The New Victory Garden

In my periodic attempts to grow vegetables, this book -- and its predecessor, "Crockett's Victory Garden," have been my constant and favorite companions. It's past time for this 1987 book to be updated and republished. This is Cadillac gardening as Crockett and his successor Bob Thomson apparently had a large budget, a full toolshed, and endless time to produce a perfect garden. My pitiful efforts never yield much in the way of edible products, but I enjoy reading about how I would grow vegetables if I were not such a lazy and shiftless person. The book is broken down by months with a long list of vegetables for planting, tending, and harvesting for each month as well as other garden tasks. The monthly labors are for Boston. Being further south, I tend to do things a month earlier in the spring and a month later in the fall than Thomson prescribes. "The New Victory Garden" is full of solid gardening advice for an establishmentarian gardener. If you're into organics or (like me) inclined to low-impact, no inputs type cultivation, you might not like Thomson's reliance on chemical fertilizers -- but he makes up for it with good advice on compost, natural fertilizers, and lots of touchy feely stuff. The pictures are beautiful. Someday, in some future world I'll have a garden like this. Yeah, sure. Dream on! But I like reading the book and I occasionally try to follow the advice. Smallchief

In my opinion, this book needs to be actively published again! I used this book as a guide to grow my first vegetable garden in Richmond, VT. It thoroughly explained EACH step in the process with text and illustrations/photos. My neighbor, whom I hadn't met yet, left a letter in my mailbox around August of that year. It contained a photo of my garden and a note saying that mine was the most beautiful vegetable garden she'd ever seen and thought I would appreciate the picture of it! I have checked this book out of the library each spring since and this year it was listed as "lost!" That's why I'm here on-line: buying an "acceptable" condition copy used rather than do without! BUY THIS BOOK IF YOU CAN!

I just want to emphasize the earlier reviews: This is a great, enormously helpful guide to gardening just about anywhere (I live in southern CA and I enjoyed the section on cold weather gardening even if I never use it). The author isn't clearly part of a gardening school of thought (square foot, raised beds, biodynamic), he is just vastly knowledgable about gardening and will meet you wherever you are - a sign of a great teacher. He wrote the best section on homemade garden structures - A frames, cold frames and the like - I have seen. Not a useless or wasted page. Please bring it back!

This is THE most outstanding gardening book - month by month entries for each vegetable, organic methods of improving soil and pest control. My father handed this one down to me when I started my own garden - I don't understand why this hasn't been reprinted or the format copied.

This is an absolute must for any gardener, especially the first time gardener. It gives month to month coverage of the garden and what to do for each month. This is one of my gardening books. If you can get your hands on a copy, it is worth it.