A Life in the Garden: Tales and Tips for Growing Food in Every Season

Damrosch (The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook), a former Washington Post gardening columnist, provides a robust introduction to growing fruits, herbs, legumes, and vegetables. She recommends placing garden plots in places that get six hours of sun per day and details how to get the right pH level and nutrient balance in soil (adding pulverized limestone lowers acidity, and cottonseed meal boosts nitrogen levels). Damrosch’s organic approach urges readers to refrain from using pesticides; she explains that such “pests” as yellowjackets and moles actually tamp down insect populations that would otherwise overrun crops. The bulk of the book offers detailed instructions on growing beans, cucumbers, raspberries, and other edible plants. For instance, she recommends installing wire cylinders around tomato vines so they’ll climb upward and away from soilborne diseases, and she encourages covering lettuce plants with shade cloth to prevent them from growing into unwieldy stalks. The advice on working with nature, rather than striving to control it, is well observed, and Damrosch has an amusing habit of anthropomorphizing plants (“In a cold, wet spring... my basil will sulk outside the kitchen door, ‘palely loitering,’ as Keats would say”). This stands out in the crowded field of gardening primers. (Oct.)