Allotment books

[leoblackcat]

I am looking for a good allotment book to help me with my new adventure. Would anyone recommend the Alan Buckingham book or the Andi Cleverly or are there any better ones?

Has anyone read the half hour allotment? Was just wondering if that is any good as well?

[oldie]

There will be as many opinions as there are gardeners! The Andi Cleverly is good and I like it. If you want something straightforward, no pictures just good advice the Essential Allotment Guide by John Harrison at£5.99 (Allotment Growing: Vegetable, Fruit and Herb Gardening on an Allotment) is worth looking at. Visit you local Library and have a browse before you buy.

[bluemoon]

Andi Cleverly is good. I also like 'The Allotment Handbook' by Caroline Foley.

[Couperman]

I am looking for a good allotment book to help me with my new adventure. Would anyone recommend the Alan Buckingham book or the Andi Cleverly or are there any better ones?

Has anyone read the half hour allotment? Was just wondering if that is any good as well?

I have the 'Half-hour allotment' and it is good especially if you are short on spare time.

The Allotment month by month by Alan Buckingham is good to try and get your head around what needs doing when in the growing calender.

I also have one by Joy Larkcom called 'Grow your own Vegetables' which is an in depth no-nonsense guide to veg growing.

Along with the 'Self sufficient gardnener' by John Seymour.

I would recommend all, but if you are anything like me you will end up with loads of books just to get you through the winter and some are not so useful and therefore I haven't mentioned them.

If I was only allowed to keep one of all the veg related books I have acquired (and read in a very short space of time) it would be the Joy Larkcom one.

[Two_Sheds]

another vote for Andi Cleverly here, and Dr Hessayon lives in my shed

[rustylady]

Try borrowing some from your local library (free) and deciding which you like before you buy

[jackie j]

I have Andi Clevely, Carol Klein's grow your own veg, Alan Tichmarsh The Kitchen Garden, Food from your Allotment and Garden and more but cant remember lol,

[Alison]

Andi Cleverly is excellent as another one I have (will check the name and add later) but I was rather disappointed by the 30 minute allotment one as I found it didn't really fit in with how I wanted to garden - seemed to be more for the fad allotment holder who liked the idea of a plot but didn't have the time to commit to making a proper go of it. It concentrates on high value and easy crops but ignores lots of the things I want to grow. Worth having a really good look in the book shop / library before you buy but worth having a couple of loved books for easy reference. Recent find has been the River Cottage veg book which is a great size for keeping in my lottie bag and is used loads for checking spacing, harvesting times etc etc.

[OllieMartin]

Personally I found Cleverly's a little too wordy. I'd rather use a gardening book as a reference tool rather than a bedtime read.

[kiwirach]

i second the River Cottage vege book.....its a very handy size for the allotment, and for some reason its growing chart at the front seems to answer all the questions i have had about what to sow when.....this info is in other books, but somehow it all came together for me in the RC book.

[pukka.tukka]

Hi

I would defo buy Essential Allotment Guide by John Harrison. If you buy from his website you usually get free seeds

I like Dr Hessayon pocket guide to take with me to the Lotty.

I like the picture in 'The Allotment Handbook' by Caroline Foley. My in-law brought my copy for Christmas the year we got the Lotty.

[Pumpkin Becki]

The books I refer to again and again are:

Alan Titchmarsh 'The Kitchen Gardener' - brilliant! Excellent advice, descriptions, methods, recipies, illustrations, and great photography (but not the 'coffee table book' type photography which is for glamour rather than information).

Sue Berger 'Allotment Gardening: an Organic Guide for Beginners' Great size book for carrying round, good information and recipies.

Clare Foster 'Your Allotment: Down to Earth Guide to plot paradise' Got this from the Book Club at work for about £3 or something silly. I liked the 2nd World War Ministry of Agriculture planting guides in the introduction, so I thought 'why not'. I do also refer to it, but I am always worried by the photo of the woman digging in her flipflops!!

[Storming Norman]

I spent a couple of months two winters ago on crutches & in plaster.

My husband bought me Sarah Raven's Great Vegetable Plot to cheer me up. It took some reading as it is very pretty, quite amazingly informative, but utterly confused in its layout. I've always grown veg but this books gave me the veg bug in spades -hence my allotment this year.

Since then I must have read 20 or so of this type of book, but I still go back to Sarah to see what varieties she recommends and I have not been disappointing with these choices.

Alan Titchmarsh's book is pretty good, the River Cottage veg book is a little diamond [but don't make the tomato sauce as it's rubbish - try the honey carrots they are good]. Dr Hessayon's book is good but quite out of date on modern varieties. Quite a few other allotment books seem to apply to more northerly areas better to my mind. Depending on where you are in Reigate this may mean that you have a very favourable area and can plant earlier [and later] than some books suggest and double crop a fair bit as well.

The half hour allotment book should be called the full hour allotment book, other than that the ideas are sensible for a modern and busy lifestyle but some seemed a bit extreme to me and sort of lost the point of having an allotment in the first place - it is more encouragement not to give up to early really.

Most of my reading was from the Surrey libraries:
https://www.surreylibraries.org/
Which has a great listing of books and you can reserve to your local library quite cheaply. Many books mentioned here can be taken out from the libraries - only buy what you think you will refer to regularly after you have skimmed read from the library.

Personally I found that varied reading [time permitting] was very valuable and allowed me to develop my own ideas, preferences and plans. Also using the experience of others at the allotment was most useful.

Despite all the reading the really odd thing I discovered this year was that whilst my garden and allotment are not far apart they might as well have been in different counties for the different growth, disease and weed rates on the same type of soil.

Oh and read up on blight - it's really endemic around here. No you may not see it in your garden but there is no avoiding it on an allotment plot if the weather is favourable and it is so disappointing. The common thought on the plots this year is no we are never going to grow tomatoes here ever again..........

[Princess Unicorn]

I am looking for a good allotment book to help me with my new adventure. Would anyone recommend the Alan Buckingham book or the Andi Cleverly or are there any better ones?

Has anyone read the half hour allotment? Was just wondering if that is any good as well?

I ordered the Alan Buckingham book the other day and it arrived yesterday, not had a big look at it yet, but from what I have seen it seems very good! It appears to be a good starter book in regards of what to sow when, what to plant out when, what jobs to do that month, what pests are around that month etc.

I am looking at other books to get too

[geoff]

Hessayon's The Vegetable and Herb Expert is simple, clear and cheap; get a copy to keep at the allotment. It covers most veg in alphabetical order, and includes illustrated guides to diseases and other problems

It's not quite so good at background stuff like planning and techniques, so get a more detailed book for that, just have a browse round a bookshop and the library till you find something you like. Look for something specifically for allotments or growing vegetables as general gardening books tend to concentrate mostly on flowers

But you can, of course read any number of books from your libary, all for free, and if there's a particular book you'd like, they can order it for a nominal fee

You could always ask for a subscription to GYO as a present - Christmas isn't that far off now!