If you’re one of the 20 million (give or take) Americans who took up gardening with the onset of the COVID-19 quarantines of 2020, you’ll be psyched for a vegetable gardening-focused book that is new for Spring 2021. The book is aptly entitled The First-Time Gardener: Growing Vegetables: All the know-how and encouragement you need to grow—and fall in love with!—your brand new food garden. The book written by an avid and eager vegetable gardener by the name of Jessica Sowards, who also just happens to have a popular YouTube vegetable gardening show called “Roots and Refuge Farm.” It’s from this experience of hosting a YouTube gardening show and interacting with new gardeners that Jessica had the inspiration to write this book.

Covering all the First-Time Gardening Basics

Last year’s garden was a bit of a by-the-seat-of-your-pants endeavor, wasn’t it? Did you get into vegetable gardening on a whim, picking up a tomato plant while at the grocery store? You became intrigued by the work and reward By the end of the summer, as you sat eating the grilled cauliflower steaks, caprese salad and pepper relish, you swore you’d do it all again—but with more knowledge. This book is where the first-time vegetable gardener can gain that knowledge. Jessica answers questions that new and experienced gardeners alike ask themselves at the beginning of each season:

• Where should my new garden go?
• What should I do to this soil?
• What vegetables should I plant?
• What’s better—growing from seeds or buying transplants transplants?
• Watering, fertilizing, maintaining the garden—gah! Help!
• Wait, what’s eating my plants? And how do I make them stop??

Basics and (Slightly) Beyond

Once Jessica covers the fundamentals of getting the basic garden going, the first-time vegetable gardener will have some time to consider a few other slightly more advanced (but still rudimentary) gardening topics. You want an eco-friendly garden for your family. What does that entail? You want to seamlessly grow and harvest from one season to the next. How does that flow? And what needs to happen to maximize the amount you harvest from such a small growing space?

The full-color, 176-page First-Time Gardener book will advance your entry-level experience from last year, for sure. And for those of you beginning your vegetable gardens for the first time, this book is definitely a welcome companion as you begin your journey.

Inquire about the book from your local bookstore or find it at Amazon.