Vegetable Gardening

••• Vegetable Gardening: What, Why, How. •••

Few experiences in life give more satisfaction than planting seeds or vegetable transplants, being responsible for their growth and enjoying a bountiful harvest. Not only will you ensure that delicious fresh-picked flavor of salad greens like the crisp, crunchy ‘Buttercrunch’ lettuce variety and the extra sweetness of a fresh-picked ‘Sungold’ tomato, you will ensure that they have lost none of their nutritional value through storage. This is particularly true when you grow vegetables organically because they will be free of chemical residue that taints many a sore-bought product. When the First Lady, Michelle Obama decided to plant a vegetable garden at the White House she did it for health reasons, to feed her family. Moreover, she involved local schoolchildren in the project as well as her own daughters because vegetable gardening teaches children responsibility and self-help. She also used organic methods of fertilizing, such as crab meal to provide phosphorus, and replacing the indigenous soil with good compost and top-soil because the site had previously been lawn contaminated by a sludge-type fertilizer suitable only for growing grass.


••• About the Author •••

Derek Fell is an award-winning garden writer and photographer whose book titled ‘Vegetables – How to Select, Grow & enjoy’ (HP Books) won a best book award from the Garden Writers Association. The owner of historic Cedaridge Farm, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, he cultivates a large vegetable garden with his wife Carolyn. The garden serves as an outdoor studio for Derek to take photographs of yields and also as a test facility to evaluate different gardening techniques such as irrigation, fertilizing and pest control using organic methods. A former director of All-America Selections, the national seed trials, and the National Garden Bureau, an information office sponsored by the American seed industry, he worked with the White House during the Ford Administration as chairman of a task force to plant inflation-fighting vegetable gardens. Currently, Derek hosts the Avant Gardener on-line radio program with his wife and also publishes the award winning full-color Avant Gardener newsletter (http://avantgardener.info).


••• About Sutro Media •••

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