A Year in the Edible Garden: A Month-by-Month Guide to Growing and Harvesting Vegetables, Herbs, and Edible Flowers

Raven (A Year Full of Flowers) returns with a book about edible plants, and it is delicious. Known for her work growing flowers and her addictive gardening podcast Grow, Cook, Eat, Arrange, she helps readers of this book fill their plates with produce. She starts in January and details everything from sowing seeds to companion planting, pest control, taking cuttings, and storing what has been grown. While the book is divided into months, she suggests understanding growing vegetables as a two-season activity, October–April and May–September. She is focused on productivity year-round, however, highlighting cut-and-come-again salad and leafy greens, plus herbs. Raven also stresses plants that produce in abundance, such as rhubarb, potatoes, zucchini, beans, tomatoes, and peppers. She advocates growing the delicious and difficult to buy, rather than what can easily be added to a dinner plate from the grocery store. Plant lists, timing charts, and practical advice fill the book, as do luminous photos and delightful suggestions, such as using a teapot as a nesting site for wrens.