Grow Your Own Food

 

Grow Your Own Food is a helpful tutorial guide by Clare Macnaughton for gardeners who wish to begin, to improve, or to increase their food security. Released 29th July 2022 by Pen & Sword on their White Owl imprint, it's a compact 120 pages and is available in paperback format. 

This is a basic guide full of general advice on getting started with raised bed gardening, sourcing and starting seeds, growing (with a little bit of troubleshooting along the way), and even a short bit on chickens for egglaying. The advice is written with an emphasis to readers living in the UK (and associated climates), but is also general enough to be moderately useful to readers living outside the UK. 

The guide's chapters are full of photographs to illustrate the advice and planning details included in the text. This is in no way an encyclopaedic start to finish one-size-fits all guide which will turn readers into professional gardeners with one read-through, and the author wisely says precisely that. Gardening is less a destination so much as a journey and a process. 

Her advice about allotments, personal gardens, and even balcony/windowsill gardens will allow a complete beginner to make some progress toward a successful harvest of some sort. Gardening is a very therapeutic hobby, and one that brings benefits in the form of physical exercise, mental health and stress reduction, life skills, and with hopefully the promise of high quality food at some point. The author's style is chatty and informal and definitely not at all intimidating. It reads more like a friendly chat with a helpful neighbour. 

Four stars. This isn't the -only- book a new beginner should depend on, but it could be a good addition to a starting gardener's bookshelf.

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