Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener's Handbook: Perfectly Timed Gardening for Your Most Bountiful Harvest Ever

"Timing is everything," they say, and vegetable gardening is no exception. Knowing exactly when to start seeds indoors, what day to transplant them into the ground, when to pinch off the blossoms, and when to pick for peak flavor is the secret to enjoying bountiful harvests all through the gardening season.

In Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener's Handbook, authors Ron and Jennifer Kujawski take the guesswork out of gardening with weekly to-do lists that break gardening down into easily manageable tasks. Suitable for all gardening zones, the book offers easy instructions for setting up a personalized schedule based on your last frost date.

The Kujawski's are an inspiring father- daughter team who share their own triumphs, mistakes, and misadventures over many years spent together in the vegetable patch. Readers will enjoy the friendly direction and advice these veterans offer. Easy-to-read boxes, bulleted lists, charts, and detailed how-to illustrations make each week's activities clear and doable. Spots for record-keeping encourage readers to track their own successes and fine-tune their weekly schedules from year to year.

Inch by inch, row by row, week by week, gardeners will move confidently through the gardening season. Whether it's planting the strawberries, pinching off the pumpkin blossoms, checking for tomato hornworm, or harvesting the carrots, they will know exactly when and how to do it for the most bountiful harvests and the most enjoyable vegetable-growing experiences ever.

"Using the first and last frost as guideposts, father and daughter Kujawski guide would-be gardeners through the growing season and beyond, with plenty of tips and tricks to ensure a great harvest. Beginning with basics like site selection and soil preparation, the Kujawskis walk readers through the basics of seeding and planting, transplanting sensitive plants along with canny tips like using cover crops like clover or grasses as well as vinegar and clove oil to keep weeds at a minimum. Though the authors do offer suggestions on making the most of the harvest by freezing and canning, the book will be most useful during the growing season itself. Once readers have set the wheels for a small garden in motion, the book's weekly worksheets, with timely advice on which plants can be planted or harvested as well as maintenance tips for specific crops, are likely to be the most useful. Gardeners will appreciate the book's soft cover, though its pages are likely to get dirty from frequent consultations in the back yard, which is probably the intent. (Dec.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright PWyxz LLC)

The authors take the guesswork out of gardening with weekly lists of easily manageable tasks. Suitable for all zones, the book offers easy instructions for setting up a personalized schedule based on a last-frost date.

Ron Kujawski's indoctrination into vegetable growing began at an early age, when he worked on a family onion farm in upstate New York. That experience provided the motivation to pursue a career that involved teaching and research in plant sciences and horticulture. Though now retired, he continues to write, lecture, and consult in the horticultural field while maintaining a passion for gardening, which he shares with his daughter, Jennifer, a professional horticulturalist.

Jennifer Kujawski grew up helping in the family garden. She has many memories of the experience, both fond (eating peas straight from the pods) and not-so-fond (squashing potato beetles between rocks). Jennifer earned degrees in botany and horticulture and worked as the assistant manager of USDA's National Plant Materials Center in Beltsville, Maryland. She has written articles for numerous publications, including American Nurseryman and Native Plants Journal and was one of the authors of the Community Forest Buffer Guide (Chesapeake Bay Foundation, 2001). Jennifer currently works as a freelance writer and editor for such organizations as University of Massachusetts Extension, USDA's Forest Service, and Massachusetts Nursery and Landscape Association. She is passing along the family gardening tradition to her young son in the 2,000 square foot vegetable garden she tends with her father.