The Postage Stamp Vegetable Garden by Karen Newcomb

The Postage Stamp Vegetable Garden by Karen Newcomb is a best selling guide which has been newly and completely revised.  This book will give the reader step by step in how to plan, create and maintain a small garden.  This small garden could be large pots or containers on the patio or in the window of your house or as large as 10' by 10'.  Ms Newcomb tells how the reader can obtain as much as 200 pounds of vegetables from a 5' by 5' garden if it is properly prepared and maintained.  She includes information from picking your spot to harvesting your produce.  This book can be easily used and understood by the beginning gardener but the experienced gardener also  will easily pick up enough tips on improving their own gardening to make reading this book worth their time and energy.  The original book was written 40 years ago at a time when this information was new.  Now the author includes more information on choosing from the varieties of heirloom vegetables and using the organic tips which are easy and simple.  Gardening can be expensive but this author tells several ways of doing for instance composting the cheapest and easiest way or using products which are one the market or even easier just buying compost in a bag from the nursery.  She tells how to have a simple patio garden if the reader lives in the city to how the rural gardener can plan their 100 square foot garden.  She uses the companion methods of planting vegetables with other vegetables, herbs, or flowers to improve production and lessen the work effort on the gardener.  She even includes a list of seed sources for mail order purchase which would come in handy for the novice or someone wishing to go organic or just include vegetables more in line with their own location.
I am an experienced gardener and I enjoyed this book.  I had a large garden when the children were young but now plant just a small garden and this book is just the ticket for a person like me.  I had been attempting to closely plant my vegetables to decrease my garden size but this book explains to me what I have been doing wrong.  I am so glad that I now have this easy to read manual on small gardens and how to plan them.  I would recommend reading this book for anyone who is planning a small garden this year.
I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.