Niki Jabbour's Veggie Garden Remix

Niki Jabbour is a familiar name to people who love gardening (or reading about gardening). This is her newest book, which offers a fun and useful look at heirloom varieties and alternatives to classic garden crops such as potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, radishes, etc.

There's a whole literal world of heirloom and localized varieties which are mostly not known to American gardeners.  Some of them are becoming more available via farmers' markets and CSAs as well as heirloom seed saving groups, many of whom have an almost zealous fervor about spreading and preserving the variety and heritage many of our great grandparents took for granted.

This book, 240 pages, due to be released 6th of February, 2018 from Storey publishing is written in Jabbour's informal, familiar, and informative style.  It also has an unusual format.  The chapters are arranged around garden standard plants and their lesser known (but often more delicious and nutritious) alternatives:  'if you like tomatoes---why not try this'.  There are chapters for tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, snap beans, arugula, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, and several others.  The 'alternatives' to the usual popular garden staples include information and many luscious full color photos of 238 new plants to try in your home garden.

The photography is straight up gardening heaven.  Beautifully photographed and well explained, the photos support the text very well and give great depth to the book.  There are also a fair number of pictures of (presumably) Niki's own family garden.  I've yet to meet a gardener who doesn't like to see pictures of other people's gardens.  (Hint: hers are well organized, healthy, and beautiful).

I like that she takes the time in several places to talk about pollinating insects and planting heirloom varieties for other reasons than just growing exactly the same thing as everyone else.  Diversity is so incredibly important and she really 'gets it'. 

One quibble I had with the book and text (and it's a small one) is that she generally doesn't talk about suitability for different zones.  I get the feeling that was intentional, because it might have been beyond the scope of the book, and that gently forcing the readers to do more support is a good thing... but some broad general guidelines would have been useful, I think. 

Anyhow, a beautifully written and photographed book which fills a definite need.  I enjoyed the chatty style and the lovely photography.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.