Grow Great Vegetables Illinois

 

 

 

Grow Great Vegetables Illinois is a regionally tailored home gardening guide for producing vegetables for taste and nutrition and to increase self-reliance and food security. This is one of a series of regionally specific guides released by Timber press. Edited by Bevin Cohen, it's due out in May 2023, runs 212 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats. It's based on an earlier release Vegetable Gardening in the Midwest by Michael VanderBrug, reformatted and edited for Illinois gardeners. All of the guides in this series follow the same format.

This guide is arranged by seasons with a chapter for each month. The introductory chapter (~13% of the page content) covers garden planning, climates and subzones in Illinois, as well as very general gardening advice.

The monthly sections include tasks for each month, potential problems and troubleshooting, planning and placement of the garden plot, harvesting and more.

The third section of the book is a regional guide to choosing vegetables and specific varieties which will thrive in the area.

There's a resource list (slanted to readers in the Midwest), a bibliography and further reading list, USDA based hardiness zonal map, and an index.  The photography is crisp, clear, and abundant.  This is a well crafted book which will provide gardeners with hours of blissful dreaming as well as serving as a valuable troubleshooting guide.

Four stars. Very well done.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes