Starter Vegetable Gardens, 2nd Edition

I'm not a starting gardener, but I am intrigued with this book and will be using tips and techniques shown here. Not only for the beginning gardener, but a book for every vegetable gardener. Thank you!

This was a very informative book! There were many plans to help gardeners, whether they are experienced or not. The different garden plans were very well explained and the pictures of each plan helped to explain how the layout worked in the different years of planting. I was glad that the author added information on insects but I wish she would have also added how to keep animals out of her garden. I am very excited about using some of the tips in my garden at home!

Being a somewhat beginning gardener, failed more than succeeded, this book has given me encouragement. It gave me specifics in planning my garden as the years go by and as my garden grows each year. Suggestions included easy to raise crops, what, how, how many to plant and caring for them is included. All topics from seed, mulch, fertilizer and even insects are covered to help you succeed in gardening. I recommend this for those starting out or are stuck in where to go with their garden or how to "grow" it. It is easy to follow and read.

The book takes you through soils, garden layout, plant placement, best practices for starting seeds and growth/maintenance, with year-to-year guidance as you begin your gardens and retain for future seasons. This is a fantastic "winter read" to work through and take notes without feeling rushed or overwhelmed to immediately implement. The illustrations were also very helpful in seeing concepts in action.

Thank you to Storey Publishing for the digital ARC provided via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Starter Vegetable Gardens is the perfect book for someone just getting started with gardening. The format is extremely helpful in building that first garden and expanding it year after year. The tips and "recipes" for the garden make it enjoyable to read. The crop by crop varieties section was especially helpful to the novice gardener and covered many of the typical garden varieties. As an experienced gardener, I found most of the varieties listed are tried and true in my garden. Overall the entire book is very well organized, very readable, and extremely helpful to all types of gardeners.

Great how to book for gardeners! Gardening is laid out in a 3 year program. This book makes gardening a breeze! From how to plot your garden, soil/fertilizer to add, and what types of vegetables to grow where. It’s written in an easy format with illustrations. This author makes gardening fool proof! I’ve been a gardener for years and learned quite a bit from this book! I’d highly recommend it!

This book is excellent! It is a thorough and easy to follow guide for both the beginner and the experienced gardener. It provides step by step instructions and helpful images/illustrations. This is the book I wish I had 2 summers ago when I started my backyard vegetable garden during the Covid lockdown. I actually read this book earlier this year, however I waited to write this review until now as I wanted to see how helpful it would be for me for this years' growing season. It turns out it was extremely helpful. I ended up consulting this book fairly frequently throughout the summer. I highly recommend this book for all prospective backyard gardeners.

Buy Book !!!! Read, pick a plan, prepare soil, plant, water and harvest. What a great book.
I have been trying to build the confidence to start a garden at my house. This book does a great job of giving you options for a garden. Then provides you details in preparing the soil and setting up your garden. The book even gives you a diagram with dimensions and tells your what and where to plant.
The timing of reading this book should set me up to have a garden next spring. How exciting! The book even tells you what types of each vegetable to plant. Also talks about starting from seeds or small plants.

I really enjoyed this updated edition! I'm not sure if this will be a purchase for our library, but I'll definitely be ordering a personal copy to inspire and educate in my gardening efforts. These garden plans are simple, easy to understand, and beautiful. I think that this is a great resource for beginning gardeners as well as those who have a little bit more experience, but want some more direction or inspiration. There's just a ton of great info in here, and the pictures and illustrations add to the experience. A great addition to a gardening collection!

Do you know that you can start a garden in a bag? You can purchase a bag of topsoil, plant the seeds in it and harvest right from the bag - don't forget to poke holes in the bottom for drainage!
You will learn how to map out your garden, putting in paths, planting vegetables that protect each other and support each other, and plant the plants in rows or hills. You will be shown which plants grow best in each season, from early spring to early winter.
A compost pile will help you to fertilize your garden all year, a container with a lid is good for keeping your compost protected from animals or appearing untidy, you can use grass clippings, weeds, leaves and fruit and vegetable peels in your compost pile.
Raised beds can be an asset if your soil is poor and you will do less bending, you will also be shown how to have a front yard garden that you and your neighbors will enjoy.
This is an all around gardening book with many helpful ideas for the beginner or experienced gardener!

