Product Description

In an ideal world you could live off your garden produce all year round. With Bob's knowledge and expertise this becomes a reality. Often crops arrive in gluts or are disappointingly small and Bob offers all sorts of advice as to how best to eat, store and preserve the nutritious goods you have. He discusses how to extend your harvests too, so that you can enjoy what you've grown, fresh, for longer periods, and offers advice on which early and late crops are the best, what to grow for processing and preserving, and how to harvest. With ideas on how to squeeze, freeze, dry and fry as well as every possible way of using your produce inventively, you will be looking forward to your glut of plums to make plum sorbet or your windfall of apples to make your own home-made cider. Bob includes his own favourite recipes for classics such as raspberry jam and potato dauphinoise as well as more adventurous recipes including home-made sun-dried tomatoes, gooseberry and strawberry liqueur (also a love potion!) and how best to eat your nasturtiums seeds. With an invaluable reference of all the fruits and vegetables, this is a wonderful, no-nonsense guide on how to get the best out of your harvest.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56465 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-16
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Review
This practical guide has all the advice you need to make the most of your garden all year round. --Grand Designs

Bursting with ideas on growing, storing, preserving and cooking home-grown produce so that you can enjoy it all your long...a fantastic and friendly reference book. --G Magazine

This beautifully photographed offering from Bob Flowerdew makes a refreshing addition to the book shelves...feel inspired to get into the kitchen but also make sure you get the best and longest harvest possible. --Organic Gardening

About the Author
Bob Flowerdew has gardened organically for over 20 years. He is a regular panellist on radio 4's Gardener's Question Time and a co-author of The GQT Tips and Techniques and The GQT Plant Chooser. His previous books include The Complete Book of Companion Gardening, Bob Flowerdew's Complete Fruit Book, Bob Flowerdew's Organic Bible, The No-Work Garden, The Gourmet Gardener and Going Organic.

Customer Reviews

Read this if you are/want to be serious about producing your own food
A great, earthy, realist's guide to producing your own fruit and veg. I wonder if Bob Flowerdew's working title for this book was "Of course you can grow your own food!" It is definitely an antithesis to celebrity branded supermarket products!!
He recaptures some of the lost Victorian ideal of growing continous fresh and exotic foods throughtout the year with the basic cottage garden approach of providing food that is good enough to sustain the family, all brought into modern day life with very practical comments.
Bob aims his approach at those who "believe in eating what you have rather than what you fancy" but shows very well that this can be diverse and interesting.
For those of us that already live this way, the 100 pages on "Coping with gluts" (more than half the book) gives refreshing and humorous ideas, but for the novice or prospective grower it will give a crucial insight into what it is really about.
The photographs reveal a treasure of detail into this style of life and should encourage those of us that are not super-efficient and don't spend a fortune on designed garden accessories.
If you read this book it should reveal to you that in reality you can grow your own food and inspire you to have a go. (Go on, roll back that sterile lawn!!)
foot note: Just made 5 trays of apple amd raspberry fruit leather, brilliant!! (Now need to work out how to put a padlock on a storage jar so that I can keep the 6'4" rodent out)

love Bob, love this book
I love Bob Flowerdew! His attitude, his humour and his organic ethics are all summed up beautifully in this book. More so than some of his other works, the warts-and-all photos reveal his endearingly Womble-like side - at a beautifully weathered old table on a rusty chair, surrounded by garden shed paraphernalia, there sits Bob, happily shelling beans in the autumn air.... As ever, there is a wealth of gardening wisdom, a lot of it unique to Bob, his special brand of make-do-and-mend growing techniques and a fantastic array of food preservation methods - far more comprehensive than I have ever come across in a cook book. I hold Bob and his previous books responsible for many of my own gardening experiments and this time I have been inspired to rush out and buy citrus trees and grapevines purely so I can stash them in old plastic buckets, confident that this time next year I'll have a harvest. If only I had room for a goose and some chickens. Fabulous stuff.

A man after my own heart...
My mum gave my partner this book for his birthday n I just couldn't put it down. Lots of storage wisdoms for those harvests that come in all at once as well as recipes and guidance to get the most out of the space available!!..I don't know Bob from T.V being not a telly head n not living in the UK for some years, but know now that he is a man after my own heart as I sat mouth watering... at the devilishly delicious ideas he shares with the reader...chocolate dipped candied fruits...stop!! Hugely practical and worth every minute spent spent reading...will be referring to it on many future occasions!