Grow the Good Life: Why a Vegetable Garden Will Make You Happy, Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise

by Michele Owens

A lively, passionate argument for the backyard vegetable garden, drawing on science, history, and stories from the author's garden.Our parents saw supermarkets and processed foods as the height of convenience. But nothing is more convenient than grocery shopping in the backyard. A vegetable garden offers the best defense against rising food prices, the most environmentally sound way to eat, and better exercise than any gym. It will turn anyone into a wonderful cook, since nothing tastes more vibrant than homegrown. And it can take less time every week than a trip to the supermarket.In Grow the Good Life, Michele Owens, an amateur gardener for almost two decades, makes an entertaining and persuasive case for vegetable gardens. She starts with two simple but radical Growing food on a small scale is easy, and it is absurdly rewarding.With her wry, funny, and accessible approach, Owens helps beginning gardeners overcome obstacles that keep them from planting a few seedlings every spring. She explains why dirt isn't dirty; the health benefits of growing one's own food; and that vegetable gardens are not antithetical to the frantic pace of modern life, but simple and undemanding if intelligently managed.Grow the Good Life is not just another how-to. Instead, it will teach you the true fundamentals of vegetable how to fit a garden into your life and why it's worth the trouble.

Genres: Gardening

226 pages, Kindle Edition

Reviews

[Roben · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book and I will read again. As a new vegetable gardener, I was encouraged and prompted to do more next year with a relaxed and joyful approach that Michele Owens brings to growing things. She hooked me in the chapter, "Why Don't Americans Garden" with 'Here is what's really convenient: ending a workday by wandering out into the yard and seeing what's good for dinner right there, instead of having to get into a car to explore that supremely unpleasant landscape called a supermarket. Her's what's convenient: having ingredients at hand that are so good in themselves, they will more than make up for your limits.'

[Angel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t quite know what the rubric for grading a non fiction book is - but I walked away (or rather curled up tightly under my sheets as it is *checks watch* 11:42PM) yearning for a patch of land bigger than my balcony. It left me fondly anticipating the spring when I can get my planters set up with the first crops of the season.

This book is informative, funny, and easy to follow. A touching final chapter wrapped up this (actually quite a quick) read up. Commit to a couple of hours and come out of it inspired

[Diana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, but after a while, it was clear that the author suffers from "Iknowitallitus". She sounds so strident & nasty at folks who decide to go to the gym vs. garden. Why all the hostility?

[Vickie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a gardener I found it amusing, light reading, kind of like reading the blog of a friend. Ostensibly the book is an argument for why we should all have gardens, especially vegetable ones, though in my case she's preaching the choir.

[Brigetta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should read this, her feelings about growing food mirror mine!

[Adrian Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love gardening. I don't feel the need to justify my gardening hobby by pointing out how good for the planet it is, or how I'll be able to 'live off the land' in case of apocalypse. I appreciated the author's guidance about disregarding most gardening books and taking care of your soil, but could have done with the chapters that felt like a defense of the passion.

[Cory St. Esprit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall a really decent book on the economic, social, behavioral, environmental, and physical benefits of gardening and growing your own food - but the author comes off as SOOOOOO whiny it almost forced me to put it down.

[Nathalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction to the history and politics of agribusiness. Although not always elaborated upon as much as desired, it adds more to the educational aspect of this book. It's a good overview on how gardening is beneficial in so many powerful ways.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy read. Author came off more smug than joyful about gardening, and there was a fair amount of negativity about larger bodies, larger farms and processed food that I didn’t love.