Down to Earth

April 5, 2019 11:18 AM - by Monty Don

Unrivalled gardening wisdom from Monty Don, including essential tips, knowledge and musings from his 50 years of gardening experience. Written as he talks, this is Monty Don right beside you in the garden, challenging norms and sharing advice. Month-by-month, Monty reveals the jobs he does in his own garden, that he hopes are relevant to you. Discover Monty's thoughts and musings on nature, seasons, colour, design, pests, flowering shrubs, containers, and much more. Monty's intimate and lyrical writing is accompanied by photos of his own garden. The perfect gift for the gardener in your life.

"I have written many gardening books but this is the distillation of 50 years of gardening experience. It has all the tips and essential pieces of knowledge that enable you to make your garden grow well, and it also shares my view that gardening is the secret to living well too."-Monty Don

posted by Homo neanderthalensis (5 comments total)

First off h/t to filthy light thief, because if it were not for their post on Monty Don on the front page I would never have stumbled onto this book. This book is perhaps straining the credulity of the non fiction club, but in recent fpp it seems that metafilter is just chock-a-block with gardeners and I thought a few of them might find this book interesting. It's a sort of soft guide that takes you through gardening tasks month by month, with solid explanations of why this and why that, coupled with Monty's thoughts on the seasons and tasks. It's a very gentle and warm book that might help you figure out what to do when in your garden, but might also just cheer you up and make you think of soft earth and warm plants. Now of course the major caveat is that Monty gardens in the UK- so some of his monthly activities might not apply in warmer climes. It applies maybe 80% to me out west, and of course there are quite a few UK mefites, so If you garden in an area that's chillier and wetter then standard and you want to read a very gentle and sweet guide to gardening that reads like a novel, this is the book for you. It definitely gave me ideas, which is a dangerous thing.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:25 AM on April 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

so If you garden in an area that's chillier and wetter

Monty Don is great but yeah I had snow last week and my ground will be way too cold to work until at least May. But one can dream...
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:58 AM on April 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

After watching everything Monty Don I could get my hands on, I finally had to look up the gardening zones in the UK to figure out 1) how they were growing all of these tropicals and 2) why they were doing garden tasks in February that I can't reliably do until late April.

That's how I was reminded that England is on an island and they are zone 8.
posted by annathea at 12:20 PM on April 5, 2019 [2 favorites]

Thanks, mostly hit up google for advice but an actual book may help, grew one single bean last year...
posted by sammyo at 9:57 PM on April 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

grew one single bean last year...

Beans are great, very productive, but they have fairly firm soil temp requirements. Not the air mind you- the soil- around 65 degrees plus. The weather can be colder, but if the sun isn’t warming the soil enough- beans won’t grow, or they won’t grow right. Where you are this means you absolutely have to wait til the snow melts (natch) but also use a cheap-o probe thermometer to tell when the soil is warm enough. But as long as it’s 65, the beans will germinate and grow well. But for you that may mean waiting til May or later to put seeds in.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 10:39 PM on April 5, 2019