This month's Feature

Read this special article before consulting a gardening book or website

Just imagine that day in late summer when you are happily harvesting your crop.  The juicy tomatoes, crisp carrots and crunchy celery.  Every time you turn over the soil there are perfect potatoes, you fill bags and bags of them.  Let alone the stunning flowers you have been cutting from late spring onwards....

Sounds great doesn't it ? When you open any book, catalogue or website you will see perfect pictures.  The strawberries are just seconds away from being put in a bowl, even the salad has no blemishes, bugs or imperfect leaves. When you read the books the concept of coping with a hosepipe ban, rabbits tucking into your crops or the mystery of the unpredicatable potatoes yields seem years away.

Having had an allotment for many, many years - in 2 completely different parts of the country - I have spent many evenings consulting my gardening books.  Surfing the internet for hours looking for hints and tips.  I always find it mystifying that the 'champion' allotment winners always have PERFECT RESULTS.  Yes, it could be the hours they spent but probably more importantly they have build up a fountain of knowledge over all the many years.

As I wanted this year to be my best year ever I decided to make a detailed comparison of all the major gardening books and reference guides. What struck me was how incomplete (and similar) they are.  Yes, they would all have the basics, which plants to put in in March, April, May...... (pretty useless if your march is so wet you can't walk on the soil, april is bone dry and your allotment is like concrete, etc.)

Because I wanted this to be as scientific as possible I decided to contact as many gardeners and allotment holders as I could. They all made the same comment - books are great for background info but "I get more useful information from Bill, Bob, etc.)

Having said that some of the champions growers did let slip at times that they did have a few favourite books even they would consult. Books which they would read at night and not mention to often, as they contained snippets of information which will help make a good allotment into a GREAT allotment or vegetable garden. There were 2 books which kept being mentioned as containing useful information. Not the same rehashed content as everywhere else, but actually some very practical hints and tips.

These were the kind of books which:

• Will make the difference between 'good' vegetables and prize winning vegetables

• The type of information you will want to consult time and time again

• Particularly when it comes to such mundane items like compost will make you wonder why you had never heard that information before.

The books I managed to unearth are mentioned below - but I am not sure how much longer they will be available online before the publishers decide that a hardback copy in the shops (at a far higher price) will be much more profitable.

This is the end of my search for the ultimate gardening advice.  I am glad I managed to find 2 sources of information which will make this summer my best ever, can't wait to see the results this season.  Good luck with your allotment, vegetable garden and growing season. I hope yours will also be the best one ever !