How to Grow Winter Vegetables

I rate Charles Dowling highly, he's an experienced vegetable grower and a brilliant communicator. This is my third book of his and the one I have been waiting for. Every year my allotment skills improve and I build on past experience BUT in winter I have rarely managed more than a small crop of purple sprouting broccoli and a few leeks. Next winter will be different. The book is extremely well laid out with best sowing times very clearly explained. From this I have been able to fill my diary with reminders for sowing and planting. The fantastic photos show what to expect at all stages from seedling to plant to mid-winter. I highly recommend it.

Really practical with lots of great tips for times of sowings,suitable crops and growing methods to help garden over winter,but actually it's really useful for summertime too to help you plan ahead so you don't run out of plants later in the year.Wish I had got this book sooner!

Best varieties, sowing and planting times and loads of tips - advice gleaned from a lifetime of growing winter salads and greens. A wonderful resource. Invaluable if you want to keep your plot producing through the winter. Charles Dowding is an inspiration!

Overall, I've been impressed by this book. Not only does it address a topic, winter growing, that isn't dealt with elsewhere, but the author also includes an impressive amount of information in only 232 pages. I'm fairly new to vegetable gardening generally, so it could be that others have covered some aspects of this, but the only other books I've come across are the classic one by Hessayon (The Vegetable and Herb Expert), Harrison's "Vegetable Growing: Month by Month", Hills' classic but quirky "Month by Month Organic Gardening", and Dowding's other book "Organic Gardening"; none of these seem to deal with growing over Winter. That said, having followed Dowding's advice what I mainly found was that not much does grow over Winter, but I did learn quite a bit trying things I read in his book, and I remain intrigued by the notion. The key issue, as far as I can see, is overwintering, namely the planting of crops that can *survive* Winter and then have a head start. His advice for many vegetables was sound, and I'm now seeing quite a bit of growth. Of course, overwintering cabbages is nothing new and could be found in many other books, but many of the other crops don't appear to be dealt with elsewhere. The flaw? Well, it's poorly laid out and so it's difficult to find the info you're looking for. For instance, if I wanted to know about growing cabbage I can look in the index and will find "cabbage, growing", and then find references thereto on pages 23, 54, 102-103, 109, 115, 126-127 & 142. They're all legitimate, useful references, and I applaud the thoroughness of the referencing, but surely a further level of sub-referencing is called for?! Most of the reasons for the plethora of page numbers is due to starting planting in different months (very helpful, by the way!), so just have different index entries!: e.g., "growing, june", "growing, july" etc. It's not beyond the wit of man.... (A smaller gripe is the title of Chapter 15 (An Amazing Array of Vegetables). How on Earth is this informative? That said, overall, the positives heavily outweigh the negatives and a second edition with these issues addressed would be a classic in my view. The most impressive aspect is the amount of info he gets in there. It's also much more impressive than Dowding's "Organic Gardening", which I wasn't too keen on.

So much information, backed up with wonderful photographs .. absolutely invaluable book to inspire me on my path of growing my own vegetables.

Really well written. Most importantly, this is not one of those books where the same old "traditional"advice is trotted out. Charles has done extensive trials and kept comprehensive records and THAT is what makes his books so valuable. For instance, I spent 15 years following the accepted wisdom that ground needs digging and that compost and muck must be dug into the soil. That is rubbish. I tried the no dig, surface mulching method - and it works! Not just that, but with far better results! No more double digging for me. Far fewer weeds. Bigger and better crops. Thank you Charles! By the way, he has really good videos on YouTube as well and watching those inspired me to give it a go. Try it yourself. You won't be disappointed.

In keeping with the Authors previous two Gardening Books this is a must. Having been a gardener for 40 years I thought I knew most of the answers.....not to be .... I realised I still had much to learn...and this is the book to do it with. Sensible..practical..full of reasoned information. A great book..

The real value of this book it how it teaches you successional planting; as you pull out one thing, plant something else that you've grown in your polytunnel https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0711231702/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_1 in it's place. As of late June, I'm just watching my "winter larder" getting bigger and bigger. What an excellent book. As a blue chip "techy", I'd say that these two books, together, are "the killer app". Well, well worth the investment.