I really enjoy watching Huw on Youtube so I was really excited for the chance to read this. It is chock FULL of valuable information to have a productive garden. Whether you do raised beds or polytunnels, it's mapped out for you month by month so that you can have a successful self-sufficient garden!

The kitchen chapter is fantastic as well. You can read about different ingredients you might have grown in your garden, such as broccoli or chard, and the chart breaks down the flavor profile and how best to serve it-blanched, roasted, etc.

I've been watching Huw on YouTube for a while, and I think this book is a good compliment to that. It shows what you should be doing every month in the garden to get a productive garden. I like the format since that's the part that I have the most trouble with. There's also tips of what to do with the food, which was nice. Over all a good read.

Thanks to NetGalley for the digital ARC.

This is the kind of book you read and it leaves you thinking "Yeah! I can be a gardener!" but buyer beware: I think the authors underplay the amount of work involved in this and just how much time and effort setting the garden up will take.

That's not to say the book is of little value. It has some great permaculture concepts and talks about year-round rotational planting. If you're wanting a homestead-style garden and you live in a climate similar to Wales, he's got everything laid out for you.

I found the chapter on composting useful, though my compost bin is miles away from producing anything useful. According to Huw, I probably have too much "brown" material (carbon-rich) slowing things down.

This is a really good resource if you're engineer-minded and enjoy having measurements calculated out for you. If I were healthier and more able, I think I'd give it a try but on a smaller scale. Because this is very much a garden for 2-4 people to maintain.

Huw's garden is aesthetically pleasing, and I enjoyed all the shots of it and of the greenery growing inside it. I don't know how he filled so many beds with soil (seriously, I've spend hundreds of dollars on bags of soil for potted gardening and I'm perpetually behind on getting things transplanted because I never have enough damned dirt).

Then we get to the kitchen section, which is Sam's. Here, he discusses the main flavors and how to make the best use of your garden yield. There are tips on how to cook just about everything, from blanching tomatoes to canning peas. And there are traditional recipes for things like condiments and curries, pizza and pies.

Overall, it's a good resource for the ambitious farmer, even if you don't have a lot of space.

This was an interesting and well organized. A month to month guide on what you can build, grow, and store. I liked that materials and dimensions were given for building raised beds, trellis, etc.
At a quick glance, I see it as a guide to be referenced monthly as the year goes on.
Unfortunately, the tables were misaligned in the sample ebook I received making it hard to follow. Hopefully this is fixed in the final version or may just be the NetGalley app not displaying things correctly.

I really love the idea of this book and while I appreciate the lengths the authors went to share their exact, step-by-step plan for creating a self-sufficent year-long garden, the practicality of the plan fell apart for me. The scope of this plan requires a lot of time, money and space, and I don't see your average gardener being able to adopt even half of this garden plan. I wish that the authors had provided a mini version of the plan for gardeners with smaller spaces.

This book has some great elements to it. It includes a garden plan that can be followed fairly easily. It breaks down the year into manageable chunks of what should be done for each month. It includes info on sowing, amending, caring for the plants and more. It also gives some great recipes for using those things that are being grown. I wouldn’t recommend it to a first time gardener or anything, better for someone with a bit of experience. Also, if you live outside of the area in the book, you’d have to adjust for your climate and location. I’d also be adjusting to better fit my families eating habits. I think this book is still a great resource and pretty helpful.

I have read alot of garden books and I wasn't sure what to expect with this. But dk did not disappoint. It gives you alot of information about having a self sustaining garden. It also gives you things to build with actual plans and equipment lists. I will definitely be getting this for my personal library.

There are many elements that I appreciate about this straight-forward self-sufficiency focused gardening resource.

My main praise for this book is the information provided about different types of raised bed options, along with suggest building dimensions and visual aids. This is surprisingly difficult to find to the level of detail provided here. I did not know about Hot Bed Gardening nor have I seen schematics like this for Polytunnel Gardening practices as well so for me, those two options were the most beneficial to my current set up.

