Digging in the Dirt

Due to the loooong winter experienced by those of us in the Midwest and eastern United States, we’ve been slow to get our garden in. Also a bit tardy to look around and notice the new gardening books that always start popping up in March. But better late than never: here’s one nice addition to your family gardening library, and be sure to click on the links below for past recommendations!

Garden to Table: A Kid’s Guide to Planting, Growing, and Preparing Food, by Katherine Hengel. Scarletta, 2014, 139 pages. Age/interest level: 7-13.

Like many gardening books, this is also a cookbook for using some of that great produce you’ll get all excited about growing. But first things first: 18 pages of cooking terms, common ingredients, and kitchen tools, which may be about 15 too many. Except for the glossary at the end, there’s no corresponding discussion of gardening terms or tools. This would have been especially helpful on the subject of containers—such as where to find inexpensive substitutes for the big clay pots pictured on the gardening pages.

But once we get to the actual growing and cooking, the fun begins. One reason gardening is so intimidating to beginners is all the soil preparation that needs to be done: spading up a piece of ground, working in fertilizer or compost (after making the compost), waiting for the April showers to stop. This book shortcuts the process by using containers, which are easy to fill and maintain, work in any housing situation, and can be moved inside when the weather turns quirky. Best of all, weeding is a snap! Step by step, we learn how to plant, cultivate and care for basil, carrots, green beans, lettuce, potatoes, and tomatoes: a nice selection of herbs, row crops, and root crops. Every plant comes with five or six recipes, all of which sound yummy (all vegetarian, by the way) and easy enough for a responsible ten-year-old. Many gardening books for kids are either overloaded with information or too general to be truly helpful.  This one strikes a nice balance, and with such a delicious payoff I can’t imagine a better way to get kids interested in growing food.

Garden to Table is a how-to book. For fiction and picture books about gardening and the promise of spring, see our previous posts: “How Our Gardens Grow,” “Not-So-Secret Gardens,” and Betsy and Megan’s “Librarians’ List.” If you’re in a cooking mood, see “What’s on the Menu?” and our review of The Unofficial Narnia Cookbook.