Product Description

"The Allotment Keeper's Handbook" is a no-nonsense guide to managing your own organic vegetable patch. Packed with invaluable advice, from how to choose an allotment and test its soil to knowing your chickweed from your chicory, it offers an enjoyable and inspiring shortcut through the trials, errors and frustrations of starting a kitchen garden. Dispensing with the strict calendar-based advice usually found in gardening manuals, Jane Perrone steers a carefree course through the gardener's year. Featuring a full chapter devoted to harvesting, a history of allotments, an exhaustive section on crop rotation, 'spotlights' on unusual vegetables, fun monthly projects and a glossary to cut through garden jargon, this book is all you will need to get growing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #140326 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

About the Author
Jane Perrone is a keen organic allotmenteer and gardener who writes regularly for Guardian Unlimited and keeps a blog (http://perrone.blogs.com/) about growing vegetables, fruit and flowers. She lives in Bedfordshire.

Customer Reviews

Everything you could ever need!

I am new to allotments, having just got an overgrown plot in February. I bought this book after seeing it in the Guardian and it has now become my bible!

It is exactly what it says, a down to earth guide. The advice is informative, straightforward, clear and realistic in terms of making you realise you dont get it right every time and failures should be taken in your stride.

This book is never more than a couple of feet from me and I spend hours in the evening poring over it, after a long day on the plot.

And for info the plot is no longer overgrown, and is in great shape with a bumber harvest due, thanks in no small part to this book, so thanks Jane!

Would recommend without reservation.

Great for beginners and old hats alike
Well, for anyone thinking of buying this book I HIGHLY recommend it. I've read my fair share of allotment books, many of which will tell you exactly what you've read elsewhere, but seeing as I'm such as avid visitor to Jane Perrone's blog I thought I'd treat myself. A great read for anyone, no matter how experienced they are at this allotmenting lark. I loved hearing about all the things that went wrong and how to either overcome them or live with them. Very readable, very personal, very useful and never far from my side.

not a book for the more experienced
I bought this book at the end of last year when i aquired an allotment.
The book is written by an amatuer for amatuers, and although it has a few handy sections - like the month by month planner, it's very basic and more of a quirky comedy about a lady's toils in her allotment.
I would reccomend this book if you are very new to gardening and have a small plot or maybe a small veg plot in your garden, as it has some novel ideas ie: building a hedgehog shelter, but fruit and veg gardening bible it is NOT!