GROW GREAT VEGETABLES ILLINOIS by Bevin Cohen is one in a series of about 15 state-related books. Each author is local and a well-respected expert on plants and vegetables, etc. in the area. The books are well organized and easy to use. The first section, Get Started, offers a general introduction to gardening and garden planning with helpful information on topics like watering with rain. The next section, Get Planting, includes a chapter for each month with detailed checklists for these steps: plan; prepare and maintain; sow and plant; and harvest now. The planting and harvesting charts are a wonderful visual aid with growing zone-specific date ranges. The third section, Edibles A to Z, offers a page or two of text about growing and harvesting each of 50 vegetables and includes names and descriptions of particular varieties. There also is an excellent Resources section with addresses and websites for seeds and plants, tools and supplies, and soil testing; plus, further reading suggestions, including cookbooks (!) is included. A detailed practical reference, GROW GREAT VEGETABLES ILLINOIS would also make a thoughtful gift.

This is a great resource. I really like the monthly to do list and the planting and harvesting chart. You can easily plan your garden based on your zone. As a beginner gardener, I found the information here helpful in planning a successful garden.

I am a remedial gardener at best. I try to plant but can always use more advice in planting. This guide is a great resource for me. I like how the guide shows which vegetables should be planted in which zones.

The monthly lists of when to plant will be helpful when I plant my veggies this spring.

Thanks to NetGalley and Timber Press for this book.

Solid information and a helpful guide for starting a vegetable garden. I feel like I can reference this during planning and I also read through the Indiana guide as I have family there and we always look for ways to bond. Gardening has always been fun for that especially when we have a meal made with home grown food.

Great info that I will use next spring. Nice illustrations as well. Thanks #NetGalley for digital book to review.

Grow Great Vegetables Illinois is a regionally tailored home gardening guide for producing vegetables for taste and nutrition and to increase self-reliance and food security. This is one of a series of regionally specific guides released by Timber press. Edited by Bevin Cohen, it's due out in May 2023, runs 212 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats. It's based on an earlier release Vegetable Gardening in the Midwest by Michael VanderBrug, reformatted and edited for Illinois gardeners. All of the guides in this series follow the same format.

This guide is arranged by seasons with a chapter for each month. The introductory chapter (~13% of the page content) covers garden planning, climates and subzones in Illinois, as well as very general gardening advice.

The monthly sections include tasks for each month, potential problems and troubleshooting, planning and placement of the garden plot, harvesting and more.

The third section of the book is a regional guide to choosing vegetables and specific varieties which will thrive in the area.

There's a resource list (slanted to readers in the Midwest), a bibliography and further reading list, USDA based hardiness zonal map, and an index. The photography is crisp, clear, and abundant. This is a well crafted book which will provide gardeners with hours of blissful dreaming as well as serving as a valuable troubleshooting guide.

Four stars. Very well done.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

Thank you Net Galley for an ARC of Grow Great Vegetables Illinois by Bevin Cohen. What a great book with a wealth of information! Ice never grown a garden but plan to next year. This book has schedules and everything!

I received a free copy of, Grow Great Vegetables Illinois, by Bevin Cohen. from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I have never had a garden before, but always wanted to start one. This book is very informative, on starting a garden in Illinois. This book tells you about the frost dates in Illinois, the soil, what vegetables to grow, and when to grow them. Very helpful guide, to gardening in Illinois.

I am cutting and pasting my review since this book series cuts and pastes their content from state to state. This series is cut and pasted for all the midwest states, with just a handful of pages changed. I have read several of them cover to cover and almost all of it is absolutely identical -- the intro about what it's like to live in the state (literally, it's a whole page about how great the state is and how it’s second only to California for how great it is to garden there and what the unique strengths and challenges are and they just change the state name and leave all the same descriptions in), photos, monthly guide, etc.

They do have a little bit of specific information about each state in a couple of places though, which is helpful. It’s a clever way to inexpensively produce a whole series of books.

I am in MN and can't speak to how accurate it is for other states but I suspect it's fairly accurate for this state. It is not entirely accurate for MN. For instance, it says to harvest asparagus in March. We're buried in snow in March. We harvest our asparagus in May, every single year. Maybe in your state you harvest your asparagus in March though and maybe it will be more accurate for your state.

This series really should have been one book, Grow Great Vegetables in the Midwest, and then added the few pages showing the maps with zones and the list of a handful of cities average frost dates that are shoehorned in. I have no idea what state the author really lives in, since it's kept deliberately very vague. All that said, it has good basic growing information for novice gardeners.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.