The knowledge and techniques you need for successful vegetable growing, based on Charles’ decades of experience

Grow vegetables easily throughout the year Use time creatively to maximise growth Learn cost-effective and productive-per-area methods Learn to plan, sow, multisow, transplant, space, water, harvest, and succeed with succession Improve growth while working alongside nature

Master gardener Charles Dowding explains the skills and understandings you need for successful growing. His approach sometimes diverges from the mainstream because he assays and develop new or lesser-known methods, for easier and better results.

Skills for Growing illustrates how you create planting plans and advises on succession and rotation, interplanting and multisowing, how to propagate plants and quick ways to set them in the ground.

It gives detailed information on spacing, harvesting methods and timings, watering, and using covers for both warmth and pest protection.

Dowding describes the skills needed for successful winter gardening, growing in containers and growing perennial vegetables and herbs.

The advice given in the book is based on having a clean and fertile area in which to grow vegetables. It may not be large, but that is fine: there are examples of how much food you can grow every year in just one bed, and in containers too.

The book comprises 18 chapters, grouped into 6 parts. Each chapter is illustrated with captioned, full-colour photographs from Dowding’s garden in Southwest UK.