One of my favorite types of veggies to grow during our cool season are root crops. There is something so exciting about …
Learn to grow tasty, organic vegetables year-round in Southern California.
Written specifically for the SoCal gardener, this comprehensive guide features growing tips for more than 40 vegetables, as well as chapters on soil health, composting, seed raising, pests and diseases, fertilizing, and tips for gardening with kids.
SoCal has one of the best climates in the world for growing produce throughout every season. Featuring beautiful, full-color illustrations and photographs, this comprehensive guide answers all your questions about growing a bountiful vegetable harvest every month of the year.
Each 2-page vegetable spread explains exactly what to do in terms of planting location, soil, fertilizing, watering, and more. Also learn about the nutrition packed into each veggie, and enjoy tasty recipes using your harvest.
Book Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must have for any SoCal gardeners collection.
Bar-none - this is absolutely the best Southern California Gardening Fruit book out there.
The first half of the book is dedicated to providing accurate and actionable information to select, plant, and maintain your fruit trees, bushes, and plants. There are a lot of helpful (and beautiful) illustrations and pictures with the information being organized in a way that is easy to read and understand.
The second half of the book is dedicated to individual fruit types - 38 to be exact - in alphabetical order from Almonds to White Sapotes which makes it easy to find what you need when you need it. Each fruit has two pages chock full of important information including the flowering and fruiting season, if the fruit can be grown in a container, where and how to plant it, what kind of soil, watering, fertilizing and pruning requirements each type of fruit plant has and how you prune, thin and prevent or treat major pests and diseases. A cool addition I haven't seen in other books is how to harvest the fruit, how to store it, secret growing tips, and nutritional nuggets.
I love that many of the pictures are from the authors' gardens and one can see how the fruit is grown for real in Southern California. Honestly, this is the most concise and easiest to understand information for SoCal Fruit Gardening reference.
5.0 out of 5 stars Everything you need to grow fruit in Southern California!
Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2022
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If you want to be successful growing fruit in Southern California, get this book! I learned so much with this great resource, including what fruit varieties to grow in Southern California and how to plant them, as well as fertilizing, watering, and pruning. There’s even a section on grafting. Each of the individual fruit page spreads tell you exactly what you need to know to have success growing fruits like lychees, peaches, nectarines, loquats and avocados. There’s also nutritional information about each fruit, and recipes I can’t wait to try. This will be my go-to reference book on growing fruit in my Southern California garden for years to come.
One person found this helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Comprehensive and packed with insights
I enjoy how easy to read this book is. It is filled with insights, beautiful pictures, and is super comprehensive. Just perfect for the SoCal gardener. The growing tips for each fruit covers location, soil, watering, fertilizing, pruning, thinning, harvesting, secret growing tips as well major pests and disease prevention. This book reminds me that it can take a few years for a tree to produce fruits (sometimes not at all), which means a gardener is really an “experimenter.” The very existence of this book means that authors have done a lot of the experimentation. Thanks to these growing tips, the success rate of our “experiments” can be much higher. That said, I can’t wait to start growing blueberries, cherimoyas and other yummy fruits!
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The first book in my SoCal Year-Round Gardening Series released on Earth Day! Southern California Vegetable Gardening tells you everything you need to know to grow a tasty, organic veggies in SoCal.
In the book, you will find SoCal growing info for more than 40 vegetables. There are also chapters on growing in our climate, soil, fertilizing, watering, pests and diseases and gardening with kids.
Learn to Grow Veggies in SoCal
The Makings of a Veggie Gardener
When I was a kid living in rural Massachusetts, there was a lady who lived across the street. She had a large fenced-in vegetable garden. I don’t recall her name, but we could call her Mrs. McGregor. She was a bit on the cranky side. At first, she thought I was up to mischief when I hung around the outside of the garden and began asking about her gardening techniques.
When Mrs. McGregor realized that I was truly interested in learning how to garden, one day she grudgingly opened the gate. She motioned for me to come inside her patch of paradise. That started a series of mini gardening lessons. Each lesson ended with me being able to pick whatever delish veggie I wanted. Then I’d eat the vegetable right then and there.
In time, Mrs. McGregor gave me carte blanche to go into the patch even when she wasn’t around and eat whatever I wanted. The other neighbor kids would gasp and say I was going to “get into big trouble.” But as I dined on veggies in the garden, I knew better.
I still remember the thrill of eating straight from Mrs. McGregor’s outdoor cupboard. My favorite crop to munch on was the carrots. They were so crispy and sweet.
Organic Vegetable Gardening in SoCal
When I started gardening in my own vegetable patch in SoCal in the late 1980s, I tried carrots, but soon found they didn’t grow like Mrs. McGregor’s. The big reasons were a difference in climate and soil. After some experimenting, I did figure out the secrets to growing carrots in SoCal.
Learn about growing carrots and nearly 40 more veggies in Southern California Vegetable Gardening, which is now out in paperback and ebook, and can be read for free on Kindle Unlimited.
Shade gardening in SoCal takes some extra effort but the results are well worth it.
Trimcraft9 Precision Automatic Trimming Scissors make garden tasks easier. You simply push a button and the trimming is done for you without any wear and tear on your hands.
To pollinate your garden, bees need water to thrive. Vision Bee Cups are a beautiful way to hydrate the bees.
One of my favorite types of veggies to grow during our cool season are root crops. There is something so exciting about …
Shade gardening in SoCal takes some extra effort but the results are well worth it.
Trimcraft9 Precision Automatic Trimming Scissors make garden tasks easier. You simply push a button and the trimming is done for you without any wear and tear on your hands.
To pollinate your garden, bees need water to thrive. Vision Bee Cups are a beautiful way to hydrate the bees.