Customer Reviews

A book for gardeners who like to push the boundaries Review by Emma Cooper

Review

Asian Vegetables’ is a book about growing fruit, vegetables and spices from the Indian Subcontinent. There’s some general information at the beginning about the author and how she got involved in growing Asian vegetables, plus some handy hints about growing unusual things outside of their normal climate.

The book is then divided into 4 sections – leaves, beans, roots, spices and ornamentals. Each plant has two or three pages devoted to it, with details about culinary uses, nutritional value, other uses and cultivation in the UK. There are photographs of each plant – usually in growth and the harvested vegetable and sometimes flowers or seeds/ seedlings.

At the end of the book there’s a couple of interesting appendices – one with alternative names for the plants and one about different banana varieties. There’s also an index of suppliers.

Overall, it’s a nice book – easy to read, pleasantly laid out and nicely illustrated. The text is chatty rather than dry, informative and clearly the result of long experimentation and experience. There’s occasional anecdotes about plants surviving in the UK despite unlikely circumstances.

It’s a book for gardeners who like to push the boundaries and experiment with growing unusual edibles. Sometimes you strike lucky and find something that you love and that grows well in your garden. Sometimes you get an attractive houseplant that’s too delicate to live outside. We grow these plants because we can, and whatever happens, it’s always interesting. (Posted on 21/07/2010)

the practical information is detailed and has the stamp of authority that only comes from first hand experience Review by Joy Larkcom, review in Permaculture magazine

Review

Sally Cunningham has, at different stages of her career, tried to grow a good cross section of asian vegetables herself, so the practical information is detailed and has the stamp of authority that only comes from first hand experience. It has to be said that only a handful of the Indian vegetables are really worth growing here, in terms of producing a useful yield, and these are ones adventurous gardeners are already familiar with: aubergine, amaranth, mooli, coriander, fenugreek for example.

I personally found the herbs and spices section the most interesting. I hadn’t appreciated that growing your own turmeric (it’s the tubers that become turmeric powder) as a greenhouse plant is a practical proposition, even though the suggested starting point ‘going to your local Asian greengrocer and finding a shrivelled tuber from the bottom of the box’ might be a tall order here in West Cork. But the book has solved a personal mystery. For years a ridged, desiccated pod of unknown identity has been surfing my desk, re-emerging in tidying phases. Now, thanks to Sally, I think I’ve nailed it: it’s a pigeon pea. And just a thought, who is going to do the same for South American and Caribbean vegetables? (Posted on 15/07/2010)