A Life in the Garden: Tales and Tips for Growing Food in Every Season

Longtime Maine farmer and home gardener Damrosch (The Garden Primer; The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook) shares her decades of experience growing vegetables, fruits, and herbs in this informative, personal, engaging work. It begins with her journey to becoming a vegetable gardener and the U.S. history of growing one’s own food, then debunks barriers to gardening, such as lack of money, time, or knowledge. The book covers soil care, composting, and getting more from one’s garden by intercropping and succession planting. Damrosch shares details on designing a garden, seeding, and growing transplants, plus the tools she finds most useful. She breaks down the garden year by season listing the tasks to be done in each, including growing food in cold frames or greenhouses during the winter. The book also talks about how to deal with creatures that attack garden plants as well as beneficial ones, followed by a section on weeds. It concludes with specifics for growing a wide range of vegetables, fruits, and herbs and suggests varieties Damrosch has had success with, plus advice for using them in cooking.