American Horticultural Society Essential Guide to Organic Vegetable Gardening

The Master Gardener’s Bookshelf

American Horticultural Society Essential Guide to Organic Vegetable Gardening:  Techniques and Know-How for Planning, Planting, and Tending a Home Vegetable Garden Organically by American Horticultural Society

Review by Susan Wilhelm, Extension Master Gardener

If you’re thinking about trying organic vegetable gardening for the first time, or if you want a general organic vegetable gardening reference, consider the American Horticultural Society Essential Guide to Organic Vegetable Gardening: Techniques and Know-How for Planning, Planting, and Tending a Home Vegetable Garden Organically. Published in January 2025, it provides a comprehensive overview of organic vegetable gardening from planning and garden layout to harvesting and storing the crops.

The guide advises those new to organic vegetable gardening to focus first on determining what the garden is to look like and learning about local climate and growing conditions. To help, inspirational photos illustrate various garden styles, including formal or informal plantings in raised beds, in the ground, or in containers. Resources are provided to help gardeners determine regional climate and growing seasons, along with tips for identifying microclimates and dealing with less-than-ideal planting areas.

Subsequent chapters explain the growing process, including selecting plants, soil preparation, planting, and garden care. The authors have done an excellent job organizing the content, so each chapter builds on the preceding one. Short introductions list the topics to be covered and identify major takeaways. Helpful tables highlight key considerations, and great photos provide useful visual aids. For instance, the watering section includes a table listing the pros and cons of five watering techniques. The text accompanying a related photograph of a wilted plant reminds gardeners to check the soil prior to watering, as plants can wilt from both overwatering and underwatering (as well as from high midday temperatures even when the soil is moist). Internal cross references make it easy to locate related information elsewhere in the book, and careful attention to the “why” in addition to the “how-to” builds gardener confidence in applying strategies to their own garden.

Each chapter concludes with suggestions for useful tools for carrying out the featured activities, such as rakes for soil and site preparation, or scissors or snips for harvesting. Other resources include season-by-season “to-do” lists and plant profiles of commonly grown edible plants and how best to grow them. Handy tips teach skills such as how to determine soil texture or whether you have applied enough water when watering.

The Guide is written for a national audience, so consider it a starting point and look for local resources to supplement it as needed, such as Planting Dates for Arlington and Alexandria and Between the Rows, a month-by-month vegetable gardening guide. Readers considering heavy metals soil testing may want to contact their local extension agent as not all extension services handle this in the same way.

The American Horticultural Society Essential Guide to Organic Vegetable Gardening: Techniques and Know-How for Planning, Planting, and Tending a Home Vegetable Garden Organically (Cool Springs Press, 2025) is available at the Arlington Public Library and national booksellers.