My Copy: 9781603429986 (image from bn.com)

Vertical Vegetables and Fruit is pretty self-explanatory. While some might see tomatoes, cucumbers, and ivy as mostly climbers, there are plenty of other vegetables and fruits that have the ability to climb, or at least be trained to grow up more than out, saving valuable space in a small garden.

The book has plenty of illustrations and useful information regarding training up dozens of plants. However, a description of different types of plants in those chapter sections (there’s one on peas, strawberries, etc) was not really necessary. What I was more interested in was how exactly to train types of fruits and veggies to save space, not the 20 varieties of peas with a paragraphs description of each.

Most gardening resources would already mention that or tell you how to get the info anyway. I felt that it kind of distracted from the point. I’d rather learn about the myriad of ways to train the plants, and which would be best or worst in certain circumstances.

Still, I’m definitely going to be hanging on to this book. The illustrations were easy to follow for the most part, and the book has plenty of humor and ideas for you. It may not be comprehensive, but Vertical Vegetables and Fruit is a good start of a book for the subject, especially if you know about very few fruits and vegetables out there and need some help or pointers regarding what to buy..