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Books: Joy of Gardening

Facts

Author: Dick Raymond
ISBN: 0-88266-319-4
Paperback: 365 pages (fully illustrated in color)
Publisher: Storey Publishing

The Back Cover

Garden Way’s Joy of Gardening can show anyone, anywhere, how to turn any patch of ground into a lush, bountiful vegetable garden.

With Dick Raymond’s help, you will:

• Double your harvest with wide rows. Less weeding, too.
• Solve soil problems forever. His secrets will work anywhere.
• Get your earliest and healthiest tomatoes. Use his trench-planting technique.
• Harvest the sweetest melons. Use tin cans for sweeter melons that ripen faster.

The companion to the television series of the same name, Garden Way’s JOY OF GARDENING contains the best of Dick Raymond’s vegetable gardening wisdom – his proven methods for raised beds, wide rows, and other techniques that promise a bigger harvest with less work. Full color photographs and illustrations, and at-a-glance charts make Dick’s proven methods accessible to any gardener, beginner or seasoned expert.

Introduction

For a long time I’ve been perfecting some unbelievably easy ways to plant vegetables, to harvest, to get rid of weeds and to improve soil.

Wide row growing methods are at the heart of this new system. I grow over 30 different crops in wide rows. Wide row growing means planting seeds and many transplants in wide bands, instead of one behind the other in conventional single rows. A wide row puts much more of your garden to work producing food.

I realize there are probably as many ways to garden as there are to bake a cake, and my way is one of them. So I won’t ask you to change all your gardening habits. But if you give some of my methods a try, even in just a tiny section of your garden, I promise you’ll have a better garden.

Your soil and climate conditions might be different from mine, but my gardening methods will work for you, too. All you have to do is adjust planting dates to fit your area and choose your own favorite vegetable varieties.

I grew up on a farm during the Depression years, so I guess I started out with an advantage in developing my gardening system. We were always trying to outsmart Mother Nature to harvest as much food as possible from each growing season.

When my wife, Jan, and I started raising a family of our own, I grew a one-acre market garden for extra cash and to keep our own food costs down. It was strictly a spare-time operation. I had my hands full with a job, three children, and a home to keep up. By switching from the traditional single rows to wide rows I saved a lot of time, weeded less, and used less water; plus, I doubled the yields of many crops without making the garden an inch bigger.

We don’t run the roadside stand anymore, but gardening is still a challenge. I try to have the earliest and latest harvest in the neighborhood, and as much as possible in between. To me, that’s what home gardening is all about – enjoying the longest possible harvest of fresh produce each year. The day I sow my first seeds in the spring I harvest some scallions and parsnips which have wintered over. And in late November, when our ground is freezing, I pick the last broccoli and Brussels sprouts from my fall garden.

To me, there are always newer, easier and better ways to grow a good garden, and I’ve spent a lifetime trying to find them. That’s why I’ve written this book. I have a lot to share with you about my wide row growing, keeping the garden covered with plants, harvesting and cutting way down on weeding, and there are plenty of new tips for growing the most popular vegetables, as well as new information about raised planting beds, watering, and dealing safely with pests and diseases.

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