Slice of Springtime Heaven

This was a good chunk of yesterday afternoon:

That's a pile of my favourite veg and herb gardening books, tea and some lovely March sunshine. I've not been quite 100% and had spent a good chunk of the morning cooking and knew I was in for a late night. So decided it was in my best interests to chill out, rather than getting stuck into the garden. A good couple of hours later and I had a list of herbs to grow, along with lists of plants and seeds to buy and bits that needed moving in the garden, and a little plan of the herb beds.  

The books are:

Food from Your Garden by Reader's Digest which is my bible of veg gardening. My parents had it as I grew up and I snapped up a copy from a charity shop. It's old fashioned and fantastic with lovely illustrations. It also assumes you have at least as much space as a full size allotment and says amusing things like 'for a family of four, two 12ft rows should be sufficient'. I love it.

Organic Kitchen and Garden by Ysanne Spevack, Christine Lavelle and Michael Lavelle. A great book which is half gardening, half cooking. The gardening section has a lot of general info on organic methods plus directories of veg, fruit and herbs with cultivation requirements, timings, spacings etc. The book I usually go to first. 


Allotment Month by Month by Alan Buckingham. To be honest all the info in this book is in the others, in fact they have more info, but I bought it because of its month-by-month arrangement which makes organising myself that bit easier. 


Grow your own Drugs by James Wong which is a fun book I still haven't made anything from. 


Jekka's Complete Herb Book by Jekka McVicar which is my herb bible. There's no magical information, obviously, but otherwise it's just great for someone like me who dabbles - I don't need great textbooks of info and Jekka strikes a good balance here. I can see how a dabbler like me could get by with only this one book. Obviously it isn't my only book as I'm a bit of a book fiend, but since I bought it, it's often the only one I open.