The Editors of Reader’s Digest present the definitive A-Z guide to vegetables and how to grow and use them. This complete illustrated guide to vegetables unlocks the secrets of nature’s bounty with comprehensive information on the planting, harvesting, and storing of vegetables, together with a wealth of great ideas for using them in cooking, healthcare, crafts, vegetable dyes, home products, beauty treatments, and more.

Once upon a time, potatoes, carrots and cabbages were just about the only vegetables the average gardener could contemplate growing - but not any more. In this completely revised and updated edition, the author expands the repertoire to include Kohlrabi and cardoons, celeriac and chicory, 16 varieties of pepper and 20 of onion.

Explore the wonderful world of vegetables with Vegetables: The Ultimate Cookbook. A celebration of vegetables by chef and farmer Laura Sorkin, you’ll learn about where specific vegetables originated, which countries produce the largest number of radishes, how to select the best avocado, ways to use jicama, and more. With this book on hand, it’s easy to delight all tastes by making vegetables the star of any dish. Inside, you’ll find: 300+ easy-to-follow recipes, including options for snacks, salads, soups, stews, side dishes, and entrees A heavily illustrated A-Z of over 50 vegetables comprised of the author’s expertise as both a chef and farmer Mouthwatering photography, archival imagery, and colorful original illustrations Recipes for essential ingredients, including stocks, pastas and noodles, dumpling wrappers, and condiments Thoughtful analysis of various farming methods From decadent soups to hearty internationally inspired entrees, Vegetables will satisfy all cravings.

Complete instructions for growing over 190 vegetables, herbs, berries, fruits, nuts, and tropical fruits in the ground and in containers. Plans and design ideas for kitchen gardens of all sizes, as well as easy-to-follow guidelines for composting, building raised beds, and more. Growing season details for all regions of the West, including Alaska and Hawaii. Timely tips from edibles experts around the West-British Columbia to New Mexico. More than 300 pages of color photographs, practical advice, and inspiration from the editors of Sunset magazine, the West's authority on gardening.

How to Use this Book This book is based on my desire to preserve vegetables in ways that my family will eat and do that as efficiently as possible. When possible, I preserve vegetables in a meal-ready way. Instead of canning a bunch of carrot slices in quart (1-L)-sized jars when I bring in a large carrot harvest, I’ll make a batch of Canned Spice Carrot Soup and a couple of jars of Fermented Mexican Carrots. Then, I’ll use the tops to make Frozen Carrot Top Pesto for the freezer. The carrot soup is the only time-consuming item; the other two can be put together while the soup is processing. The first part of this book is an overview of food preservation methods: canning, both water bath and pressure canning, dehydrating, fermenting and freezing. You’ll find the basics of how to use these methods to safely preserve vegetables, but you won’t find details for every scenario that could happen while preserving vegetables. I’ve written these chapters with enough information to get you started preserving the harvest, but not so much information that it leads to confusion and information overload. The rest of this book is focused on growing and preserving the most popular vegetables and herbs that are grown in the home garden. Each vegetable has its own chapter and, in that chapter, you’ll find instructions on how to grow, purchase, can, dehydrate, ferment and freeze that vegetable. You will also find recipes that highlight the vegetable; most of these recipes are for preserving the vegetable, but some recipes use the preserved vegetable. Most of the recipes are written so that you’ll preserve small batches at a time, simply because I find that adjusting recipes to scale up is easier than scaling down. If your family likes a recipe, or if you have enough of one vegetable to make two batches of a recipe, just double the ingredients and it will work out fine. The exception to this is any of the jam or jelly recipes; don’t ever double a jam or jelly recipe or you run the risk of it not setting up. I hope you read through the whole book to get a vision for how these different preservation methods can work together to stock your pantry with food your family will eat. Then, when a vegetable is in season, I hope you reread that vegetable’s chapter and make a plan for preserving all of the harvest in a variety of ways. Of course, I hope that some of our favorite preservation recipes become your family favorites, too.

Completely revised from cover to cover, this is the 35th anniversary release of Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, the bible to organic vegetable gardening in the Pacific Northwest. Now in its seventh edition, the book has been thoroughly updated and includes a new formula for complete organic fertilizer and how to tweak it for a variety of different soil conditions, how-to sections for herbs and ornamental plants, new organization for better usability, updated sources for appropriate seed suppliers, and information about natural pest controls. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Enjoy the fruits—and veggies and herbs—of your own labor! This comprehensive guide teaches you how to grow bigger and better-quality produce and manage pest problems either conventionally or by organic methods. Inside you'll find: Numerous growing, harvesting and storage tips for vegetables, fruits and herbs are included ensuring homeowners become expert food crop gardeners. Includes simple techniques and professional tips for planning, planting and caring for edible crops. An expansive encyclopedia showcases the most flavorful and easiest-to-grow vegetables, fruits and herbs.