Postage Stamp Garo P

I bought this book 2 years ago, and I'm growing more and more each year in the same space. I am so hooked on this book. Super easy reading, and very helpful on how to grow without pesticides, although it is doesn't mention growing organically specifically(that I can remember), a lot of their advice helps you grow healthy plants w/o chemicals. It tells you what to plant next to what and how to save space too. LOVE IT!

I've grown vegetables in the past, when I was a teenager, but now that I'm going to try again in my thirties, I wanted to brush up on the best way to get as many vegetables as possible out of a small mountain garden. Following the authors' directions I measured my space, made a list of the number of plants for each vegetable based on the size of my family, and then used their spacing recommendations to see if it would all fit, taking into account intercropping and succession planting. It all turned out to be fairly easy to accomplish (on paper at least!), and I'm now shopping for seeds. I'll update this review next fall with my results.

As the other reviewers have said, this book is an update from the 1975 (or so) edition which was an inspiration at the time. What seemed the most useful in this edition is an updated seed type and source list, since you are looking for compact forms of most items. I miss the graphic artist who was involved in the first book. The pictures in the new book are charmless. And the new book lacks the diagram of double-digging that is hard to explain verbally.And I'm just about to get started this spring on a potato barrel. It would seem like a good candidate for mentioning postage-stamp-wise, yet is not covered.

I am a gardening dummy and found this book to be a real "bible" for me when starting my first patio and small in-ground garden plot. This books really lays it all out for you. They go into detail about how to do things organically, as well, if you want to go to all the trouble. But they also tell you the easier alternatives (like buying store organic fertilizer). I would recommend this book to new gardeners as well as experienced ones -- lots of tips on how to get all types of vegetables producing a lot of food for you, when to plant, what to plant with, etc.

...and if this is as good as that one (circa 1975) then it gets 5 stars. I (like the author) too had been failing miserably in gardening - until I read his book. Unlike many other books on the subject of bio-intensive gardening, this one was encouraging and made it sound so easy. It ended up being very easy and very rewarding. Now I tell everyone - double dig, amend heavily, plant close together. Get this book!