The Tao of Vegetable Gardening

December 1, 2014
This thoughtful book is a guide for growing tomatoes, squash, and greens, but its most significant contribution is Deppe’s approach to gardening. She encourages the gardener to cultivate an intuitive relationship with plants and almost a sixth sense about when to actively work in the garden, and when to stand back and let the plants do the growing they need to do. She calls it the Tao of gardening, a form of “non-doing” or “doing that which gives maximum effect for the minimum effort,” so that unnecessary action has been eliminated. It is about balance: not watering too much, not fertilizing too much. She further enjoins the gardener to create a relationship with the garden, knowing what needs tending what needs to be left alone. The advice for raising tomatoes and greens will benefit the gardener, but the magic of the book is the way it teaches the gardener how to grow with the garden. Agent: Colleen Mohyde, Doe Coover Agency.

December 15, 2014
Biologist and plant breeder Deppe (The Resilient Gardener, 2010) shares principles and practices that will allow a gardener to do nothing whatsoever after sowing the seed until it is time to come back and harvest. Such wonderful pragmatism does not mean that this is a cut-and-dried how-to. Far from it. Deppe is lively, thoroughly engaged, and cheerfully direct, and her use of the tao is no gimmick. She infuses her in-depth, hands-on guide to growing, harvesting, preparing, and eating the most popular and nutritional vegetables with pithy and resonant philosophical observations, including such aphorisms as these, which preface the weeding section: Deal with the small before it is large. Deal with the few before they are many. Age-old wisdom graces comprehensive, clear, and timely instructions on every aspect of vegetable cultivation and enjoyment, including Deppe's guidance in avoiding late blight, the disease now threatening heirloom tomatoes, and her eat-all greens strategy for growing succulent kale, mustard, and other leafy greens. Whether writing about squash or serenity, Deppe is pleasurable and enlightening company, and this is a vegetable gardener's treasury.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)