I found this book quite informative and loved the full color pictures. This would be a great book for a beginning gardener.

High Yield, Small Space Organic Gardening is a new well illustrated gardening guides by Christy Wilhelmi covering a range of gardening topics. Released 8th April 2025 by Fox Chapel, it's 256 pages and is available in paperback format.

This is a well written garden tutorial and inspiration book aimed specifically at readers who want to employ organic methods to garden more effectively and productively within a limited space. The author does a really good job of highlighting specific potential problem areas and providing creative solutions. The information is written in clear and concise blocks with photo illustrations.

The chapters are arranged thematically around specific design elements: creating pollinator friendly spaces, planning, soil building, planting, irrigation, trellises and hardscaping, problemshooting, etc. There are some resource lists and bibliography and index which will give some further planning ideas for readers to explore. The photography is clear and in color throughout.

Four stars. This would be a good choice for public and school libraries, gardening groups, community/allotment gardens, suburban gardeners, homeowners, etc.

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

Your garden has its own ecosysyem that can provide shelter, windbreaks and even pest - control assistance.

You can even make the garden welcoming for insects such as bees that help to pollinate your garden by planting flowers such as hyacinths and setting up a swarming box in your backyard.
You need to think about sun exposure when planting your crops by putting the taller plants such as to,atoes in the back and planting medium plants such as peppers in the middle and short crops like spinach in the front.

If you set up raised beds for your plants, you will use less water and be able to control the weeds better and not have to bend down as far to reach plants or control the weeds.

The big 3 - Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium will affect your plants' vigor, green leafy growth and develop strong roots and flowers.

You will also need to get your soil tested to find out what is in your soil and how it will affect your plants - you do not want zinc in your soil, oil residue such as lead, arsenic or aluminum. The results will tell you how you can improve your soil by adding nutrients or even new soil!

You will be shown how you can make your own compost, fertilizer and even using glacial rock dust!

In the middle and back section of the book there is an encyclopedia of crops and specifics about when to grow them and how that you will find to be extremely helpful !

You will be amazed at the amount of helpful information that is contained in this book - if you have it in ebook form you can even carry it out to your garden!

This is a good introduction for folks new to gardening. It’s a rerelease of a book the author wrote in 2013 with a new title, publisher and lots of good stock photos. It’s not really a lot of new information for experienced gardeners but it has a lot of great information and detailed instructions on growing a lot of herbs and vegetables.

I read a temporary digital loan of this book for review

As someone who wants to get into gardening for the first time, this book truly takes you step by step for starting your garden. I could easily see this becoming something that you read again and again to refresh your memory as you plan for your yearly garden. And let’s be honest with as expensive as grocery and fresh items are getting in the stores… more people are getting into gardening so it would make a great gift. This goes over layout, placement, common fruits and vegetables, how to grow them, common problems, harvesting, and even some general need to know information that I found very useful. I received this as an art, but I will absolutely be purchasing a copy so that I can highlight and tab some sections that I’m going to want to reference.

This book was so wonderfully done! Highly recommend if you are interested in how to garden well, and what the proper steps are. It was just done so well. I loved it!

I was really impressed with this guide - I loved how each chapter went into such detail - bed types, soils, fertilizer, planning, cool season crops, warm season crops, composting, how to plant, seeds, vegetable and herb profiles including information on growing, harvesting, and common problems. Companion planting, plotting and charting. This has a bit of everything for gardeners.

My one issue with this is there was a photo of quinoa and talking about grain growing - this was the sole time it was mentioned in the book - it wasn’t mentioned again and I don’t really understand how it ranked space in the book.

Beyond my issue with this, I got a lot of this gardening guide and it’s one I recommend.



Thank you to Creative Homeowner and NetGalley for the temporary PDF

My hubby and I are passionate organic gardeners but we don't have a ton of space. I've collected a good few books over the years but was excited to be able to get an ARC of this one.
Wow what does this book not cover, its truly the most comprehensive we have come accross!
Its covers in detail everything uou need to know to get the best yield from the size soace you have. Including creating raised beds, plants placements, specific plant's role's in pest control and organic fertilisers.
Throughout there is bright gorgeous photography which I found very inspiring.
There is lots of information on planting seasons such as cool and warm specific grows.
Sections on companion planting, square foot gardening and more, I'm seriously just touching the surface here 😂. I'm off my feet not well today so my hubby connected my ecopy to the TV so we could go through it together.
There is a whole section of Veg and Herb profiles with planting depth, spacing, soil temps, placement, how long to harvest, soil pH and a ton of information on the individual vegetables themselves.
The book is full of detailed charts, plans and diagrams from creating a raised bed to top ten crops for kids or patios. We also came away with new idea for pest control, which was a massive issue last year.
Something I found pretty unique was the entire section on storing and getting the most out of your harvested vegetables. It literally covers freezing, dehydrating, canning and more.

Then when I thought wow I need to preorder this book on amazon as its super unique I flipped the page and there were recipes lol!

We will definitely be purchasing the physical copy of this book on pre-order which comes out April 8th.

I've already posted it in several organic gardening groups im in on FB!