Joy Larkcom, proclaimed by the Observer 'the queen of vegetable growing', transformed the experience of growing vegetables in Britain - and indeed can be said to have played a large part in changing the whole of the British attitude to vegetables. Among many innovations she introduced saladini and bags of mixed salad leaves, and popularized the practice of cut-and-come-again. All this, according to Joy, stemmed from the Grand Vegetable Tour she undertook with her husband, Don, and their two young children in the 1970s, travelling around Europe by caravan. While Don did the cooking and taught the children, Joy bicycled off to find out everything she could about how people were growing vegetables and to collect seeds of rare varieties. The tour led to books (famously Grow Your Own Vegetables) and a lifetime of garden writing. The articles published here, for the first time in book form, are selected from that life's work. They describe not just her adventures on the Grand Vegetable Tour - from a rollicking evening's dancing after husking maize with French farmers to visiting ancient Portuguese gardens excavated in sand dunes - but many other experiences, including life at the small experimental market garden she set up in East Anglia on her return; her travels in China and Japan in quest of oriental vegetables; and the creation of a new 'retirement' vegetable garden at a farmhouse on the west coast of Ireland. View an interview with Joy Larkcom on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft5lRQex8xM
About the Author :
JOY LARKCOM is Britain's most respected vegetable garden maker and gardening writer. She has contributed to many magazines and newspapers, radio and TV programmes and has lectured all over the world. Her accolades include the Garden Writer of the Year award (three times); Lifetime Achievement Award from the Garden Writers' Guild in 2003, and the Veitch Memorial Medal for horticulture, the RHS's highest honour, in 1993. Her other titles for Frances Lincoln are Oriental Vegetables (9780711236128), Grow Your Own Vegetables (9780711219632) and The Organic Salad Garden (9780711222045).
Review :
'At first glance a biography of a vegetable grower hardly seems likely to be any more exciting than a bag of potatoes, yet Joy Larkcom manages to animate and energise her story with such good writing that every chapter is a tasty morsel ... '
'every gardener should own a copy'
'Gripping, funny, fascinating, mouthwatering, adventurous, serious and an important for future generations. I couldn't leave it down.'
'Thanks to this doyenne of the cabbage and cut-and-come-again leaves, as this memoir attests, she has travelled around the globe researching veg and bringing her findings - from winter purslane to mustard greens - to us British gardeners.'
'Gripping, funny, fascinating, mouthwatering, adventurous, serious and an important for future generations. I couldn't leave it down.'
'A glorious celebration of worldwide dirt-under-the-fingernails gardening.'
'Joy Larkcom is the Elizabeth David of veg growing... having read her new book, 'Just Vegetating', I now understand that she is at the root of everything I treasure about growing veg. It's almost like discovering your real parent after years of not quite knowing where you come from. Without her I would not have heard of half of what I grow. The way I grow it would be different too.
[Just Vegetating] should be compulsory reading for any aspiring allotment holder or vegetable gardener.'
'It's that rare thing; a true classic. Get your hands on it just as soon as you can.'
'Joy Larkcom is one of my grow your own heroes so I'll definitely be dipping into her new book, Just Vegetating.'
'You don't have to be an obsessive foodie, or organic, or even green, to want to rush out to buy [Joy's] new book...It's a great read... easy to dip into and out of, informative, wry, and a family biography along the long way...A delightful informative read.'
'This superb adventure story deserves a place on every gardener's and social historian's bookshelf.'
'Contains a lot of practical information and tips, and yet, at the same time, also manages to be highly entertaining. It's the sort of book that friends will borrow and never bring back, so you might like to order more than one copy'
'A kind of autobiography that, with a light, self-deprecating commentary, stitches together some of the pieces she's written over the past 40 years. All generations like to think they are pioneers. But Larkcom really was.'
'You could read this memoir for nostalgia, for horticultural information and history, or just for enjoyment . . . [Joy's] vivacity and enthusiasm come through it all.'
'A fine collection of her best published work. Together they offer a fascinating insight into the life and gardening times of one of Britain's most unassuming gardening experts and are a must-read for any gardening enthusiast'
'Joy's latest and most heartwarming book'
'A brilliant blend of memoir-cum-journalism'
'offers a fascinating insight into the world of a person obsessed with vegetables ... full of inspiration, entertaining and informative, it includes lots of great gardening ideas.'
'Though the author describes this modestly as a memoir it is much more: part reminiscence, part travelogue and part autobiography. Together with a compilation from her life's work of writing on vegetable growing this book puts both the subject and the author in high profile, where they justly belong.'
'an account of a remarkable life, told through her collected articles published in the last 40 years. It is a repository of knowledge, gained over a lifetime, and generously shared.'
'every gardener should own a copy'
'At first glance a biography of a vegetable grower hardly seems likely to be any more exciting than a bag of potatoes, yet Joy Larkcom manages to animate and energise her story with such good writing that every chapter is a tasty morsel ... '
