Skip to content
Caroline Foley divider

Allotment Vegetables

Publisher: New Holland Publishers
Published: 2006
Pages: 192

Reviews

Kitchen Garden

If you are just making your first sortie into growing veg. or a keen grower just needing a modern reference book, then the A – Z of Allotment Vegetables by Caroline Foley could be for you.

It has three main sections, one with useful information on gardening techniques, another, the heart of the book, comprises a vegetable directory, literally an A – Z of all the popular veg. and some unusual ones too.

Crops are divided into their respective groups such as roots, legumes, brassicas and salads. Also, quite unusually, there is a substantial section on showing veg with some hints and tips to help you win that elusive red card…

Optima Magazine

Following on from her brilliant definitive guide, The Allotment Handbook, comes this new book full of information on all the best known vegetables, as well as numerous exotic and lesser-known ones along with advice on sowing, planting, problems and much more.

Good Housekeeping

If you are inspired to flex your own green fingers, you’ll find the A – Z of Allotment Vegetables by Caroline Foley invaluable. As well as the beautiful illustrations, it’s full of useful tips and practical advice.

Four Shires Books

Caroline Foley is a renowned gardening writer and is passionate about growing fruit and vegetables. Following on from her successful guide, the Allotment Handbook, comes this companion title. Whether you have an acre or a courtyard, it is possible to grow your own vegetables so that you can enjoy fresh, seasonal produce that you have grown with your own hands.

The A – Z of Allotment Vegetables presents a vast directory of vegetables, both common and more exotic, to fit with the current growing interest of world cuisine alongside practical gardening advice. The directory is divided into vegetable groups, from potatoes to onions, fruiting varieties to salad leaves, and for each group Caroline gives information on the various types available as well as advice on everything form planting and cultivating to harvesting and cooking.

Gardens Illustrated

A vast directory of vegetables, both common and exotic, along with practical advice.

Gardens Illustrated

A vast directory of vegetables, both common and exotic, along with practical gardening advice.

With more money being spent on vegetable seed than flowers for the first time in 40 years, allotment and vegetable gardening is increasing in popularity. There are numerous guides but Caroline foley’s threw up an interesting nugget of first glance. Jerusalem artichokes are one of the easiest plants to grow in the vegetable garden, but their uses seemed limited. Soup, yes, roasting – great, but as a substitute to water chestnuts in Chinese cookery?

The Times Magazine

I was in the gardening section of a bookshop, disorientated as I stared at the unfamiliar books. It felt like shopping in a foreign supermarket, only more bemusing. Here I had no map at all: no brands I recognized, publishers I trusted, authors I knew or could disregard.

Did I go for a book with lots of pictures; for an “essential gardener”, a vegetable growing guide, a TV tie-in? There were plenty of “complete” gardeners or “essential” gardeners, but when I took one down it said on the front “volume two”. Now I may not be a complete gardener but nor am I a total fool: how complete can volume two be without volume one.

There were several small books that would fit in a pocket for immediate reference on the vegetable plot; large and heavy ones that probably had the lot cove red. Blinded by choice, I left the shop instead with a handful of novels.

Fortunately someone has sent the A – Z of Allotment vegetables (Caroline Foley; New Holland) to the Times, which the gardening editor handed on to me. I have no idea if another book does it better, but, apart from the fact that it doesn’t cover herbs, this has been a godsend.

Here, I discover what “bolting” is – plants panicking and doing everything too soon. Which is a nice idea, though it puts paid to a vision I had been enjoying of rows of little parsnips and leeks fleeing over the sout downs in an excited chatter.

Here too, at last, I discover burdock: a large plant with roots like fagt old man’s fingers, and sticky burs to boot. Fortunately only a few of the burdock seeds seem to have germinated and the shoots are being eaten by something, so it may be making much of an appearance.

Everything is taking for ever to come through, but little bit b y little bit they are poking up – the parsnips, the spinach, the leeks.

Potatoes and onions are doing great. But not the carrots. Barely a shoot can we see in what is supposed to be a five long rows of these. Not a bolt, not a saunter – not a squeak. Why?

Alice Miles
VEGGING OUT