Small Plot, Big Harvest: A Step-by-Step Guide to Growing Fruits and Vegetables in Small Spaces

by D.K. Publishing

Want to grow your own fruit or vegetables, but unsure how? Small Plot, Big Harvest contains brilliantly simple instructions on how to grow more than 50 different crops – perfect for beginners and expert gardeners alike.

Look up the specific crop you want to grow, and follow the photos and practical advice on starting, nurturing, and harvesting.

Choose your variety from more than 275 covered across the book, with galleries featuring unusual, exotic, or heirloom options for the most popular crops.

Discover how to plan your space, whether it's a vegetable patch, a small raised bed, or just some containers (outside or inside). Explore different planting themes to suit your needs and maximize your harvest.

This updated edition contains the latest popular new cultivars and heirloom varieties and expanded troubleshooting information to help keep your plants healthy. Whether you're a novice, a longtime gardening fan, or just want to explore a new at-home hobby, Small Plot, Big Harvest is an invaluable resource for all your gardening needs.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Reference, Adult

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 2012

About the author

Dorling Kindersley (DK) is a British multinational publishing company specializing in illustrated reference books for adults and children in 62 languages. It is part of Penguin Random House, a consumer publishing company jointly owned by Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA and Pearson PLC. Bertelsmann owns 53% of the company and Pearson owns 47%.

Established in 1974, DK publishes a range of titles in genres including travel (including Eyewitness Travel Guides), arts and crafts, business, history, cooking, gaming, gardening, health and fitness, natural history, parenting, science and reference. They also publish books for children, toddlers and babies, covering such topics as history, the human body, animals and activities, as well as licensed properties such as LEGO, Disney and DeLiSo, licensor of the toy Sophie la Girafe. DK has offices in New York, London, Munich, New Delhi, Toronto and Melbourne.

Source: Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Shannon Rohrer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great resource for gardeners, whether growing on a balcony or on a plot of land. Lots of information accompanied by pictures detailing methods of growing, planning, trouble shooting pests and illness, and more.

[Allie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm planning a huge garden overhaul this year, and this book is a fantastic reference guide. I love that they give you sample plots, where to plant things and how many of each.

[Angelina Justice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book for it's combination of simplicity and detail. It manages to give a basic overviews of many things while maintaining time and space for detail where it is needed.

The writing style and layout of illustrations/photos make this a great book for small portion consumption.

I like it so much, I've checked it out from the library twice. This one is on my "to buy" list.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surface level but wide ranging. The book touches on almost all commonly grown crops and because of this it takes a very quick look at each and tends to lack helpful additional details. There were many parts of the book I wanted more information than it provided, such as dealing with/avoiding prematurely bolting onions and bolting cilantro, or the difference in yields when growing onions by seeds, sets, or bulbs. But it never really gets into depth on any one subject, so I kept finding it lacking.

Much of the information in this book I already knew but still I learned a lot, and especially loved the suggestion about how to avoid peach leaf curl.
This is a great book for beginners or people still planning their gardens out since it looks at such a wide range of fruits and vegetables. But the more experienced gardener may want a book more narrow in scope.

[Scott County Library System · Rating 4 out of 5]

Featured Nonfiction - Small plot, big harvest by Lucy Halsall

Whether you're an urban gardener, or just want to make better use of containers, this book has lots of information. It is easy to read for beginners and contains lots of pictures and ideas. Halsall has suggestions on what to buy, what to grow together, and how to get a better yield out of a small space or container.

What better way to start out spring then by planning a garden? Check out the gardening sections all all your branches -- start with 635 in Dewey and go from there. Happy planting!

[Ligaya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not any new information but nice to have so much of it all in one place for easy reference. Crammed full of photos, plenty of recommendations for small space plants, and the graphics for sowing/harvesting/plant space is great! This book will get you started. But if you need a deep dive on particular plants or crops, you'll have to go elsewhere. The four "planting plots" highlighted at the beginning of the book - with the main planting plot photographed throughout an entire season - are great.

[Lana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super helpful how tos with beautiful images. Basic growing help for all your food gardening categories. I loved the extra sections on pests and diseases. The photos will prove to be most helpful every year as I diagnose issues. I plan to keep this book for years to come. It's a great tool for me because I garden in a very small space.

[Liz Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

great tips and information

[Christine Barth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comprehensive, easy to use has good photos and illustrations. Wish I'd found this at the beginning of the season!

[Erin Penn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can't really just exactly how good the book is until I get into my garden and start using it, but the pictures are amazing - including a good section on disease and pests in the garden. Wish it had a little bit more about companion gardening other than the one line of marigolds and tomatoes.

With over 70 step-by-step pictures of various crops from beets to pumpkins, I am pretty sure I will be using this book a lot. Good book for beginners and an easy read. Great setup of a 9 x 9 foot (3 yard square) crop area.

But the book also is suppose to go into how to grow in containers, and in that it is woefully lacking other than telling you things need more water. No information on how large a container should be, if you need to rotate them, etc. The big example is the 3 yard square area - which is in the ground planting, though four different setups are provided. The harvest of potatoes shows containers, but the other 70 step-by-step pictures are all in the ground kind of things.

Also a hazard is no real discussion of climate differences. For a beginning gardening book, at least one page should have been devoted to snow vs. no snow climates rather than the vague "if you live in colder areas".

So lots of pretty pictures. Need a little gardening background (like remembering visiting your grandparents in the summer and helping them a couple years when you were six or seven), but not much. Good for small lots and inspiration if you want to do container gardening. And pretty pictures if you don't know what the plant is suppose to look like from sprout to harvest. (I mentioned pictures, right?)

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this book to be useful and well laid out with excellent photographs. Some good ideas on how to get the most out of small space. The step-by-step sections for each type of vegetable/fruit should be very helpful for beginners, with optional point of starting under cover inside or direct sowing outside, but I'm not sure I would ever start root vegetables in trays for transplanting. I found that the varieties listed for each type of vegetable weren't necessarily those varieties most easily found (at least not in my geographic area), but that gave me some new varieties to look for. Good information on growing potatoes vertically, which I plan to put to use this year.

[Latasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This might be my favorite gardening book so far. It takes you from the soil and digging your plot, to soil amendments, exact planting details, to pests and how to get rid of them. The best part about this book, however, was that it goes by plant and discusses sowing, transplanting, upkeep, and harvest. It's a great resource for a first time gardener like myself.

[Debra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully photographed with great information for the gardener who wants to see more yield and variety in their small back yard. Found several good ideas that I will try this year as I try to expand my variety of fresh food.

[Ietrio · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book really is about small plots. Meaning you have to have a garden. And be ready to waste time for what machines do today. I thought it was about "small spaces" as featured on the subtitle on the cover, meaning for the urban folk. Misleading.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally useful book, lovely pictures. The most useful part for me was the disease and bug section (because of the pictures). Also useful were the bits on individual fruit plants.

[Lici Beveridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best how-to gardening books ever!

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great for the beginner needing clear advice about how to plan a garden, what and when to plant, and how to take care of your plants. Not specifically organic, but still useful for organic gardeners.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great information. Not a lot of it completely new, but the writing was good, the advice sound and the pictures lovely.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book for the beginner.