The Postage Stamp Vegetable Garden

My sis and I are planting gardens this year.  I am particularly excited about this, because this year, for the first time ever, my garden will actually be in a place that gets more than a few hours of sun each day.  I have been planning and scheming all winter, deciding which veggies I want to grow a lot of to preserve and which plants I want to grow just for fun.

I love gardening.  I love eating food and preparing food for my family that I grew myself.  I do not necessarily love spending a lot of time working in the garden.  Or rather, I think I would enjoy working in the garden more if I didn't have so many other summer-time responsibilities.   Ms. Newcomb's postage stamp method minimizes work while maximizing yield, so I was excited to read The Postage Stamp Vegetable Garden by Karen Newcomb.

The Postage Stamp concept is similar to the Square Foot Gardening method.  The idea is you can grow a lot of plants, therefore increasing yield, in a small area, by not planting in rows.  Plants should be placed so that when they are 75% mature, plant leaves will just touch each other, which doesn't leave a lot of room for weeds, which means gardeners don't have to spend a lot of time weeding.  Gardeners should make use of vertical space, training vining vegetables, like cucumbers, squash, beans, tomatoes, and peas, to grow up, freeing up more space in the garden.  Ms. Newcomb provides a lot of good information on topics such as preparing the soil, how to compost, which plants benefit or harm each other when planted near each other, and how to recognize and deal with garden pests and plant diseases.

I found this book to be helpful and inspiring.  I won't follow every single bit of Ms. Newcomb's advice, but I will take the ideas that make sense to me and put them into practice in my own small garden this year.  I also anticipate using the book's many charts as a reference for when and what to plant and to troubleshoot any issues that arise.

Bottom line: new and experienced gardeners alike are likely to find nuggets of useful information in this quick-reading book.

I received this book for free from the publisher through the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review.