Gardening Books for the Complete Idiot
January 16, 2023 7:37 PM Subscribe
I live in a house in Portland, Oregon with a vegetable garden and I need some books to tell me how to grow things.
After living in apartments for my whole adult life, I now live in a house with a yard. The previous residents sure did some gardening, so we have some stuff already in place. Namely, some raised beds, a timed drip irrigation system, some blueberry bushes, some artichokes, lots of kale and chard, I think. The leafy stuff sat out there all fall and winter, me walking past it every day thinking, “That looks like rainbow chard. Am I supposed to just go out there and snip it off and eat it?” So that tells you the level I’m on, man. There’s free veggies all out there in the yard and I haven’t even eaten it. At least the crows enjoyed the blueberries.
I need a book or two to tell me how to take care of this stuff we have and to grow some more stuff in the spring. I like to cook, so I would especially like to focus on stuff I am likely to eat. This is in Portland, OR. Please advise.
After living in apartments for my whole adult life, I now live in a house with a yard. The previous residents sure did some gardening, so we have some stuff already in place. Namely, some raised beds, a timed drip irrigation system, some blueberry bushes, some artichokes, lots of kale and chard, I think. The leafy stuff sat out there all fall and winter, me walking past it every day thinking, “That looks like rainbow chard. Am I supposed to just go out there and snip it off and eat it?” So that tells you the level I’m on, man. There’s free veggies all out there in the yard and I haven’t even eaten it. At least the crows enjoyed the blueberries.
I need a book or two to tell me how to take care of this stuff we have and to grow some more stuff in the spring. I like to cook, so I would especially like to focus on stuff I am likely to eat. This is in Portland, OR. Please advise.
I recommend finding a used copy (or a new one!) of the Sunset Western Garden book. Lots of information, keyed to the region you are in.
posted by suelac at 7:55 PM on January 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by suelac at 7:55 PM on January 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
The Bountiful Container is written by some local folks (so not trying to cover the full range of coastal/valley/inland desert climates) and it’s good place to start small - and raised beds are basically overgrown containers.
posted by janell at 8:11 PM on January 16, 2023
posted by janell at 8:11 PM on January 16, 2023
Check out Steve Solomon, in particular his book Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades and the seed catalog from Territorial, which is a seed company he started.
posted by 10ch at 8:11 PM on January 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by 10ch at 8:11 PM on January 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
But also there are book sections in more or less every plant nursery in town and now is a good time to browse them (when there won’t be Temptation in the form of so many plants)
posted by janell at 8:12 PM on January 16, 2023
posted by janell at 8:12 PM on January 16, 2023
I grow a lot of vegetables in Seattle! I have and love all of the first three books in comments, but I’ve honestly gotten more information from local nurseries and farmers’ market vendors and seed companies, where I can get locally-appropriate varieties, and experimentation. Get a local planting calendar, find a place to get good booster soil in your area, get to know the plants that are already there first, and then find your favorites.
posted by centrifugal at 9:01 PM on January 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by centrifugal at 9:01 PM on January 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is not a book, but the BBC seasonal show Gardeners World, contains a shit brick ton gardening knowledge. We share much of their climate and things that generally do well there, do well here. The host, Monty Don is a calming Bob-Ross like figure but for, gardeners. It’s a really good resource and one of the cute things he does is give you weekly “chores” for the garden.
r/gardenersworld has (seemingly innocuous but, stream responsibly) links to stream them in the US.
This is also a great time to acquaint yourself with the OSU extension office! I have asked them questions of varying degrees and they’ve helped me with a few different garden issues.
Oh; and don’t get discouraged. No garden works 100% every year (last year here in town was kind of shitty; ultra late spring rains and snow and the hot as balls).
posted by furnace.heart at 9:39 PM on January 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
r/gardenersworld has (seemingly innocuous but, stream responsibly) links to stream them in the US.
This is also a great time to acquaint yourself with the OSU extension office! I have asked them questions of varying degrees and they’ve helped me with a few different garden issues.
