Review: Charles Dowding's Skills For Growing

I'd read one of his gardening books before--it was where I learned how to do "no-till gardening" and became very addicted to it.  In a plot as small as mine (25'x30') it makes a lot of sense, and seems to work well. The main problem I have is that I don't make nearly as much compost as I need (making compost is a lot of work) and so I end up periodically scraping up the mulch between the rows and using it as compost for top-dressing the beds. That also works well, but it is a good bit of work.

But back to this book. He had some new stuff to add to the previous book, and it is very well done. The skills he speaks of are all things I could use a refresher course in, like transplanting, watering, covering the beds, and succession. He's really big on succession. I've never been very successful with it.

Especially useful to me was the section on frost protection and how different families of plants vary in their degree of frost tolerance.  But other than that, I didn't learn a lot of new stuff from this book. But I enjoyed it.