This book is a wonderful, beautifully illustrated and very informative gardening guide!
As some of you may know, I’ve been tending a little container gThis book is a wonderful, beautifully illustrated and very informative gardening guide!
As some of you may know, I’ve been tending a little container garden on my balcony for the past few years, and its the highlight of my spring, as well as an ongoing joy through the entire growing season. But even with a few years of playing in the dirt under my belt, I still feel like I have a lot to learn, and while this book may be targeting gardening newbies, I think it probably has something for everyone interested in the topic!
The comic book format is charming, and sets it up not as an instruction manual, but as a friendly conversation between two neighbors, George and Mia. George is a seasoned gardener with a technological problem, and Mia works with computers but kills all the plants, so they end up helping each other out with their respective challenges.
From choosing where to set up your garden to picking plants from the nursery, getting your soil tested, building raised beds and handling pests; everything you need to know to set up a beautiful and bountiful garden is covered by George’s wise advice and Mia’s experimenting. The illustrations are beautiful and clear, so visual learners can pick up the ideas quickly.
I loved this book, which made me look forward to spring even more than I already did! For all gardening fiends and comic book fans!...more
This is my second year of balcony gardening. It started as a way to make sure I had enough fresh culinary herbs to cook with, but it unexpectedly becaThis is my second year of balcony gardening. It started as a way to make sure I had enough fresh culinary herbs to cook with, but it unexpectedly became my favorite thing about spring and summer. I have a bunch of herbs, but also tomatoes, chilis, cucumbers, bell peppers… Next year, there will be snow peas, spinach, kale, maybe even carrots and beets! There is something about playing with moist soil and fragrant plants, the daily watering, harvesting and pruning, and then sitting down with a book, surrounded by that growing greenery that brings me so much joy. When I saw Murphy’s book at Octopus Books (awesome little Ottawa place, check it out: http://octopusbooks.ca), by the title alone, I knew this woman and I shared a basic philosophy about gardening: I has to be about love. Love of the plants, the process of growing and caring for them.
A large part of the book is dedicated to describing various garden crops in great details: how to plant them, pick them and how to use them in the kitchen. The twelve “families” mentioned in the title are in here, and it’s quite an exhaustive list, with everything from garden classics like tomatoes and runner beans to root veg and edible flowers. This section is a great “menu” of ideas, but I admit I was especially curious about the final part of the book, about the minutiae of growing plants. Divided into chapters about seeding, planting, propagating, tending and training, as well and continuous growing, harvesting and garden planning, this section of the book can get very technical, but it’s also accessible and incredibly useful for anyone who had long-term gardening plans, even with limited space.
The instructions throughout the entire book are detailed, easy to follow. There is a handy map of average temperature per region, to help you determine what your growing season is, and an entire section on getting of garden pests without using any harmful chemicals. So far, this is definitely my favorite gardening book. Even if the gorgeous photos make me bitterly jealous of her fabulous garden set up....more
Update after setting up my balcony garden for the second year running:
Yup, this book definitely helped make this little project of mine a success! ThoUpdate after setting up my balcony garden for the second year running:
Yup, this book definitely helped make this little project of mine a success! Though I must say that I probably learned just as much from making rookie mistakes last year than I did reading it, the material in "Girl's Guide" was still very useful and gave me many great ideas. My very own little green space actually inspired my neighbor and his daughter to do the same! I only wish my balcony was bigger!
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Original review:
Being a city slicker hasn’t entirely crushed my hippie father’s influence, and I have been dreaming about taking care of a lovely balcony garden for a while. This year’s attempt to grow stuff was foiled by awful spring weather, but as a (stubborn) optimist, I refuse to give up and started a detailed plan so I could be 100% ready to grow stuff next spring. I read “The Edible Balcony”, also by Mitchell (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), and while it gave me a bunch of good ideas, it didn’t have the very practical gardening tips I was looking for. Like, what kind of container and soil do I need for this? How often does it need to be watered (“frequently” is not really a precise indication)? Do I have to sing and play ukulele at the plant to it to make it grow, or do I just ignore it a while and come back to a pile of ripe fruits?
I usually hate anything that has the words “The Girl’s Guide To…” in the title because a) I’m not terribly girly and b) I’m not sure that non-girls necessarily have an easier time growing tomatoes. That being said, when I flipped through the book, I saw much more practical instructions than there were in “The Edible Balcony”. Sure, there were also a lot of annoyingly cutesy graphics, but not enough to make me gag, so I took a copy home with me, and I must say I am very glad I did.
The book is neatly laid out, with an introduction giving you some basics (required tools, types of soils, etc.), and is then organized by season, which makes sense, as you need to take care of a garden very differently from season to season. Some produce should be sown early, some when it’s warmer, and even in winter there is some care you must give your soil and plants to ensure a nice harvest the following year. Each produce has a difficulty rating and methods from growing it either in a pot or in garden soil. There are neat little sections on herbs and edible flowers. The book is also peppered with recipes, tips, definition of weird gardening terms people like me have never heard before (crocks are pieces of broken terracotta you add at the bottom of a pot to help the drainage! who knew?), and concludes with tricks on how to get rid of pests and a shopping guide.
"Edible Balcony" was inspirational, but this book is the practical, hands-on guide I had been looking for. The tone is friendly and accessible to beginners, and since it’s aimed at busy city people with jobs and lives, the projects are simple and not too time-consuming. It gets 4 stars because it is written for British climate, which is a bit different from Canadian climate, so some advice isn't really applicable. Looking forward to spring already!...more
This book is a great reference for gardening beginners and people curious about urban gardening. Since that's exactly what I am, I found the book infoThis book is a great reference for gardening beginners and people curious about urban gardening. Since that's exactly what I am, I found the book informative and inspirational: I've been meaning to start a small balcony garden at home for a while, but last year, the weather totally thwarted me (it was cold and rainy in Montreal until early July!) so this year, I decided to have a solid plan so that I could get started in early spring - in the hopes that the weather will be a little more friendly this time around...
"The Edible Balcony" gave me a lot of ideas about which plants and veggies to get started with and how to take care of them: I'm going to start slow and easy with tomatoes, spinach, jalapenos and some fresh herb! But honestly, that's where the book's practical usefulness ended.
There are quite a few chapters in this book dedicated to explaining why urban gardening is important, its benefits, ecological impact, long-term sustainability, etc. And don't get me wrong, I am 100% behind that, because I think it's important to educate people about the amount of work that goes into producing the food they eat and how they can make a difference by actively being part of the process. But I also assume that if you buy a book about balcony gardening, you are already aware of all that: hence the buying a book about urban gardening... I would have liked a bit more "how" and a little less "why", because preaching to the choir is all good, but giving them the tools to act is even better.
Alex Mitchell also seems to assume that everyone has a huge balcony or rooftop at their disposal, which isn't really the case. A lot of her advice and projects are great if you have a medium or large space to work with, but actual tiny spaces require a bit more ingenuity to be maximized - and there aren't many ideas that are applicable to 5-square meter balconies...
Still 3 stars, because the book gave me the kick in the butt I needed to get my balcony garden project going and gave me good pointers on how to start, but it's really more of a coffee table book than a gardening guide....more
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