In this age of sustainability and inflation, we are all seeking ways to have an organic garden on our lawns. This book gives one of the easiest ways to incorporate a sustainable garden in our homes by just using a 40 pound bag of topsoil located at any garden center we can have a quick garden plot without all the trouble of build raised beds or tilling. The book even give suggested garden plans...a great find.

This book was wonderful and taught me so much about vegetable gardening! I am started my garden in September and will certainly be using this book as a reference!

This is a very good book for beginners or anyone wanting to have a garden. It was descriptive and educational and i will be using this when starting my garden next year. I recommend this for any gardeners or someone interested in starting a garden.

This is a great book for anyone who, like me, would like to have a go at growing some of their own vegetables but really doesn’t know anything about gardening and doesn’t know where to start.
It’s written using plain language and doesn’t use too much gardening jargon so that Was something I really liked.
I’m going to have a go at some of the suggestions in the book for next season and I’m looking forward to seeing how I get on.
My thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read this book in return for an honest review.

Very useful companion for me in my first year of growing my own. Lots of great tips and pictures. Recommend to anyone who is thinking of getting started!

I was quite impressed with the content and layout of the book. I will be purchasing a copy of this book once published. Great resource for gardening. I am excited to try the bag gardening. What a great idea! Other gardening books get too technical for me. This book explains in simple terms and easy to understand. The planting/gardening plans are very doable. For the weekend gardeners get this book!

I don't really consider myself a 'starter gardener; but this book gives so many insights and such great information that I might as well be one. The author explains why you should do certain things rather than just telling you to do them and gives explicit instructions so it is nearly impossible to get confused. I look forward to implementing many of these tips in my own burgeoning garden in upcoming seasons.

Barbara Pleasant's Starter Vegetable Gardens is an excellent resource for the home gardener. It's designed to help beginners plan for their harvest over a few years, but I found it useful as well (I'm not exactly a beginner, but I'm nowhere near expert level by any means). I love that there are suggestions for plant placement, as I'm always looking for ways to best use my garden space, as well as tips for harvesting over each season, something that I definitely want to improve upon. I'm glad to have this in my collection and looking forward to finding a finishing copy. I highly recommend this--the text is quite easy to follow and really inspires you to get your hands in the dirt.

Thank you so much to Storey Publishing and NetGalley for providing this copy to review.

I am an avid gardener and always looking for ways to improve my skills and improve my harvest. Something I really valued was the information on how to improve the ground I am planting on. This book has encouraged me to switch my mindset from focusing on the plant and the output to focusing on the earth around the plant more. Thank you to NetGalley and Storey Publishing for a copy of this book for an honest review.

I love love love this book. There is SO much information in gardening and it can be very difficult to translate that over to building and maintaining your own garden, but I find this a very descriptive and clear source for it. The illustrations are great, and I love that this isn't just a "here's how you start, good luck!" kind of instruction.. The author gives you a three-year plan to follow in whichever option you choose of those offered. I will be using this to help me restructure my garden!

Starter Vegetable Gardens is a beginner accessible tutorial instruction guide for planning and executing an organic garden by Barbara Pleasant. Originally published in 2010, this second edition is due out in early 2022 from Storey publishing. It's 232 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

Storey is quite well known for high quality lifestyle, gardening, and sustainable living titles. This is a classic, and lives up to their standards. There's a logical progressive layout which takes readers through planning, siting, selecting, planting, soil improvement, harvesting and other necessary tasks using accessible, easy to understand language supported by good clear photography and schematics.

The book also includes several appendices: a glossary and definitions list, a metric conversion chart, an overview over the garden plans included in the book, as well as a short resource and seed vendor list. Vendors are slanted toward readers in North America, but with online vendors, availability shouldn't be problematic for readers living elsewhere.

Five stars. This would make a good choice for smallholders, gardening / allotment groups, public or school library acquisition, and for the home gardener.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

The Starter Gardens 2nd Edition is a beautifully illustrated book with many diagrams and garden plans to meet any gardener’s needs.

This Book suits the needs of the well-rounded gardener or the very new! The plans are descriptive, detailed and themed.

