Barbara Pleasant's Starter Vegetable Gardens is an excellent resource for the home gardener. It's designed to help beginners plan for their harvest over a few years, but I found it useful as well (I'm not exactly a beginner, but I'm nowhere near expert level by any means). I love that there are suggestions for plant placement, as I'm always looking for ways to best use my garden space, as well as tips for harvesting over each season, something that I definitely want to improve upon. I'm glad to have this in my collection and looking forward to finding a finishing copy. I highly recommend this--the text is quite easy to follow and really inspires you to get your hands in the dirt.

Thank you so much to Storey Publishing and NetGalley for providing this copy to review.

I am an avid gardener and always looking for ways to improve my skills and improve my harvest. Something I really valued was the information on how to improve the ground I am planting on. This book has encouraged me to switch my mindset from focusing on the plant and the output to focusing on the earth around the plant more. Thank you to NetGalley and Storey Publishing for a copy of this book for an honest review.

This contains a lot of useful information, great for beginners and more experienced people; I am a beginner and felt it gave a lot of information that was useful including many planting schemes to follow. There are a lot of plans and ideas with some beautiful and practical designs. It could be improved with some photos of the planting once grown so you know what you are aiming for and will gain at the end. This does include a three-year plan for you to follow as well which is really useful.

I would recommend it as a great resource for beginners and anyone wanting to begin to grow veg and who wants to get it correct from the beginning rather than just jumping in!

I love love love this book. There is SO much information in gardening and it can be very difficult to translate that over to building and maintaining your own garden, but I find this a very descriptive and clear source for it. The illustrations are great, and I love that this isn't just a "here's how you start, good luck!" kind of instruction.. The author gives you a three-year plan to follow in whichever option you choose of those offered. I will be using this to help me restructure my garden!

Starter Vegetable Gardens is a beginner accessible tutorial instruction guide for planning and executing an organic garden by Barbara Pleasant. Originally published in 2010, this second edition is due out in early 2022 from Storey publishing. It's 232 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

Storey is quite well known for high quality lifestyle, gardening, and sustainable living titles. This is a classic, and lives up to their standards. There's a logical progressive layout which takes readers through planning, siting, selecting, planting, soil improvement, harvesting and other necessary tasks using accessible, easy to understand language supported by good clear photography and schematics.

The book also includes several appendices: a glossary and definitions list, a metric conversion chart, an overview over the garden plans included in the book, as well as a short resource and seed vendor list. Vendors are slanted toward readers in North America, but with online vendors, availability shouldn't be problematic for readers living elsewhere.

Five stars. This would make a good choice for smallholders, gardening / allotment groups, public or school library acquisition, and for the home gardener.

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

Great read for beginners or advanced gardeners. Loved the landscaping ideas of what to do with your garden space. The ideas hit on all levels of gardening.

Great book for someone just beginning to do gardening. Written beautifully. Answered most of my questions too.

The Starter Gardens 2nd Edition is a beautifully illustrated book with many diagrams and garden plans to meet any gardener’s needs.

This Book suits the needs of the well-rounded gardener or the very new! The plans are descriptive, detailed and themed.

Filled with design elements for various styles of gardens and information about seedlings, the author Barbara Pleasant provides just that!

She has created a book with a easy flow for the reader to understand text and terms, and the detailed visuals that will help any gardener pick the perfect seasonal garden they can design for themselves.

I am an avid gardener and found things In this book that I didn’t know. Everyone needs a refresher at some point anyways.

I felt this book could have benefited with some actual photographs to help compliment the informative designs.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this ebook.

3.5 stars

This book lays out a plethora of garden plans - so many it could be overwhelming to a brand new gardener. There were a lot that seemed unnecessary - thrown in to fit with the theme.

However, there was a TON of good information throughout the book. I think if you didn't read it cover to cover you'd miss a lot of it, as it is thrown in randomly in different plans. But if you do read the whole thing, there's a lot of knowledge passed on.

I also loved how the author gave suggestions of what to plant next, after a crop has died out. That was a super helpful aspect of the book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Storey Publishing for the eARC.

I have a large and empty garden and I've always dreamed of having vegetables especially as I wanted to make it a special bonding between me and my toddler tending to the garden. It's important to raise our children to be aware of the environmental impact.
Absolutely loved it, and will highly recommend! Clear how-to advice, great photography and very thoughtful design. A must have for all new homeowners and beginners like me. A Bible for all thirty something's!

This book is filled with excellent ideas for the first time vegetable gardener, and for those, like myself, who want to expand their horizons. A valuable tool for vegetable gardeners.

I've been reading a lot of beginner's gardening books, and this was one of my least favorite. Though it claims to be easy to follow for every level of gardener, including the beginning and the seasoned, I didn't feel like I received any insight into the process. It could have been the formatting of the e-book, which jumbled some passages, but the strictness of the outline felt confining. I wasn't really learning how to garden, I was learning how to follow this specific recipe.

Thank you for a copy of this book in exchange for honest feedback. I am excited to say that I found this gardening book extremely helpful. I am a beginner but I have read a handful of gardening books. This particular book guides the reader in areas such as organic vegetable gardening, plant care, garden design, etc. Importantly, I found value in learning about what I should buy (and when), as well as what works best for my area/budget and ability to care/tend. I think it's really important to know your limits but also test your skills as you get better. In this area, I have often ran out to the home gardening store to get whatever meets my fancy or is on sale... instead, this book offered some insight on how to make sure one understands how and what to grow, what is needed, and how to develop skills over time. Another strength is its illustrations -- it's straightforward, informative, and easy to follow along. I would highly suggest to beginner gardeners and libraries.

