Grow Yourself Healthy

An excellent and useful book, well written and full of ideas.
I liked the style of writing and the clear explanations.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Grow yourself healthy by Beth Marshall is an awesome book!
I have learned so much and can’t wait to begin my garden this spring.
The books description states:

This focuses on the activity of gardening for mental and physical health, as well as the way that if you garden for your gut you can improve your digestion too.

Grow Yourself Healthy will introduce relevant recent science in an accessible way, provide practical guidance on how to grow, produce and design a productive garden to optimize your health, and provide information on how to grow and store vegetables for fermentation, including select recipes for gut health.

I recommend this book to anyone looking for a healthy lifestyle and likes to garden.

I Love books about health and nutrition! This books delivers another wonderful component of eating healthy- growing your own garden with healthy choices. Easy to read and no master gardener degree is required. Our society could benefit from growing healthy gardens for individuals or as a community. Great resource.

Right-I am determined that this year I am going to do this-throw away all my bad habits and eat/grow myself healthy. I have already dug a vegetable plot over and bought the seeds So fingers crossed with the help of this book to a much healthier me.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

This is a highly detailed and informative book about the importance of gut health and gardening to help achieve not only good gut health but a fresher, healthier and nourishing body and lifestyle.

The photography in this book is beautiful and the book itself is an abundance of information.

I quoted so much of this book to my best friend while I was reading it that she asked me to send her some of the quotes to share with her husband. If that's not an endorsement for a book, I don't know what is. :)

This is a fascinating and well researched book on gardening and health that approaches the topics in ways I haven't encountered before. I am a very experienced gardener and well versed in health matters, but I learned so much fascinating information. For instance, Marshall shares that plants become substantially healthier (for us to eat) when they are grown under stress, and we can make our garden veggies much higher in polyphenols, antioxidants, etc. by growing them in somewhat stressful environments (poor soil, sporadic water, high heat, etc.). I knew the basics of this -- that's why the outer leaves of lettuce are so much higher in antioxidants than the inside leaves, because the outer leaves are dealing with the harsh sun and increase their protective chemicals that we then eat, for instance -- but didn't realize what an effect these factors have. She then talks about which fruits and veggies in each family are the healthiest to grow in the garden and how to grow them to increase the stress but not greatly decrease the yields.

From there, Marshall offers garden projects to make use of the plants and philosophies she recommends. These include a small raised bed with a garden plan for exactly what to plant for maximum variety, nutrition and yield to rainbow planters (each has a variety of plants in each color family with their own nutritional benefits) to a little forager's garden for against a back wall that utilizes some of the best wild plants, and more.

Marshall also covers quite a bit about our microbiomes and beneficial bacteria, explaining how prebiotics work, how our own gardens increase the diversity of our beneficial bacteria and much more. The science is all explained succinctly and thoroughly, making it easy to understand and implement.

The entire book is full of beautiful color photos from the large UK garden that Marshall and her partner manage. It's a feast for the mind and the eyes, and it will definitely influence what I plant in my organic gardens this year and how I manage them. Highly recommended.

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

This is an absolutely fantastic resource! The book is divided into four sections; The Science Explained, Vegetables and Fruits In Focus, Grow-For-Health Projects, and Ferment Recipes. The photographs are stunning. I love this book and can't wait to try out some of the projects!

What the author talks about in this book was wonderful. The perspective was so original and mind changing. I will definitely take the ideas expressed in this book and use them in my own life!

"Grow Yourself Healthy" is a gardening book with a focus on foods that are good for our intestinal microbiome. The author talked about the importance of a healthy microbiome in your gut and the types of foods that help the beneficial microbes thrive. She then discussed how to grow those foods, including tips on how to plant them, the mild stresses that help increase the nutritional value of these plants, and tips on how to best store and cook them for the highest nutritional value. She included suggested layouts for different types of gardens made up of these beneficial plants, including layouts for small areas. She also included several recipes for fermented foods (like kimchi and sauerkraut) using these plants. Overall, I'd recommend this book to gardeners who want to get the most nutritional and gut health benefits from their plants.