Book Recommendation - Epic Tomatoes
Spring, when gardeners and vegetable eaters turn their fancies to tomatoes...
Epic Tomatoes - How to Select & Grow the Best Varieties of All Time by Craig LeHoullier (Storey Publishing, 2015) is a beautifully designed and illustrated book about tomatoes. In fact, it is visually mouth-watering and clearly reflects the author's professed passion.
LeHoullier has been growing tomatoes for 35+ years. His specialty is heirloom tomatoes -- he is, btw, responsible for the naming of the Cherokee Purple way back in 1990. He also authors a blog, and his website includes many videos about basic gardening techniques.
All aspects of growing tomatoes from starting seeds to saving seeds for next year's harvest are, needless to say, thoroughly covered for backyard gardeners in this book. Although Epic Tomatoes describes the characteristics of 250 tomato varieties, LeHoullier clearly favors the heirloom types. He also slips in a handful of recipes and a little information about preserving, but these topics are clearly secondary to his simply wanting to help gardeners grow and enjoy the fruits of Solanum lycopersicum.
LeHoullier breaks up the major sections of Epic Tomatoes by highlighting the superior features of each of his ten favorite heirloom varieties. The sections on pests and diseases cover the most likely problems a backyard gardener may encounter. Symptoms and solutions are well explicated and the accompanying illustrations are unambiguous. These along with a few other miscellaneious topics are further augmented by another section consisting of answers to gardener submitted questions that is reminescent of James Underwood Crockett's Victory Garden books.
For beginning gardeners his advice about using containers applies not just to tomatoes but to using containers in general is right on target - although most gardeners will probably choose not to convert their driveways into container garden sites. LeHoullier also mentions how to use straw bales in lieu of planting beds for tomatoes, but you may want to checkout the fuller treatment concerning straw bales in his second book, Growing Vegetables in Straw Bales - Easy Planting, Less Weeding and Early Harvests. For the truly curious gardener, he even discusses how to breed your own varieties.
In short, if you know a gardener and are stumped about what to give them sometime for a present, give them this book. They will thank you and hopefully share their tomatoes with you!
And remember...
Epic Tomatoes - How to Select & Grow the Best Varieties of All Time by Craig LeHoullier (Storey Publishing, 2015) is a beautifully designed and illustrated book about tomatoes. In fact, it is visually mouth-watering and clearly reflects the author's professed passion.
LeHoullier has been growing tomatoes for 35+ years. His specialty is heirloom tomatoes -- he is, btw, responsible for the naming of the Cherokee Purple way back in 1990. He also authors a blog, and his website includes many videos about basic gardening techniques.
All aspects of growing tomatoes from starting seeds to saving seeds for next year's harvest are, needless to say, thoroughly covered for backyard gardeners in this book. Although Epic Tomatoes describes the characteristics of 250 tomato varieties, LeHoullier clearly favors the heirloom types. He also slips in a handful of recipes and a little information about preserving, but these topics are clearly secondary to his simply wanting to help gardeners grow and enjoy the fruits of Solanum lycopersicum.
LeHoullier breaks up the major sections of Epic Tomatoes by highlighting the superior features of each of his ten favorite heirloom varieties. The sections on pests and diseases cover the most likely problems a backyard gardener may encounter. Symptoms and solutions are well explicated and the accompanying illustrations are unambiguous. These along with a few other miscellaneious topics are further augmented by another section consisting of answers to gardener submitted questions that is reminescent of James Underwood Crockett's Victory Garden books.
For beginning gardeners his advice about using containers applies not just to tomatoes but to using containers in general is right on target - although most gardeners will probably choose not to convert their driveways into container garden sites. LeHoullier also mentions how to use straw bales in lieu of planting beds for tomatoes, but you may want to checkout the fuller treatment concerning straw bales in his second book, Growing Vegetables in Straw Bales - Easy Planting, Less Weeding and Early Harvests. For the truly curious gardener, he even discusses how to breed your own varieties.
And remember...
"To grow a tomato or a pepper and prepare a meal from your labor
and care is primordially satisfying." - Neil Newman
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