How to Grow Winter Vegetables

While I have quite a collection of books about winter vegetable gardening, I turn to this book a lot for advice on timing. This is the best organized manual I have seen on how to grow crops for eating in the winter. The author gives specific, practical advice for what to do each month for each vegetable: preparing, planting (including spacing for best results, giving you a range), care, and special concerns. He also has helpful charts for at-a-glance help. He's been a market gardener for many years and it shows.I'm surprised this book isn't more popular. My guess is that it is because the author lives in the UK and the book hasn't been promoted in the US. I've found the author's timing and culture recommendations work very well for my mid-Atlantic garden as long as I keep in mind that his winters are a bit milder than mine, and his climate is usually more rainy and cooler in the summer. If you live in the South, you will need to grow short-day onions (he grows long-day onions), and the timing will be different.

Mr. Dowding pours knowledge of no dig gardening over every page. From soil building methods to individual vegetables growing techniques and sowing schedule. This book is not only a book for growing winter vegetables, but how to plan the garden around having a productive garden year-round.

I loved all the details about each plant's requirements. I wish that the recommendations about timing were more about light and temperature and moisture, rather than say, March, or May, or whatever works for Charles Dowding in his specific region. For example, knowing when peas sprout or flower or fruit or stop doing any of those activities moisture- or temperature-wise is more helpful than knowing what month is a good month for him to do those things. I live in an area dominated by microclimates! That said, I learned a lot about many winter vegetables, and have much more courage to try growing them now.

Great reference. Mr. Dowding's market garden is in zone 8 so it is quite applicable even here in US.After reading this, you wonder why you didn't plant vegetables for winter harvest and for spring "hunger gap". We run a small farm and sell at local farmers market and it still has wealth of information even for those of us with years of experience. And if you are new or novice at gardening, Mr. Dowding really makes it easy for you to understand, when to plant and when to harvest. And I do love his writing style.Don't turn over the soil no matter how great your temptation is. And do use insect netting for brassicas.

Wow, an entire new window of opportunity has been opened up to me in the gardening world!!!

This is a wonderful book. Very organized, easy to follow, complete guide to growing winter vegetables. Charles adds a very pleasant writing style with tips and tricks and things that he tried that did not work so well for him. I find this the first book I reach for in guidance.

Love this book

I'm very pleased with this book. It has beautiful color photos to help identify the plants. Im looking forward to trying some of the great ideas in it. I would recommend this book.