New gardening book covers all the bases

The cover of Vegetable Gardening for Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba is a pastoral cornucopia of produce featuring a large round basket mounded with crisp red peppers, crunchy cucumbers, prickly asparagus, scented onions and large squash. It is exactly what I dream of growing in our short-summer Zone 3, but probably never will.

But that didn’t stop me from flipping through the pages of Lone Pine’s new gardening read and fantasizing. By the time I reached the soil section on pages 20 and 21, my fingers were itching to work the black dirt in my garden plot now covered by melting snow and desiccated winter dog waste.

If anything, glancing at that waste reminded me of writer Laura Peters’ top suggestions — test the soil for the right pH level to determine a good balance of acidity and alkalinity, an important factor that influences available nutrients.

But before yanking out the rototiller, the Edmonton author recommends planning your garden and buying seeds for appropriate light and shade, wet spots and dry areas. Taking shortcuts can lead to a lot of extra work without anything to show for it, to which many inexperienced gardeners can attest.

Peters starts out the book with a simple easy-to-read 60-page introduction followed by a snappy, photo-friendly vegetable guide where plants are arranged alphabetically. Each entry gives clear instructions for planting and growing, supplemented by handy tips. For the prairies, with a brief 100-day growing season, there’s a recommended list of suitable varieties.

While it’s tempting to bypass the introduction and flip to the vegetable guide, it would be a mistake. The instructions cover all the bases from preparing the garden, mulching and weeding to planting, fertilizing, extending the growing season and harvesting. There’s even a guide to pests and diseases with accompanying pictures that make problems easy to spot.

In fact, it’s impossible to turn a leaf without seeing images of nature’s eye-candy such as scarlet runner beans climbing a trellis, crunchy carrot tops popping out of the earth, juicy yellow tomatoes dangling from a branch or Swiss chard in a full spectrum of pinks, oranges and yellows.

One of the writer’s brilliant suggestions that my grandmother followed is making compost or manure tea, an Earth-friendly practice followed by Europeans for centuries. Peters suggests wrapping manure or compost in a burlap bag and steeping it for several hours. She even accompanies the instructions with four how-to photographs.

And finally, one of the best features of this handy pocket book is that it can be read sitting comfortably on the sofa or used outdoors as a last minute source while planting. It is made to withstand abuse.

Vegetable Gardening provides lots of nurturing information for the novice gardener and is a solid reference for the more experienced. Besides, if you’re a plant person, it’s just plain fun to read.