As a super beginner gardener, this read was a wonderful resource. I started a garden this spring and read this to get some tips. It was more than informative! I would have been lost without it, taking for granted that dirt is dirt (spoiler alert: you need to prep your soil thoughtfully to have success!). I really appreciated the author making a topic that can be a bore to me engaging and practical.

I enjoyed this book & thought it had many great suggestions. I'll be implementing some of them with our garden this year.

good informative book based on the hands-on tried and tested experience of a practical farmer / gardener.

It's a lengthy read, so get the glasses out.

This cheerful and colorful entry-level guide to backyard gardening covers flowers, veggies and herbs in a very clear and engaging way. For more experienced gardeners, it might be more of a review than an introduction to gardening techniques.

I have very little gardening experience, having only successfully grown tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and gourds, so this book suited me perfectly. There is also a section on organic gardening and a helpful calendar with monthly checklists.

This book has been a great help for this year's garden. I have used it to answer questions on everything gardening.

This book is beautiful and exceedingly helpful for people with enough space and time for a large garden. It is a great book to grow with (pun intended) from your fledgling sprouts to tiny greenhouses. I will be getting a copy for my personal collection when I can, it is an enlightening read.

A great book about gardening. Each and every page page gives detail about how to plant each and every plant........

I am an expert at gardening. Destroying them, I mean. I forget to water or get overcome by my allergies and hide inside or come out to find that all my beautiful herbs were enjoyed by bunnies and squirrels or destroyed by the crazy Kansas weather. Are you like me? Because now there is help. Kelly Orzel has written a book to give us all expert advice with plants.

The Backyard Gardener: Simple, Easy, and Beautiful Gardening with Vegetables, Herbs, and Flowers offers help and resources for people like me. She takes you step by step through the process, from the ground up. 

Horticulturist Orzel starts with the foundation, the soil, and helps you prepare it. She helps you understand the tools you need, how to feed the soil, why weeding is so important, how to deal with damaged or diseased plants, and how to deal with pests. She draws on her years of experience to offer simple explanations and workable solutions. 

From there, The Backyard Gardener takes you through planting and propagation, starting seeds indoors, saving seeds, dividing plants, and transplanting. It also provides practices for organic growing, like crop rotation, succession planting, intercropping, plant stacking, and companion gardening. In other words, Orzel helps you plan the timing and location of your plants to make the most of your soil. 

Then she takes you through a host of vegetable, herb, and flower plants, offering foolproof strategies for keeping them healthy and strong until it's time to harvest and enjoy. Lettuces, root vegetables, savory herbs, and beautiful flowers all combine in fresh ways to create a beautiful, sustainable garden for beginner and intermediate gardeners. 

The book includes lots of beautiful photos for inspiration and so many resources for once you're ready to go on your own plot. Suggested reading and websites, suppliers of gardening supplies, garden calendars, and seasonal checklists all help you plan and prepare for your best garden yet. 

As for me, maybe this is my year. The Backyard Gardener has given me so much information I can take to my favorite garden center and start to build my beautiful backyard garden. I don't think I can reverse all my years of unsuccessful gardening in only one year, but I can make a start. And now I know just where to begin. There is hope, even for a black thumb like me! 



Galleys for The Backyard Gardener were provided by the publisher through NetGalley.com.

From garden to table, this is full of sensible ideas about taking care of your soil, planting, harvesting and just about everything else to do with growing a healthy vegetable garden. Beautifully photographed and presented. Recommended.

Want to grow your own fruit and veggies, but have no idea what you're doing? Maybe you live in the city or you have a small yard or every houseplant you ever owned died so you never attempted outdoor gardening...well, anyway, you need this book. A great, clearly written gardening resource for beginners, amateurs, and those of us who have regular colored thumbs.

Beautiful pictures populate the pages as you are lead through the steps to a successful garden, starting with the soil. An important part of any garden, suggestions are made of emendments that improve it, but the recommendation of testing it are the most important. It's tough to know what the soil lacks without these simple tests.
Tips on tools,time saving, plant support, pest and diseases abound.
It includes aid in starting from seed and transplanting your plants, rotation, companion planting and compost hints.
Different vegetables, fruits and herbs are discussed at length. The information contained in this book covers most of the articles that a home gardener would need.
Some flowers are covered as well as a calendar checklist.
Well written and easily disseminated information make this book a winner.

