Food to Grow: A simple, no-fail guide to growing your own vegetables, fruits and herbs

by Frankie Flowers

From Canada’s #1 garden team, a guide that makes growing your own fruits, vegetables and herbs simple, bountiful and fun Nothing beats the taste and smell of a tomato freshly picked from your own garden. And there’s a certain pride in knowing that the salad you just served―fresh strawberries and all―was harvested entirely from your backyard. But growing your own fruits, vegetables and herbs can be time-consuming and feel overwhelmingly complicated. Your eagerness to get growing in the spring can be rained out by seemingly endless seedlings and seed packs at your garden centre, all with cryptic planting instructions that leave you with withered plants rather than crunchy carrots. But it doesn’t need to be that way! Frankie Flowers has decades of experience helping thumbs of all colours turn barren patches and empty pots into bountiful harvests―and he can help you do the same. Food to Grow simplifies every growing decision you’ll need to make. Frankie helps you evaluate your space, decide just how much time you want to invest and then make the smartest choices about which plants will give you the best bang for your buck. He guides you through the entire growing season from prepping and planning, to planting, weeding and harvesting (the best part!), and he shares not just which veggies, fruits and herbs have become Frankie’s Favourites, but also which plants just aren’t worth the effort. Loaded with gorgeous photography that will have you desperate to get digging, Food to Grow includes a detailed A–Z index of over fifty of Canada’s most popular home crops. Whether you have space for a few pots or a back forty, Frankie Flowers will help you make your dream of home-grown treats a fun and tasty reality.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction

416 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2016

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're only going to have one garden book, this is a decent one to have. Especially if you live in the northern United States or in Canada. Good overview of many food crops. Also, a really nice set of plans for raised beds.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. It really helped me grow some great plants this summer.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful fruit and vegetable growing advice for Canadian gardeners. I liked the way he presented the information and it is a really accessible guide to follow up with (once you get down to actually gardening rather than simply reading about it!). It sparked my enthusiasm and we await the signs of new life in the kale, spinach, lettuce, radishes, and potatoes planed.

[Danielle Simms · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being a new in the gardening world, I found this book to be extremely informative in helping me set up a proper garden for the size of my yard. As it's just my husband and I, we will have a fantastic variety of fresh fruits, vegetables and spices this year.

I plan to continue using this book as I work through my first and many years of gardening.