This book gave a lot of information that could help a new gardener or someone who wanted to improve their skills in the garden. I especially liked the section on growing pairs and rotations. I found the kindle version to be formatted awkwardly, but I have found that true with other arcs in the past and not in the finished version. Thank you for the review opportunity!

In insightful, I'm a non-gardener and found this helpful A Must read for anyone who's starting out and detailed information for those who like tips and been at it a while.. There is such a variety of methods talked about.

The title of this one is a bit misleading. While ONE of the end-goals of the information presented in this book is to help gardeners and small-scale farmers grow more vegetables in a small space with less water, it's certainly not presented as the main one. The main one would be: building soil health in a natural and sustainable way, to lengthen the longevity of our soils, reduce the need for artificial and harmful fertilizers and pesticides, and then, YES, to increase yields. Don't get me wrong, I found this book to be hugely informative and important. But for novice gardeners who are just getting their green thumbs in the dirt, I think a lot of this book would go over their heads - it's incredibly in-depth, scientific, and dense.

TL;DR: Great, well-researched and hugely important information, but needs a more accurate title.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ten Speed Press for the opportunity to read and review How to Grow More Vegetables, ninth edition, by John Jeavons. How to Grow More Vegetables should possibly be named How to Grow More Crops. This gardening instructional guide covers soil preparation, creation and upkeep; composting; soil fertilization and nutrition; planting with seeds and/or plants; companion planting; crop rotation; insect control; garden charts, plans and tools. The book is based on the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Method of gardening and is a more complex instructional gardening book than I need, but is still very helpful; 4 stars.

"How to Grow” is a useful addition to the home gardener’s library. It details the science and practice of sustainable organic vegetable gardening for the dedicated amateur. I particularly found the master charts and sample plans useful, despite the limitations of my small garden.

How to Grow More Vegetables, Ninth Edition by John Jeavons promises to help gardeners grow more food on less land. The book seems to focus on building better soil. The author is against many things and one of them is the use of manure. I live in the country and have a never ending supply either from my own animals or my neighbors' animals. I found some of the information very useful, but nothing that made me excited to have read the book. I felt like I had stumbled into a trap where the author promised one thing but really only wanted to push the GROW BIOINTENSIVE (always written in all caps) method along with Ecology Action. Both of these may be worthy things, but they are not the reasons I chose to read the book. One mention at the beginning would have been sufficient. The book is not focused on the average backyard gardener that wants to grow food his/her family will eat.

As a background, I have been gardening for roughly 5 years and consider myself a beginner even though I've read dozens of gardening books.
Perhaps I'm better qualified as intermediate, but the gap between me and someone like Will Bonsall is so huge that I consider myself a beginner and one who still has plenty of systems knowledge to pick up.

Despite the fact that I have much to learn, I did not find much in this book that jumped out at me as something I'd like to implement. That might be due to the book's organization, the verbose nature of the writing, or my tendency to get antsy and skip around.

Love this! Great ideas for growing more vegetables. It will be invaluable to gardeners.

While this book is in its 9th edition, I find it hard to believe that the average gardener today would find it useful. It is very text-heavy, with lots of statistical information/tables, and very few helpful illustrations (most are crudely done black/white drawings). I was rather surprised by this, given the lovely cover, which seems to imply there will be easy reading and lots of illustrations. As a veteran gardener and horticulture professor, I really didn't find much useful information that I'd use, nor could I envision my students finding this helpful. Most gardeners today are people who are wanting to garden sustainably, but don't have the time to read such a lengthy, technical guide. They'd be turned off in the first few pages. Sorry, but I just can't see this being very useful to anyone but the full-time small-farm grower.

Really enjopyed reading this book and have recommended it to my volunteers at the community gardens where i work. We could all learn so much from this and hopefully improve growing our veggies

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.


This book, How to Grow More Vegetables, Ninth Edition (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land with Less Water Than You Can Imagine by John Jeavons, was so filled with propaganda that it was hard to read. I sadly read about 10% and most of it was about GROW BIOINTENSIVE. I didn't get to the growing or awesomeness that the book description promised, so I cannot say definitively that it was all it claimed to be. But for me it seemed to be more about their product than actual gardening steps.