I am by no means a vegetable gardening expert. I grow by the trial and error method of learning the intricacies of each crop that way. Errors during the growing season become my lessons learned at the end of the season, and the backbone for garden planning the subsequent year.

My troubles with carrots last season make me all the more determined to grow sweet, orange, arrow straight carrots in the coming months. Goodness knows I can only improve over last year’s crop, which turned out to look like some horrible vegetable grown in the Land of Mordor. Those so-called carrots were so ugly they went straight to the compost.

Of course, trialing and erroring can get you only so far. It really does go hand-in-hand with reading how others approach each particular crop. I’m a big proponent of blogs, obviously. But sometimes I just want to cozy up to a real book with glossy pages and sexy veggie photos and soak it all in.

Thank goodness I found two terrific vegetable-focused garden books to relish in, just as winter is winding down.

Grocery Gardening: Planting, Preparing and Preserving Fresh Food by Jean Ann Van Krevelen with Amanda Thomsen, Robin Ripley and Teresa O’Connor

This is a gardening book that’ll get your hands dirty and make your mouth water. After giving the 4-1-1 on vegetable gardening basics, it dives into details on the most common herbs, fruits, and vegetables—planting and growing; varieties; produce selection and harvest; and preparation/preserving. Each listing includes things to watch for, fun facts, and nutrition information. For example, I knew that baby carrots are often whittled down from larger carrots and packaged for consumption. But, I didn’t know that there are some varieties that are actually small, diminutive-sized carrots. This season I’ll follow this book’s recommendations for my carrot crop and see what happens.

Grow Great Grub: Organic Food From Small Spaces by Gayla Trail

Gayla Trail, of You Grow Girl fame, has released a stunningly slick and informative veggie gardening book. Its style is on the hip side and discusses the hows, wheres and whys for all types of small-space gardeners, especially the urban types. She includes some very-cool DIY projects. For instance, she converts a metal trash can into a container for growing potatoes. A great idea! She also turns a spent toilet-paper roll into seed-starting cells that will degrade right in the soil. Gayla includes recipes, as well. I’ll be trying my hand at the Everything But the Kitchen Sink Pickle recipe and the Tangy Red Pepper Ketchup later this year. With its focus on container and small-space gardening to clever projects and innovative recipes, this is an essential for the keenly interested urban gardener.