Backyard Harvest: A Year-Round Guide to Growing Fruits and Vegetables

by Jo Whittingham

From sowing and planting to growing and harvesting, Backyard Harvest covers storing, freezing, and preserving tips so that you can enjoy your garden's bounty into the winter months and throughout the early-spring gap when little is ready to harvest. Jo Whittingham, a gardener and gardening writer who has written for a range of gardening magazines, is the author of DK's Simple Steps to Vegetable Gardening , and served as consultant on The Kitchen Garden and Grow Fruit .

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Reference

256 pages, Paperback

First published February 21, 2011

Reviews

[Christine Tutunjian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Visually fantastic. But it didn't apply well to growing seasons in Canada. It touched lightly on each plant, something a simple Google could do, but didn't dig into the relationships between plants, fertilizers for each, sun/water. Nor did it provide any insight on laying out/organizing a garden plan. It was merely a picture book for timings. The tips for post harvest storage and seed collection were probably my most enjoyed section.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably one of the most visually appealing gardening books I have read. The pictures are beautiful and plentiful. I found the information to be vague. It tells you when to plant everything but does not go into much detail on how, or the differences between certain zones. This is not a book for a beginner as it would not give you the information you need to start out.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely pictures. Organized month by month, which makes following along easy. Focused on an English climate, so not quite accurate for nee England, but useful nonetheless.

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of pretty pictures but nothing new for someone who has gardened before.

[Crystal (Goddess in the Stacks) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Backyard Harvest is set up by months, which makes for a unique and absolutely essential (to me, a beginner) book. In every month, it tells you what you should be eating (provided you had planted it previously!), what you should be planting, what you should be pruning or transplanting or otherwise working on, and usually a few pages on a seasonal-appropriate subject. (A section on apples and apple trees in November, for example.) The layout is gorgeous, the instructions are easy to understand, and I feel like after a few years of following this book I’ll be eating from my garden every month of the year with ease.

For January, for example, if I had these things planted, harvested, or stored from last year, I should be eating pickles, stored root veggies, newly lifted Salsify, forced Belgian Endive, and winter radishes, among other tasty-looking things. I should be sowing (indoors, to transplant after the last frost) early-season leeks, summer onions, lettuce, broad beans, cut-and-come-again greens, and early peas and radishes. For tending, I should be amending my soil, keeping an eye on my stored fruits and veggies for signs of rot, pruning some of my fruit trees, and picking up fallen leaves from hardy winter brassicas so they don’t cause rot at the base of the plants. The feature for the month is building a seedbed, both raised and non. In January I should be harvesting celeriac, early broccoli, the aforementioned Belgian Endive, and spring greens. Another feature for the month is sprouting seeds for use in salads. Each of these categories gets its own two-page spread, the monthly features occasionally getting four or more.

It’s a lovely, really useful book, and one I HAD to own after getting it from the library. It will be getting heavy use in the coming months, I’m sure!

Whittingham has written or co-written three other books – Vegetable Gardening and Grow Vegetables before this book, and Simple Steps to Success: Fruit and Vegetables in Pots after. The latter appears to be a combination of the first two in a new format, but I could be wrong. So I’m not sure I’d recommend any of those three – I haven’t read them – but Backyard Harvest is awesome!

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

[Fran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another DK success!!!!!!!! This book is layed out perfectly in my opinion. It is not a dry text. It is relatable and very easy to understand! It has a monthly schedule of what to do in your garden and what to plant or what to harvest. It gives advice on all kinds of things that help your garden and your own gardening skill thrive! Just love it.

[Tonya Hardin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I totally loved the book! So organized and helpful! I am going to buy my copy soon!

[Sandra Calderon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative!

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beautiful pictures and month-by-month guide to gardening in all seasons would be great for those who live in the appropriate climate. This is the American edition of a British publication so I assume the author mainly refers to planting in Great Britain. There are no specifics about climate given or any real advice on how to adjust the given calendar to other climates. For example in the spread on Growing Under Cover (i.e. in cold frames or unheated greenhouses) the author states "It is particularly useful if you live in a cold area where spring comes late and fall comes early". Of course "cold", "early" and "late" are all relative terms.

This book is an introduction to gardening year-round and certainly the calendar view is helpful but many beginners are going to need more information on planting dates for their specific climate. Overall this book might be good for ideas and inspiration but the information is vague. Niki Jabbour's The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener is a better resource for beginners with some good information on climate and Eliot Coleman's Winter Harvest Handbook will provide even more specifics.

[Tashie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be the most helpful of the 20+ books I have picked up about gardening. It's our first year gardening in any capacity, and we know diddly squat about what to do. This book would have come in SO handy in terms of how to plant seeds to transplant, when to sow, when to transplant. It was especially handy because it told me at what temperature seeds are happiest. In CO it is hard to know when to sow things because our last frost is as last as May. This book was great because it showed what you could harvest in what month, what you could plant, what problems you should look for by month, etc. It is a year-round guide that made me wish I could garden year-round! It also had great pictures of the bugs to watch out for, the diseased plants and why they look like, etc. I think I might go buy this book!

[Empath Warrior · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book for knowing when to garden your plants, including a month by month walk-through to explain what to plant, harvest, etc. It is great for all levels of gardening and has tons of information. I definitely recommend this book.

[Beth Kakuma-Depew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like gardening books that break up the tasks month by month. This has great pictures and some good info.

[Tara Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not confident that all of this advice can be applied to my location (winters in Canada are cold), but I was intrigued by the notion of being to grow food year round.