Secondly, the chapter on proper composting methods is thorough and brings the subject into a realm that is easy for anyone to follow, even if you're not the type of person to understand (or care about) soil chemistry. Probably the most common question about compost is: "What do I put in it, and how much is too much?" - The answer is provided here.

There are additional chapters covering some standard self-sufficiency influenced recipes and information on transplanting, water practices and garden management. Overall, I consider this a great resource that I'll be referring to again in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this title in exchange for an honest review.

The Self-Sufficiency Garden is a concise and useful guide to increasing food security by gardening by Huw Richards and Sam Cooper. Released 14th May 2024 by Penguin Random House on their DK imprint, it's 224 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout.The links in the ebook format are honestly absolute gold and make the book a joy to use.

In times of increasing food insecurity, supply line and distribution chain disruptions and distrust/boredom with the incredibly limited selections available to most people who don't have ready access to local farmers markerts, coupled with the psychological and health benefits of being in contact with growing plants and having more control over our food as well as the sense of accomplishment that comes from being more self sufficient, it's easy to see why more people are making a conscious choice to garden.

This is a good basic guide which includes all the necessary info to arm beginner (and non-beginner) gardeners with what they need to plan, plant, grow, harvest, and succeed with vegetable gardening (with basic info which also applies to other parts of horticulture and flower gardening). It's arranged in digestible parts, with a logical progression: planning & basic terminology, planning & creating different gardens with season extenders and other aids, planting and growing crops arranged by the calendar year (with monthly tasks and categories), recipes for using and preserving the harvests, and a general broad-range skills and troubleshooting chapter (lots of good info here). The author/publisher have also included a links and resources lists for further reading.

The book is well photographed, and includes many clear color photos of gardens and the recipes. It's helpful to see what fermenting vegetables can/should look like, especially for readers who are new to canning/preserving.

Four and a half stars. Full of information. This would be a superlative choice for public and school library acquisition, home use, allotments/gardening groups, smallholders (with or without urban locations), and similar. Tutorial and recipe lists have measurements given in imperial (American) units with metric units in parentheses (yay!).

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I thoroughly enjoyed "The Self-Sufficiency Garden" by Huw Richards and Sam Cooper. The comprehensive guide provides invaluable insights into sustainable gardening practices, and I'm excited to apply its principles to my future homestead. Richards and Cooper's expertise and passion for self-sufficiency shine through, making this book both informative and inspiring.

I think The Self-Sufficiency Garden would be a great book for a serious gardener, particularly with some high quality garden tools or a plant, etc. However, this book is not the right fit for most gardeners or the general public which is why I don't plan on buying it for myself or my high school library. For example, there's a section in the book on homemade compost. This is great for people who are already intermediate gardeners and looking to become more expert -- but it's not a general gardening book. There are engaging pictures but coupled with a good amount of text. I definitely recommend this one if you're already an established, practiced gardener; I think you would love it! Or, if you're a gardener who's looking to be even more environmentally conscious or, as the title says, self sufficient. For people who live a homestead kind of life or want to do things by themselves or for themselves this would be a great title.

“The Self-Sufficiency Garden” is a book I could see myself coming back to should I decide to get more serious about my backyard garden. This book gave great advice for how to set up a garden the right way for productivity, seasons and ease of upkeep. Do know that there is an emphasis on building your own garden structures, many of which are large so you might need another set of hands for assistance. I also wouldn’t say that the solutions in the book are not are budget friendly from the start, but the upfront investment will pay off over time if you continue your garden maintenance.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book!

This was an informative and very approachable way of looking at the concept of creating a garden to allow one to be self-sufficient. I will definitely be using it more as the seasons continue in order to remind myself of some of the advice given that I haven't seen before. Overall I really enjoyed this and would recommend if you're at all thinking about homesteading or even just want to grow more of your own food!

