Blue Ribbon Vegetable Gardening: The Secrets to Growing the Biggest and Best Prizewinning Produce
By Jodi Torpey
ISBN: 978-1-61212-394-3
Published by Storey Publishing

Blue Ribbon Vegetable Gardening begins with an introduction to the history of showing and exhibiting vegetables in America, noting how this area of horticulture has developed and changed over the years.  In the following chapter, tips on how to fully understand the show schedule, as well as tips that will ensure you present your vegetables at their best are given.

Showing vegetables is very time consuming, both in the days leading up to the show, and on the day of the show itself.  It always takes longer than you expect to harvest your vegetables and prepare them for showing, as there are so many important details to attend to, from measuring or weighing your produce, ensuring you find matching pairs, or groups of very similar looking vegetables for particular classes, ensuring you have harvested your vegetables with sufficient stem length, etc etc.  Blue Ribbon Vegetable Gardening highlights these important details to the reader.  This book would be a great help to a gardener who was considering entering their vegetables and fruits into a show for the first time, or for novice gardeners who had a little experience of showing vegetables, and wanted to enter more classes or shows in the future.

The author of Blue Ribbon Vegetable Gardening, Jodi Torpey, is from Colorado.  Jodi gardens in Western America, as a consequence the American judging system that Jodi refers to in this book, is different to the National Vegetable Society judging system which is the prevalent system of judging vegetables in the UK.  Having said this, UK readers can learn much from this book, there is a great deal of useful information inside.

Blue Ribbon Vegetable Gardening features tips on growing show quality vegetables, including tips on pest control, planting, hardening off, and watering.  There’s photographs, advice, and tips from seasoned and expert vegetable exhibitors, which is a lovely feature.

The chapter on beans gives the reader information on the different varieties of bean available and their history.  There’s advice on growing beans, and a useful picture of some irregular beans, these beans would be great for the kitchen, but due to their irregularities, the beans would not win prizes in any show.  This photograph and the following explanations would be very useful for any new gardeners selecting which of their beans to enter in their local show.

Blue Ribbon Vegetable Gardening includes chapters on beans, beets, cabbage, cucumbers, aubergines, onions, peppers, pumpkins, squash, and tomatoes.  Each chapter is interesting and informative, with information on growing each vegetable, tips on showing it, and information about any problems the gardener might encounter.  UK gardeners won’t experience all of the same pests or diseases as American gardeners, but nonetheless, all of these vegetables can be grown in both countries.  I am sure that UK gardeners will find this book interesting and informative.

Other links and articles that may interest you……………

To find out more about Jodi Torpey’s book, Blue Ribbon Vegetable Gardening, please click here.

To visit the National Vegetable Society’s website, please click here.

To read my book review of The Chinese Kitchen Garden by Wendy Kiang-Spray, please click here.

To read my review of The Xerces Society’s book, Gardening for Butterflies, please click here.

To read about growing gourmet vegetables, please click here.

To read about some of the ways you can save money gardening, please click here.

To read about the National Vegetable Society’s visit to Eric Wall Tomato Growers, please click here.

To read about beautiful, edible plants, please click here.