Filled with design elements for various styles of gardens and information about seedlings, the author Barbara Pleasant provides just that!

She has created a book with a easy flow for the reader to understand text and terms, and the detailed visuals that will help any gardener pick the perfect seasonal garden they can design for themselves.

I am an avid gardener and found things In this book that I didn’t know. Everyone needs a refresher at some point anyways.

I felt this book could have benefited with some actual photographs to help compliment the informative designs.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this ebook.

I have a large and empty garden and I've always dreamed of having vegetables especially as I wanted to make it a special bonding between me and my toddler tending to the garden. It's important to raise our children to be aware of the environmental impact.
Absolutely loved it, and will highly recommend! Clear how-to advice, great photography and very thoughtful design. A must have for all new homeowners and beginners like me. A Bible for all thirty something's!

This book is filled with excellent ideas for the first time vegetable gardener, and for those, like myself, who want to expand their horizons. A valuable tool for vegetable gardeners.

Thank you for a copy of this book in exchange for honest feedback. I am excited to say that I found this gardening book extremely helpful. I am a beginner but I have read a handful of gardening books. This particular book guides the reader in areas such as organic vegetable gardening, plant care, garden design, etc. Importantly, I found value in learning about what I should buy (and when), as well as what works best for my area/budget and ability to care/tend. I think it's really important to know your limits but also test your skills as you get better. In this area, I have often ran out to the home gardening store to get whatever meets my fancy or is on sale... instead, this book offered some insight on how to make sure one understands how and what to grow, what is needed, and how to develop skills over time. Another strength is its illustrations -- it's straightforward, informative, and easy to follow along. I would highly suggest to beginner gardeners and libraries.

Where has Barbara Pleasant been all my life?! Her Starter Vegetable garden is just the book I have been looking for.

Barbara takes you through everything you need to start vegetable gardening in a clear step by step way for the first 3 years. There are 24 garden plans to suit the beginner to slightly more advanced, as well as consideration of plot size and needs. The plans are clearly pictured and walked through.

She goes into detail on prep, what to grow when, care, harvesting and even organic pest control.

Finally this is one book that quite literally holds your hand from the very beginning. There is even a questionnaire to help you choose which plan is right for you. For me its the 1st year bag garden!!! Yup I'm a beginner.

The book is colorful, the photos and diagrams are relevant. Plentiful and very clear. Barbara's writing is written for the beginner in mind-clear and consise. Where she has used 'jargon' its explained in the glossary.

Overall an excellent first gardening book. This will be in my daughters stocking some time soon.

Absolutely love it, and will highly recommend! Clear how-to advice, great photography and lovely overall design. I’ve been gardening about ten years and I wish I’d had this book when I started.

Starter Vegetable Gardens, 2nd Edition by Barbara Pleasant is a beautiful book of many different sizes, types and styles of gardens. All include full color photos and sketched plans with instructions for the garden. This book also included bag gardening, which I had never heard of, but what a genius idea! You cut open the bag of garden soil and direct sow your plants right into the cut open bag. I may have to try that. This is a great book for beginning gardeners and for those looking to change their garden.

This is probably the most comprehensive, helpful gardening book I've ever read (and I've read a lot). It gives step-by-step instructions for all kinds of gardens with detailed illustrations, layouts, buying list for seeds and supplies for each, and even year-by-year plans of how to do each garden the first year and years thereafter. Some are small, some are simple, some use bags of soil to make it easier, and so on. I wish there were more photos of the gardens themselves (there are lots of photos of plants and close-ups for tutorials, but just colorful drawings of the garden plans) but it's still a book I can't really give fewer than 5 stars to in good conscience. Well recommended it you want a complete layout of exactly what to grow and how.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

Organic Vegetable garden starter book vital to growth and success

Posted on May 8, 2021 by michellelovatosbookreviews, world's first book color commentator, book reviews with a twist

