A Beginners Guide to Companion Planting: Companion Gardening with Flowers, Herbs & Vegetables by Jeffreys, Mel

A Beginners Guide to Companion Planting: Companion Gardening with Flowers, Herbs & Vegetables by Jeffreys, Mel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I consider myself an avid vegetable gardener, but I've only had a garden two years so I'm definitely still in the beginner camp. I've been reading a lot about it, but I've learned the most just from talking to other gardeners. My boss has had a huge, successful garden for most of 30 years, and he's taught me the post, and he was teaching me about companion planting before I had ever heard of the term or knew what it meant.

This book is really rather basic, doesn't present anything that hasn't been mentioned before, and the drawings/illustrations are so tiny as to be useless (I looked on kindle keyboard & on my kindle nook app, which is in color). If you try to enlarge the screen (which I did) the drawings end up blurry.

The only "good" thing about this book is its length - and the reason why I gave this 3 stars. The book is very short, but it makes it very easy for you to find the information you are looking for. If you are about to plant peas, for example, and you can't remember what to plant with it or what not to plant with it, it's easy enough to find that section in the book.

The other good thing is the author does talk about what flowering plants are good for your garden - something I attempted to do last year, but all my flowers died, defeating the purpose.

I got this book on amazon when it was listed for free.

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jam on

Jam On: The Craft of Canning Fruit by Laena McCarthy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've been obsessing over canning for quite some time now - I think this is the 3rd year I've been talking about it. I finally landed some canning equipment for a song at a yard sale, so it's time for me to step up and actually start canning, instead of just dreaming about it. I'm looking at it as more of a hobby, something to do once in a while with some extra veggies I might have, but we'll see where canning takes me.

This was one of quite a stack of books I took out from the library. I'm honestly not terribly interested in making a whole lot of jams/jellies/preserves; I'm more interested in making picked everything I can get my handles on, salsa, relishes, etc... in small batches, but it doesn't mean jam isn't in my future, either.

This book by McCarthy starts off talking about her experience with canning. Though it's an interesting tale, it reminds me a bit of all the people in my life who are lacking self-confidence & in order to make up for that, they have to brag about themselves an awful lot to compensate. It just gets old, rather quickly, in the book.

McCarthy has some interesting recipes in the book, but I get the impression it's not aimed towards a beginner like me. That's OK: I've been reading everything in site for a while now and can get beginner information elsewhere. That being said, most of the recipes aren't anything i can see myself making - I'm not much of a cook, and like I said, I'm not planning on making 100 jars a jam a year, so I'm not going to invest in 900 different ingredients that I'll never use again. A lot of the recipes call for vanilla bean - I don't even know what one looks like or what part of the grocery store one would find a vanilla bean! That being said, something like "I Eat NYC Hot Pepper Jelly" makes me drool, and the only special equipment needed is a food processor which *gasp* I actually own. But the majority of the recipes I'm just never going to make.

There's also a definite slant towards NYC and NYC ingredients, and also uses a type of pectin not found in my area, making the recipes impractical.

This book goes into the "I'll get it used if I find it at a yard sale for a couple of dollars" pile and not the "must buy used on amazon and pay shipping to own it now" pile.

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mastering fermentation

Mastering Fermentation: Recipes for Making and Cooking with Fermented Foods by Mary Karlin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mastering Fermentation: Recipes for Making and Cooking with Fermented Foods

by Mary Karlin

A beautifully illustrated and authoritative guide to the art and science of fermented foods, featuring 70+ recipes that progress from simple fermented condiments like vinegars and mustards to more advanced techniques for using wild yeast, fermenting meats, and curing fish.

Yup, it's another book that I had to read because of my garden!

A year ago was my first and only attempt at fermentation - an idea I'm fascinated by because I have IBS, and let's face it, fermented foods are my friend, and the idea of making my own fermented food is even nicer. I had a bunch of tomatoes from my garden that needed to be used up, no way to can, no more space in the garden, and I had just bought a bunch of garlic, onions, and various peppers from a farmer's market, so I decided to make salsa. I found a recipe online for making fermented salsa, spent hours dicing up the veggies and doing everything I was supposed to, only to find out our water had gotten infected by e.coli and the water was unsafe to drink without boiling first - which, of course, I hadn't done because I was trying to ferment the salsa. I had 6 pints and an odd quart jar of salsa that I had to toss because it just wasn't safe to try to eat the salsa.