The Backyard Gardener by Kelly Orzel is a wonderful guide to gardening. The six chapters cover everything from soil to a monthly gardening calendar. Many plants from flowers to vegetables are covered with thorough information. I especially appreciate Ms. Orzel's guide to succession planting and companion planting advice. While very helpful for beginners, this book will also appeal to longtime gardener's too. The beautiful photographs added to my enjoyment of the book. It will be a book that I refer to for many years to come.

A quite advanced guide to organic gardening. There's a lot of useful information in these pages, but it was beyond my skills and/or needs. On the other hand, if you want to know how to adjust the pH balance of your soil, establish multi-year three-foot compost piles, build your own greenhouse, lay out landscape fabric, or set up four-year crop rotation plans, this is the book for you! Given that I live in an apartment with a few windows and a fire escape to garden on, it was less useful to me. I did enjoy the long chapter on individual plants, giving specific tips on how to grow, harvest, fertilize, and protect each kind (mostly vegetables, with herbs and flowers getting much fewer pages).

It's a well-written, informative book, but not the one I needed.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1938161644

A great and easy to read book on those looking to garden and grow items that can also be used in cooking. The chapters are broken down by different techniques and growing methods. There is also a handy growing calendar chapter. This book is ideal for those just beginning gardening or those looking to advance their simple flowerbeds. This book would be great for any public library non-fiction collection or a technical college with a horticulture program.

Much better for an experienced gardener. This book is called Simple, easy, and beautiful gardening and sadly I could not agree with any of that. Well, maybe with the exception of the beautiful.

First of all, I was ecstatic to get this. I recently moved into a home with a huge backyard. I have four dogs that were squished for seven years into a tiny yard and they are loving life! This yard is so large that I will be able to let them play while I can also have my own space for gardening. That is, if I can figure out how to garden. It seems to be a task that is quite beyond my skill. Recently I can barely keep anything alive, much less a full garden, but I'm jumping in with both feet to see how it goes, hence getting this book off of Netgalley.

Sadly, the author immediately talks compost. But not a how to compost but just that a gardener needs compost. I know very little about compost or how to make it or when to use it. Already frustrated I tried to continue reading but by chapter three my chest was hurting I was so anxious about all the work.

It's almost as if the author expects people to understand what she's talking about. In all honesty she may have been speaking a different language, the gardening language, for all that I could understand. I know a few things but I was only able to pick out maybe one or two things that I could hold onto in every chapter. I continued reading even though I don't think this book is for me, or for any beginner, to see if there was anything I could glean from this.

It wasn't until the very end where she talked about when to plant that I got any information that I really needed.

What I think I would have preferred, especially as a beginner, was for the book to be turned around. I get why she started with compost but I immediately felt out of my depth and completely stressed. Instead of this feeling like a zen moment, which she said gardening was like, I felt tortured and expected to do things that were way beyond my capabilities.

Had she eased me into the idea of gardening then I think it would have gone better. Then again, maybe not, as I am completely new and need something like KISS to get me started.

I do like the idea of having this book handy, so I will probably buy it and look at her valuable expertise when I feel I can understand it a bit more. For now though, it will have to sit on my shelf while I go get my hands dirty.

I learned a bunch to new gardening tips and tricks by reading this book. I find it a very information gardening book. I printed the Garden Calendar and love the tip about landscape fabric. I am doing that for now on.

I really enjoy vegetable gardening and have read many books on the subject. This one has lots of good advice and info on creating a garden that should produce copious amounts of veggies over the summer. Very useful.

This is a great book for a beginner gardener who want to read a book about gardening and not just an instructional book. There a plenty of explanation and antidotes from the authors gardening adventures. There are plenty of clear explantions and even a few homemade pest control recipes.

The Backyard Gardener by Kelly Orzel is a very comprehensive gardening guide. It lists tips and recommendations from start to finish, from soil to harvest. The photos in the book are beautiful. It also has a monthly to do list, organic options, how to get rid of garden pests, and additional resources. I highly recommend this book for the gardener's bookshelf!

I have been gardening all my adult life, but it turns out I still have a lot to learn. Orzel tackles things like soil prep (something I always have problems with), companion planting, insect and animal damage control, seed saving and composting. A worthwhile addition to any gardener’s library. I can’t wait for the snow to melt to try out some of Orzel’s techniques