How to Grow Your Own Food was published in 2007 and aims to be a week-by-week guide to wild life friendly fruit and vegetable gardening. Many of the articles in this gardening book were originally published in the Blackmore Vale Magazine as result of contributions by the author "Dirty Nails".

To this day, no one knows who Dirty Nails is. References are made to a Mrs Dirty Nails in some of his articles so we can be reasonably sure that the author is a man. But is this just a ploy to keep us in the dark? After all, what male cares if his nails are dirty or not. I suspect the author is female ..... This book does exactly what it claims to do. It has two pages for each week in the year all packed with information. The writing style is amusing from beginning to end and so easy to read.

Take the 3rd week in October as an example. An article on sowing broad beans in October explains how to do it, why do it in autumn rather than spring and the advantages. The logic is that autumn sown broad beans will mature earlier, produce a better crop and beat the inevitable black fly attack. I know I'm going to try it this year. Autumn sown garlic worked a treat, so why not broad beans?

There's also an explanation of which butterflies hibernate, where and why. Then there's the Vegetable Snippets column. Many weeks Dirty Nails explains various techniques such as soil texture and how to improve it. Week 3 of October bucks that trend by writing about how good it is to have fresh, tasty produce from your own garden or allotment.

Finally there is the section on what to do in the garden this week. Written in language we can all understand, it's extremely useful. At the end of the book is a fine collection of recipes which are aimed at the gardener.

It's unlikely that you would read this book all in one go. I'm going to leave it on my bed side table and read a couple of pages about "this week"  every so often. Over a year this book would give the amateur gardener a huge amount of information in an amusing and easily readable form. We thoroughly recommend it for gardeners and also as a birthday or Christmas present.

Published By: Spring Hill
First Published: 2007
Author: Dirty Nails of the Blackmore Vale Magazine
Title: How to Grow Your Own Food
ISBN: 978-1-905862-11-5
Price: £10.99
If you want buy it direct, click the link below:
http://www.howtobooks.co.uk
OR phone:
01476 541080

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