Hmm. 24 NO-FAIL plans for gardening? Interesting. No-fail?
Where do you have to live to be “No-fail?”
I’m betting that Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens by Barbara Pleasant has plans that work. It must. This new title from the prolific gardening author is Starter Vegetable Gardens’ second edition. I’m just not confident that I wouldn’t be the first to fail. Some people have green thumbs. My thumbs are missing.
Starter Vegetable Gardens is genuinely fantastic, authoritative and what I think is an exhaustive resource on the subject. (I say that, but I could not find the chapter in this book that addresses the harsh desert climate.) Regardless, this handy guide does handle the types of vegetables that do well in organic gardens and a variety of ways to plant and maintain them.
Starter Vegetable Gardens starts at, well, the beginning where Pleasant explains her gardening process year by year. She is slow and complete in her instruction and offers compact descriptions about where various garden plants will grow sustainably.
Pleasant then instructs readers about what type of soil and conditioning help her suggested vegetables thrive (which does indeed address the desert issue) and follows that process with one, two, and three-year overview plans to help them succeed.
I see why this is the second edition. In my lifetime, I should see about 25 of these editions. Let me give an example about how this works:
Chapter One: Bag Gardens. Very interesting. Pleasant designed this gardening plan for a city or urban garden or for those who want to bring organic gardening into their yard. First, understand the process. Second, plant the collection of vegetables suggested in her book, which includes lettuce and snap peas in the spring, snap peas and tomatoes in the summer, arugula and bok choy in the fall, and so on.
The soil in the bag supplies the nutrients. Pleasant provides the expertise
Year Two: In the spring, plant lettuce, snow peas, kale, kohlrabi, potatoes, and onions. In the summer, plant pole snap beans, bush snap beans, tomatoes, etc. Year Three: In spring, plant lettuce, snap peas, potatoes, onions, beets, and chard. In summer, plant snap beans, tomatoes, peppers, and squash.
Pleasant goes through the year, for three years, instructing gardeners on what to grow. Then she spends several chapters on how to design gardens for various places around the house (bag gardens, border gardens, and front yard gardens) that will support her plan.
Pleasant offers information about watering, mulch, insects, disease, harvesting, and season changes, as well as several other vital topics for organic gardeners.
I can see why this is a no-fail (if followed) book. Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens is one of more than a half dozen Pleasant gardening titles. And I’m convinced it can work. It sounds crazy, but I am starting to feel the itch of my thumbs growing back.

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Happy are those who respect the Lord and obey him. You will enjoy what you work for, and you will be blessed with good things. Psalm 128: 1-2

I like the simplicity of this book. The table of contents makes it easy to navigate to what specific thing you are looking for. I especially like the year by year overviews.

An excellent reference book for starting a small garden, I was encouraged to read that you could just cut growing bags open and put the vegetables in there, and which ones are best to plant at different times of year. Of course it deals with expansion to a bigger garden, for those people who want to go that way, but I reckon I will be happy with the bags idea for now, and it is possible to tend to it quite easily, it only takes a few hours. I read through it quickly, but will return to the book as a reference book, because it is easy to understand. Indeed it explains the basics of gardening in such a way that I think it is the easiest book ever to get my head round, not that I have read many books on gardening, so there may be other books that are easy to understand, but this one inspired me to take action. For that reason I would recommend the book wholeheartedly.

This is the book I wish I had when I started my first garden. It lays out 3 year plans for starter gardens. It is filled with beautiful illustrations that accompany clear, precise instructions to grow the garden of your dreams. It includes advice and how to on everything from maintaining gardening tools to how to pound a post. I cannot wait to recommend this book at my library.

This is like a garden cookbook! I love that she sets it up like a recipe with ingredients and then instructions accompanied with plenty pictures. She has 24 plans for a small scale organic garden and then tips for honing and troubleshooting based on what you want and need. I can’t believe I had never thought about gardening right out of the potting soil bags. Genius! She also organizes a progression of year one, two, and three for first four plans, which gives a great visual to the development, attainability, and sustainability you can achieve if you stick with it. Definitely recommend for anyone interested in gardening, food security, etc.

Thank you, NetGalley!

For a while now, I have thought that I really want to start growing some veggies in my garden and I have always been so so intimidated by the whole science around it. Starter Vegetable Gardens was exactly what it promised to be and exactly what I needed. First and foremost, it took some of the apprehension away and now I absolutely can't wait to try these tips out and hopefully grow some delicious veggies of my own!