Oh; and don’t get discouraged. No garden works 100% every year (last year here in town was kind of shitty; ultra late spring rains and snow and the hot as balls).
posted by furnace.heart at 9:39 PM on January 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yes to the Sunset book that suelac recommended! And double yes to used books. I find that there are usually a ton of good gardening books in used bookstores and at estate sales. You could get a bunch and then, as time goes by, you'll figure out which ones are most useful to you and you can pare down your collection.
posted by dawkins_7 at 7:16 AM on January 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by dawkins_7 at 7:16 AM on January 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
(Note: all my suggestions here are about growing food specifically.) Any book will do, in the beginning. It's not going to make sense, it's not going to tell you how to garden, but it will help you begin to build a gardener's mind. There's a really specific genre of gardening book you should look for as well: written by whoever used to write the gardening column for the local newspaper somewhere in the 70s-90s when newspapers still did that. There will be a ton of wisdom in there about the hyper-localities of gardening and these tend to be incredibly valuable references.
But what these books can't do for you is is put plants in dirt and see what happens. Gardening as knowledge is an accumulation of failures, and surprise successes, and then eventually cultivated successes and surprise failures. No book can tell you that you will be bad at watering when your job gets busy, or that your dog will obsessively pee on tomato plants because of their scent, or that your light-colored house siding will burn the crap out of new seedlings.
So books are great reference, but I actually recommend youtube for learning the things you just need to know for extremely beginning gardening where you make healthy dirt and have plants in it. When you start building context, the books will make more and more sense.
I can't think of any Portland-based gardentubers off the top of my head (maybe Parkrose Permaculture, with the caveat that permaculture is a whole aspect of gardening that layers on top of what you initially learn about gardening), and I'm still wrapping my head around the climate here myself, but I think some of the UK gardeners might be useful to follow, like Huw Richards, GrowVeg. Eventually you're going to get linked through to Charles Dowding, who is truly an expert gardener and a big influencer (the old-school kind) in sustainable gardening practices, but sometimes even I feel like I have no idea what he's talking about, after 15 years of gardening.
Roots and Refuge Farm's older beginner content is really good and understandable though they are more of a lifestyle/homesteading channel now. Jess's book The First-Time Gardener is pretty good for a beginner book, too.
And then there's google, don't discount it for absolute basic questions like "how to harvest chard" and "growing blueberries". (I still recommend youtube for understanding drip irrigation though, and it will take more than one video and then one day your brain goes OH this is not a big deal at all, let's go do it.)
posted by Lyn Never at 9:27 AM on January 17, 2023
But what these books can't do for you is is put plants in dirt and see what happens. Gardening as knowledge is an accumulation of failures, and surprise successes, and then eventually cultivated successes and surprise failures. No book can tell you that you will be bad at watering when your job gets busy, or that your dog will obsessively pee on tomato plants because of their scent, or that your light-colored house siding will burn the crap out of new seedlings.
So books are great reference, but I actually recommend youtube for learning the things you just need to know for extremely beginning gardening where you make healthy dirt and have plants in it. When you start building context, the books will make more and more sense.
I can't think of any Portland-based gardentubers off the top of my head (maybe Parkrose Permaculture, with the caveat that permaculture is a whole aspect of gardening that layers on top of what you initially learn about gardening), and I'm still wrapping my head around the climate here myself, but I think some of the UK gardeners might be useful to follow, like Huw Richards, GrowVeg. Eventually you're going to get linked through to Charles Dowding, who is truly an expert gardener and a big influencer (the old-school kind) in sustainable gardening practices, but sometimes even I feel like I have no idea what he's talking about, after 15 years of gardening.
Roots and Refuge Farm's older beginner content is really good and understandable though they are more of a lifestyle/homesteading channel now. Jess's book The First-Time Gardener is pretty good for a beginner book, too.
And then there's google, don't discount it for absolute basic questions like "how to harvest chard" and "growing blueberries". (I still recommend youtube for understanding drip irrigation though, and it will take more than one video and then one day your brain goes OH this is not a big deal at all, let's go do it.)
posted by Lyn Never at 9:27 AM on January 17, 2023
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The Tilth Maritime Garden Guide has wonderful calendars for jumping in and doing stuff at about the right time. It also has one or two pages, next to the relevant tasks, on stuff you want to know - Bugs! Good or bad? Compost! What, how, when? Watering! How much? Soil! What IS this stuff?
Obvs. I love it. I think it’s the most efficient garden guide for our region.
The best book is always going to be your notes - just write down what you did, what worked, what you wish you had done earlier, what you saw in a neighbor garden and want to try. Cellphone, paper, whatever works for you.
posted by clew at 7:46 PM on January 16, 2023 [3 favorites]