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Excellent gardening books for beginners
10
items These books have helped me along in my gardening journey. Simple techniques for any space or budget and lots of ideas for how to use your harvest.
Sections
3
Planning & techniques
Using your harvest
Using native plants
Planning & techniques
The first gardening book I read. VERY detailed step-by-step guide to creating an incredibly productive food garden in any space. If you've never gardened before, consider picking up this book first.
Square Foot Gardening, 3rd Edition
Guide for planting a productive garden in 5-minute increments. I recently started following Nicole at Gardenary and have learned so much about intensive gardening, which greatly reduces the number of resources needed while increasing your harvest!
5-Minute Gardener: Year-Round Habits
Learn how to add edible plantings to an existing garden; especially useful if you live in a neighborhood with HOA restrictions on visible vegetable gardens. Gary is one of my favorite gardening YouTubers, and CEI is just up the street from me.
Growing an Edible Landscape: Transform Your Space
This book isn't about gardening per se, but it's been an amazing tool to help me reframe how I approach gardening. No matter how much you plan, how meticulous you are with planting, or how diligently you tend to your plants, Mother Nature has a mind ...
How to Be an Imperfectionist: The New Way to Self-Acceptance, Fearless Living, and Freedom from Perfectionism|Paperback
Using your harvest
I like to gift this book to friends trying their first vegetable garden. At some point, everyone is going to have a harvest of something that's just too prolific to eat through before it goes bad. Your neighbors and coworkers will start avoiding you ...
The Complete Guide to Pickling: Pickle and Ferment Everything Your Garden or Market Has to Offer|Paperback
This book by traditional herbalist and doctorate in nutrition Marlene Houghton is a quick read and easy to follow guide for someone just dipping their toes into herbalism for the first time. There's a helpful glossary highlighting more than 100 plant...
Healing Herbs: An Introduction
Fantastic, detailed illustrations of 50 easy-to-grow herbs. Includes a simple recipe or project after each herb profiled.
Herbal Handbook: 50 Profiles in Words and Art from the Rare Book Collections ...
My best friend brought me the first edition of this book and I liked it so much I have the second edition too! Organized seasonally, most of the recipes are beginner-friendly, and there are even lower-sugar jam recipes, which are hard to find outside...
Canning for a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors for the Modern Pantry|eBook
Using native plants
The book that got me into gardening for pollinators. Actionable steps for combatting the climate crisis with whatever space you have by increasing native plants and biodiversity in your yard. My postage stamp yard attracted dozens of species of birds...
Nature's Best Hope: Conservation in Your Yard
OK, so this book is less about adding native plants to your garden and more about identifying and appreciating the existing wild edibles in your area--many of which may already be in your yard or community (at least if you live in the northeastern re...
Sam Thayer's Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: of Eastern and Central North America|Paperback