A very useful book for all of those interested in gardening! It was very informative and easy to understand, this book will be a keeper!!

This was an interesting book with a lot of helpful checklists and timelines. I did come away with some new ideas about setting up a garden. Even though I often found myself distracted by the formatting and layout of this book because it didn't seem to have a natural flow.

This is probably one of the most thorough and helpful books of this kind that I've read. I've had a garden for a few years and am moving in the direction of homesteading and found this to be majorly helpful. I will be purchasing a physical copy to use as a reference! Thank you for the ARC!

The format of this book left much to be desired. I constantly had to jump from desktop to iphone in my efforts to read this book properly. No matter how I adjusted the settings, I could never view the pages properly. I'm not sure why the publisher decided to present a book for review in this way. I'm a bit disgusted. I've tried very hard not to let this constant irritation affect my review of the book contents. It took me entirely too long to get through this digital mess.

Basically, this is a book for beginners. Fine. No issues there. Not much for those of us with a lot of experience (I am a nearly 2 decades Eco farm woman). Also, the grower is in the UK. But for the most part, the growing conditions are pretty similar to my own in USDA Zone 6. A huge problem I see with this book is the massive expense should the newbie try to follow this book. His plot is beautifully done. It's something most of us dream of doing but cannot afford. That's a mark against it without a doubt. Second, it's pretty rigid. The author gives plenty of detail on how he specifically does things that work for him. When growing anything, one needs a heck of a lot of flexibility. This is an epic fail.

The author grows a lot of food in a small area. Because of this, he cannot do proper crop rotation. His solution? Soil health. No crop rotation. That's all fine and good, but soil health alone isn't good enough. Obviously it's getting him by, but eventually it will bite him in the butt. To truly grow sustainably one needs both soil health and crop rotation.

What about garden pests? He recommends picking them off by hand. This works if you only have a teensy infestation. He poo poos insect netting stating eggs can be laid through the netting. Two solutions. Don't let the netting touch the plants. Even better, use the lightest weight of row cover; not insect netting. Don't forget the hoops. Or, if you can't afford it, don't grow the crop that is particularity troublesome until you are ready to take it on properly.

Frankly, this is not a book I would buy. It's not terrible. A lot of work went into it. But there are so many books available that I personally feel are much better. Newbies need to start slow with minimum expense. Experienced growers need fresh ideas & inspiration.

The Self-Sufficiency Garden is an excellent book, good for both beginner and more experienced gardeners. I’ve gardened for 35 years and still found helpful information. The cooking section has good information and directions for a variety of ways to use and preserve the produce grown. My only problem was following the monthly planting plans since a key was used rather than having the plants indicated on the plan itself. That aside, this is one of the few books I will buy to keep as a reference even though I was fortunate enough to read a pre-publication copy through NetGalley. I highly recommend it for home gardeners.

Huw Richards is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with in the sustainable, cheap gardening space and this new collection of his gardening wisdom given along with Sam Cooper was easy to read and informative. I would have to do a re-read of his earlier work "Grow Food for Free" which I read in the last year to truly compare how different and unique a lot of this information is to his other previously published works. I think the writing style and formatting of this book in particular made is very accessible and relevant to a new generation of gardeners. I look forward to seeing what Huw and Sam bring to the table in the future!

This book is a gem for those looking to dive into the world of self-sufficient gardening. While it may not suit beginners, it's a goldmine of knowledge for those ready to take their gardening skills to the next level. The kitchen section is particularly enlightening, offering practical tips on preserving harvests and scrumptious recipes to savor your homegrown bounty. With clear guidance and valuable insights, this book is a must-have for anyone eager to cultivate their own food and embrace a more sustainable lifestyle. Personally, I found it immensely helpful for my own gardening journey, and I'm confident it will be well-received by fellow gardening enthusiasts. Overall, it gets a solid 4/5 stars from me!