Grow Organic: A Simple Guide to Nova Scotia Vegetable Gardening

“A garden is a wonderful, humbling teacher,” writes Elizabeth Peirce in her new book, Grow Organic. Subtitled A Simple Guide to Nova Scotia Vegetable Gardening, this is just the book for those who want to grow a few vegetables in their yards but aren’t exactly sure where to start.

Peirce describes herself as “an enthusiastic amateur gardener,” who draws on thirty years of growing vegetables in teaching readers about developing their own kitchen garden. She starts quite literally from the ground up, discussing site location, soil types and management, and encourages new gardeners to ask themselves a few probing questions.

Vegetable gardening isn’t for everyone, and it does require time to plant, tend, harvest and preserve the harvest from a garden. Time, site, tastes and space are all considerations that have to be thought through before the neophyte puts spade to soil or orders enough needs to feed all of the neighbourhood.

I love gardening books where the author talks frankly and encouragingly to the readers, like she might over a kitchen table cup of tea. Peirce is excellent in this regard. Instructions are easy to follow and entertaining, and she embraces an organic approach to all aspects of gardening. Although the book is aimed at those new to vegetable gardening, anyone with an interest in homegrown produce and gardening will enjoy and benefit from Grow Organic.

Along with the dedicated sections on how to do the gardening, Peirce provides delightful sidebars of gardening trivia. These include anecdotes about types of vegetables, recipes—my personal favourite is Desperation Soup, for when there’s a plethora of zucchinis—quick practical tips, and quotations from other books.

An unusual and welcome section of Peirce’s book is the chapter on Farmer Mentors. These are profiles of several Nova Scotian gardeners/farmers, included to help encourage budding vegetable gardeners who might be hesitant about their green thumb skills. The profiles include a professional urban gardener who slips vegetables in among the city plots he tends, a community gardening experience at Dalhousie University, and a teenager who started his own organic, heritage seed business in the Annapolis Valley. —Jodi DeLong