Where has Barbara Pleasant been all my life?! Her Starter Vegetable garden is just the book I have been looking for.

Barbara takes you through everything you need to start vegetable gardening in a clear step by step way for the first 3 years. There are 24 garden plans to suit the beginner to slightly more advanced, as well as consideration of plot size and needs. The plans are clearly pictured and walked through.

She goes into detail on prep, what to grow when, care, harvesting and even organic pest control.

Finally this is one book that quite literally holds your hand from the very beginning. There is even a questionnaire to help you choose which plan is right for you. For me its the 1st year bag garden!!! Yup I'm a beginner.

The book is colorful, the photos and diagrams are relevant. Plentiful and very clear. Barbara's writing is written for the beginner in mind-clear and consise. Where she has used 'jargon' its explained in the glossary.

Overall an excellent first gardening book. This will be in my daughters stocking some time soon.

Absolutely love it, and will highly recommend! Clear how-to advice, great photography and lovely overall design. I’ve been gardening about ten years and I wish I’d had this book when I started.

Starter Vegetable Gardens, 2nd Edition by Barbara Pleasant is a beautiful book of many different sizes, types and styles of gardens. All include full color photos and sketched plans with instructions for the garden. This book also included bag gardening, which I had never heard of, but what a genius idea! You cut open the bag of garden soil and direct sow your plants right into the cut open bag. I may have to try that. This is a great book for beginning gardeners and for those looking to change their garden.

This is such a well-done, thorough, and comprehensive guide to starting a vegetable garden! There is so much information from 4 different garden plans (with details for year one, two, and three), information on what you should grow, watering, fertilizing, and harvesting (and more)!
I really enjoyed this book; I think it's a great place to start when growing your own vegetables. It has a wealth of knowledge in it.


[I received a copy of this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review]

This is probably the most comprehensive, helpful gardening book I've ever read (and I've read a lot). It gives step-by-step instructions for all kinds of gardens with detailed illustrations, layouts, buying list for seeds and supplies for each, and even year-by-year plans of how to do each garden the first year and years thereafter. Some are small, some are simple, some use bags of soil to make it easier, and so on. I wish there were more photos of the gardens themselves (there are lots of photos of plants and close-ups for tutorials, but just colorful drawings of the garden plans) but it's still a book I can't really give fewer than 5 stars to in good conscience. Well recommended it you want a complete layout of exactly what to grow and how.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

Organic Vegetable garden starter book vital to growth and success

Posted on May 8, 2021 by michellelovatosbookreviews, world's first book color commentator, book reviews with a twist

Hmm. 24 NO-FAIL plans for gardening? Interesting. No-fail?
Where do you have to live to be “No-fail?”
I’m betting that Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens by Barbara Pleasant has plans that work. It must. This new title from the prolific gardening author is Starter Vegetable Gardens’ second edition. I’m just not confident that I wouldn’t be the first to fail. Some people have green thumbs. My thumbs are missing.
Starter Vegetable Gardens is genuinely fantastic, authoritative and what I think is an exhaustive resource on the subject. (I say that, but I could not find the chapter in this book that addresses the harsh desert climate.) Regardless, this handy guide does handle the types of vegetables that do well in organic gardens and a variety of ways to plant and maintain them.
Starter Vegetable Gardens starts at, well, the beginning where Pleasant explains her gardening process year by year. She is slow and complete in her instruction and offers compact descriptions about where various garden plants will grow sustainably.
Pleasant then instructs readers about what type of soil and conditioning help her suggested vegetables thrive (which does indeed address the desert issue) and follows that process with one, two, and three-year overview plans to help them succeed.
I see why this is the second edition. In my lifetime, I should see about 25 of these editions. Let me give an example about how this works:
Chapter One: Bag Gardens. Very interesting. Pleasant designed this gardening plan for a city or urban garden or for those who want to bring organic gardening into their yard. First, understand the process. Second, plant the collection of vegetables suggested in her book, which includes lettuce and snap peas in the spring, snap peas and tomatoes in the summer, arugula and bok choy in the fall, and so on.
The soil in the bag supplies the nutrients. Pleasant provides the expertise
Year Two: In the spring, plant lettuce, snow peas, kale, kohlrabi, potatoes, and onions. In the summer, plant pole snap beans, bush snap beans, tomatoes, etc. Year Three: In spring, plant lettuce, snap peas, potatoes, onions, beets, and chard. In summer, plant snap beans, tomatoes, peppers, and squash.
Pleasant goes through the year, for three years, instructing gardeners on what to grow. Then she spends several chapters on how to design gardens for various places around the house (bag gardens, border gardens, and front yard gardens) that will support her plan.
Pleasant offers information about watering, mulch, insects, disease, harvesting, and season changes, as well as several other vital topics for organic gardeners.
I can see why this is a no-fail (if followed) book. Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens is one of more than a half dozen Pleasant gardening titles. And I’m convinced it can work. It sounds crazy, but I am starting to feel the itch of my thumbs growing back.

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Happy are those who respect the Lord and obey him. You will enjoy what you work for, and you will be blessed with good things. Psalm 128: 1-2

Must have for new gardeners and experienced gardeners alike! This book has easy to follow directions no matter your gardening skill level. Did you know you could just open a bag of potting soil and plant stuff in it? I didn’t until this book. This is just one of the MANY tips in this book. Super helpful and not overwhelming at all.