Book Recommendation:   Crockett's Victory Garden

When I first became a Master Gardener, I used to spend a lot of time in the Cooperative Extension's  office staffing its gardener's hotline.  One of the frequent questions I dealt with, in addition to "what can I do about deer," was "I want to start a garden. How should I start?"  My usual answer included  a recommendation that the caller look for a copy of Crockett's Victory Garden (Little Brown, & Co, 1977) in a used bookstore or to try to borrow a copy from a friend or the local library.

For years James Underwood Crockett hosted a popular PBS TV show that instructed gardeners about what to do month by month through the  year. Eventually, he published a book that closely followed the show's scripting. Crocket's show originated from Boston, a milder climate than most of Rensselaer County; and he was not particularly organic, but his demonstrations and practical advise still can serve the beginner.


The book covers both popular vegetables and ornamentals (i.e. flowers and  plants used in landscaping).Each chapter covers a month and starts  with  to do lists for what to plant, transplant, seeds to start, plants to thin and other miscellaneous activities. The next section deals with caring for specific plants and includes many diagrams and illustrations relating  to topics such as pruning, grafting, and dividing.  A Q&A section completes each chapter. 

Prospective gardeners, I think,  now are more organically oriented than Crockett was 40 years ago; and the climate in Rensselaer county is a bit warmer than what is shown in Crockett's growing zone map  and the accompanying vegetable  growing chart  in the back of his book.  That said, here is a little digression on the topic of a "growing season."

A  "growing season" is commonly associated with the average dates of last and first frosts that delineate the span of time plants have to complete their annual growth cycles.   Other factors   affecting the length of a growing season also include rainfall patterns, moisture and light levels, and soil and atmospheric temperatures.

With respect to Crockett's book, I usually advise people that most of Rensselaer County  probably runs 10 to 12 days behind Boston's growing season. Historically,  the length of the growing season  in much of Rensselaer County has been about 150 days running between mid-May and mid-October. Recent data  compiled and summarized by NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation reports that in much of New York, spring now arrives eight days earlier than in 1970 and the state is 2.4°F warmer, but that does not mean that the last frost necessarily occurs now  in early May.  Home gardeners wanting to get a head start on the growing season need to remember, as a minimum, to check  the projected weather forecasts for their locales.

Anyway,  I would like to hear about other books gardeners would recommend to people just getting started with growing vegetables.