In this updated 2nd edition of California Fruit & Vegetable Gardening, the critical elements of climate, soil, sun, and water are addressed to ensure your success, no matter which part of The Golden State you call home. California's diverse and unique growing conditions offer special challenges to food gardeners. Whether you garden in the southern, central, or northern part of the state, you'll find the answers you're looking for. From soil preparation and starting seeds to safely managing California's most troublesome vegetable garden pests, author Claire Splan guides you to your most productive garden ever. Inside, you'll find detailed profiles of over 60 edible plants that thrive in California's distinctive growing conditions, including favorites like avocados, tomatoes, passion fruits, eggplants, beets and pomegranates. In addition to vegetables and fruits, also featured are popular herbs. Helpful charts and planting graphs keep you on track, while the garden maintenance tips found throughout ensure a lush, productive, and high-yielding garden. Whether you grow in containers, raised beds, an extensive kitchen garden, a community garden, or a backyard veggie patch, California Fruit & Vegetable Gardening serves as an invaluable resource to West Coast gardeners, regardless of whether you're a first-time grower or an experienced Master Gardener. California Fruit & Vegetable Gardening is part of the regional Fruit & Vegetable Gardening series from Cool Springs Press. Other books in the series include Texas Fruit & Vegetable Gardening, Mid-Atlantic Fruit & Vegetable Gardening, Carolinas Fruit & Vegetable Gardening, and many others.

"A chatty, friendly swapping of good ideas on vegetable-growing with something for berries and fruits," is how author Ross Gast described Vegetables in the California Garden when it was first published in 1933. "If you have never tasted vegetables from the garden, you do not know what real flavor is." Whether you're already a hands-on gardener, or a novice seeking inspiration and instruction to plot your very own Victory Garden, this book offers sage advice to help you prepare the soil, select the seeds-including heirlooms-and plant, maintain and harvest your home-grown produce. Complete with berry-growing information from Walter Knott-written even before he founded Knott's Berry Farm-this California classic has long been considered the best resource on the market for gardeners in the know.

"The purpose of the work is to give the newcomer, or old-resident beginner, an understanding of the peculiar conditions which he encounters in California and descriptions of gardening practices which attain most satisfactory results under those conditions. Experienced gardeners from other states and countries soon find that their accustomed procedure fails of its wonted results; that the old times and ways of doing things are unsuitable, and that new rules of practice must be learned. Often those who have had no earlier gardening experience seek a rural home in California and burn with a desire to possess the delights of a home garden. They soon find that following the advice to beginners given in books written for other climates, yields little but disappointment. Conditions of soil and climate in California are varied to the last degree, and practice must vary with them."--