Sugar Snaps and Strawberries

Lack of space has kept a lot of people from growing their own fruits and vegetables, but Andrea Bellamy is a city gardener who can show you how to create abundance in the most confined spaces. A side alley, a front stoop, an entryway planting - all are commandeered for edible plants. And once you find the space, keep reading for tips on how to grow just about any imaginable edible plant.

The full title is "Sugar Snaps and Strawberries: Simple Solutions for Creating Your Own Small-Space Edible Garden", written by Andrea Bellamy and photographed by Jackie Connelly.

Andrea Bellamy is part of a growing demographic; people, often young professionals who are just starting their families, who choose to live in a city, but still want to grow their own food. It may seem incompatible, but Bellamy has been making it work for several years now. Maybe you've been following her edible adventures on her popular blog, Heavy Petal.

Bellamy uses her own experience as an urban gardener to guide the would-be city gardener into a city harvest. The book starts off by asking you to think about what you really want from a garden, then helps you discover the space for it, choose the plants and design the layout, get it all planted and cared for - all the way through to harvesting and saving seed for next year.

That's a lot of information to cover, especially for a book geared toward the novice gardener, but there's a good deal of information packed into this small paperback, from soil and tools to pruning fruit trees and taking cuttings. It's well written and easy to follow as both a how to and a reference.

There are some fun projects and the beautiful photos help illustrate the text. Even if space isn't an issue, "Sugar Snaps and Strawberries" is an excellent edible gardening guide book.

More Books About Vegetable Gardening

• Book Review: The $64 Tomato - How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden, by William Alexander

• Book Review: Book Review: 100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden

• Book Review: Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer

• Book Review: Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens, by: Barbara Pleasant

• Book Review: Tomatoland - How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.