All that to say I haven't forgotten the idea of fermenting foods. I even debating about taking a class on fermenting foods at my local trade school at night, but at $39, did I really need to take a class when I could just get a book from the library? Or heck, just do more googling? I liked the idea off hand holding, but $39 was a lot of money to spend on a night class for something like fermenting foods. and then this book fell into my lap, and I'm in love with this book and the ideas and information contained inside enough to purchase a copy for my own library. Okay, I'll probably wait & get a used copy, but still... I'm going to buy a copy.

Add all of that in, and then add recipes I haven't seen anywhere else - like mushroom ketchup - I mean, come on, mushroom ketchup!

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book of the farm

Henry Stephens's Book of the Farm by Henry Stephens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fascinating non-fiction book about farm life and living off the grid, back when everyone had to live like that in order to survive. The version I read was a newly printed, much cut book of the original.

This book is fascinating because it offers us a glimpse into what life was like back then, complete with sexist commentary. The text is rather dry and straightforward at times, but it's meant to be a manual on farm living, not a book you'd read at the beach.

There's lots of artwork included in the book, some fanciful drawings of farm scenes and others that just cracked me up, like a drawing of a milking stool (but was useful for such tools like a mattack, which I never heard of before).

I do admit to skimming much of this book, because though most of it is interesting, it's just much more detail than what I wanted to know - which is why this modern printing is cut as much as it is.

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Bokashi Composting

Bokashi Composting: Scraps to Soil in Weeks by Diego Adam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Being a vegetable garden and an apartment dweller, I was definitely hooked on the idea of Bokashi Composting - something I had definitely never heard of before - and is what Adam's book is all about, bringing Bokashi composting to the US and to people who might benefit from a different type of composting. He specifically mentions apartment dwellers, which is why I asked for this book to review (from netgalley). I've been wanting to try composting, but not having a yard of my own makes this problematic.

Adam begins the book by explaining how he wanted to write a book about Bokashi Composting, and how there's little information about it out there. He doesn't dismiss other types of composting and explains that each of the various methods all have their places. He then gets into the terms used with bokashi composting and the benefits of using this method over other methods - for example, you can compost meat, dairy, eggs and bread with this method & you can't with others. This section is interesting but gets repetitive - after all, you already have the book in your hands so why is the author trying to sell us on the method as much as he is? (it just feels like a sales pitch to me).

The next two sections are on the history and science of Bokashi Composting - another couple of sections that starts off interesting, but just got into too much detail for me and as I sat there reading, I kept wondering if this information was mere filler to make the book long enough for publishing. (these two sections are why I give the book 4 stars instead of 5)

Finally, in chapter 4 we get to the good stuff - how to make bokashi bran, the heart of the composting method (which is actually a process of fermenting). Now that we got into how to do the actual composting - I discover I can't use this method in my tiny 400 sq ft apartment - there's just no way I have the room (especially when we get to the part about how I have to spread the bran around on a large tarp to dry. I have NO floor space, period).

The end result is that this made for fascinating reading, and it was definitely interesting to learn about a new method of composting - but isn't going to work for my household, either.








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Groundbreaking Food Gardens: 73 Plans That Will Change the Way You Grow Your Garden by Niki Jabbour

Groundbreaking Food Gardens: 73 Plans That Will Change the Way You Grow Your Garden by Niki Jabbour
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Anyone who reads my reviews regularly knows that I love to read (and review) gardening books - most especially vegetable gardening. Growing up, we had a few tomato plants, grew potatoes a time or two, and rarely another vegetable plant, though our yard was always surrounded by trees and flowers. Two years ago my parents, hubby & I planted a small vegetable garden, and at the end of our second season, we doubled the size of our plot. I've never been much for cooking, but having my own garden has made me so much more aware of the food we eat and where it comes from, and I've slowly become a better cook as a result.

This book is put together by 73 different contributors, so there's great variety of plans, from small herb gardens to huge spreads with every vegetable imaginable. The books is exactly what the title says, a book of garden plans, so there aren't a lot of pretty photos of growing gardens, but illustrations of where to plant what vegetable to maximum your space. There is an introduction to each plan that explains what's going on in the plan, the how-to's and the why's, so you can learn from the plans & make it your own.



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