Grow for Flavor: Tips and Tricks to Supercharge the Flavor of Homegrown Harvests - Hardcover

(review of UK edition) James Wong maintains that for too long, kitchen gardeners have been following rules laid down by the Victorians that were designed mainly to boost yields. Wong now wants to turn attention away from size and towards flavour. After all, he says persuasively, that is why we grow our own fruit and veg, isn't it? To get better tasting food than we can buy in the shops. He pitches straight in with tomatoes, an excellent choice of crop for reappraisal, as tomatoes, although a popular choice for growers, can be fussy and finicky to raise. Wong's approach is to distrust a lot of received wisdom and to start again from his own ethnobotanical viewpoint. A botany graduate who trained at Kew, he is at pains to stress the botany and chemistry principles that inform his ideas and the scientific trials that back up his findings. About the tomatoes, he suggests doing away with the watering plans, the trimming and snipping and the pinching out that we spend so much time doing each summer. Instead he prescribes salt water and soluble aspirin, working to increase the flavour of each fruit, even if that means reducing the overall number of fruit. Better one delicious tomato than three disappointing ones, he reckons, and it's hard to argue with that. Wong goes on to similarly deconstruct our growing habits for salads, blueberries, beetroot, peas, carrots, corn, before moving on to less conventional crops such as edible flowers, grapes and sweet potatoes... As well as radical growing advice, the book also contains some recipes, again leaning towards the unusual and impressive... Wong writes informally and with verve, rattling off statistics and findings from trials at a brisk pace. The scientifically minded reader will appreciate the detail and the backing; if you're more of a layman like me, you can simply be carried along by his enthusiasm. The book isn't all about using exotically new techniques to grow vegetables: there is some solid and fairly conventional advice about pruning, for example, and many of his recommendations are based around choosing specific varieties for the flavour you desire.--Zia Mays"Secret Garden Club" (03/09/2015)

This colourful and absorbing book is loaded on every page with unusual methods most of us will not have heard before, because many challenge traditional practices, particularly those related to watering, fertilizing and racing for high yields, that tend to water down flavours and nutrients.--Helen Chesnut"Times Colonist" (05/14/2016)

In his new book, Grow for Flavor, James Wong provides simple tweaks and changes we can make to our food gardens to supercharge the taste and aroma of our crops... This book maintains that all of the recommended ideas are based on scientific facts as opposed to gardening's love of wives' tales... The book is filled with gorgeous, vibrant photos, ideas for supercharging your fruits and veggies, recommendations for varieties to try, recipes and preservation tips, and more.-- (02/24/2016)

If you need a gift for a gardener, I think you need look no further. I really don't know how any gardener could resist this book.-- (05/06/2016)

Grow For Flavor immediately grabbed my attention by the unique way that it promised to "turn the tables on conventional gardening advice" by dispelling common garden myths such as "home-grown always tastes better" and "heirloom vegetables always taste better than hybrids." The publisher promises that "this book contains tips, how-to's and recipes on how to increase the amount of flavor in home-grown food." For example, the author describes how you can make salad greens either sweet or fiery by choosing where and how you grow them, or how to use acidic soil to give strawberries better flavor. With recipes such as "Purple Sun" Carrot Cheesecake and Spiced Pumpkin, Tarragon and Marshmallow Soup, Grow for Flavor is the perfect book for a foodie-gardener." I must admit to being intrigued at its premise and couldn't wait to discover more for myself. Written by self-described obsessive botanist, James Wong, has based the book on over 2,000 scientific studies as well as his own taste tests has made the goal of this book to help home gardeners grow crops with maximum flavor and minimum labor... It turns out that a plant's genes are the biggest factor in how they taste, but growing plants in full sun and taking care to not overwater can also help to maximize flavor. Recommended varieties are included for many types of vegetables... Colorful photos make the book a visual treat coupled with many delicious recipes featuring fresh grown produce, wild food delicacies such as certain weeds, flower waters, vinegar, jam and syrups are also featured. After spending a very enjoyable time reading through the book, I found the publisher's description described Grow for Flavor perfectly and I highly recommend it and it now occupies a prominent spot on my plant bookshelves.-- (02/06/2016)

Grow for Flavor provides a cornucopia of information based on botanist James Wong's years of his own and others' research... I know of no other book quite like this eye-opening one.-- (06/01/2016)

In this Royal Horticultural Society publication, Wong relates research-based tips to increase flavor and yield. The lively presentation goes beyond vegetables to edible weeds and flowers. His value-added crop ideas (like black currant leaves) are a bonus.-- (11/23/2016)

Grow for Flavor makes the latest horticultural research accessible to the home gardener. Bursting with ideas, it invites frequent returns and sparks further adventures in gardening.-- (07/01/2016)

Gardeners can be disappointed by the insipid flavor of the vegetables and fruit that they have so carefully nurtured. The problem, according to botanist James Wong, is that many conventional gardening practices are based on pure myth or faulty science. They create bumper crops at the expense of flavor and nutrition. It doesn't have to be that way.

After trial and error of cutting-edge horticultural techniques and extensive review of more than 2,000 journal papers from around the globe, Wong turns the tables on old-school advice with a radical new system that transforms the flavor and nutrition of homegrown produce.

Grow for Flavor shows the simple steps and innovative methods that yield tasty harvests beyond dreams and, best of all, the methods involve less effort, are strictly organic and can be mastered easily by newbie gardeners. The goal is maximum flavor with minimum labor.

Consider these examples:

• For tomatoes 150 percent sweeter with 50 percent more vitamin C, ditch the tomato food and use molasses, aspirin sprays, and a bit of salt water.
• For strawberries 20 percent bigger with 100 times the aroma, plant in acidic soil in full sun with a skirt of red plastic mulch.
• For super-healthy berries with 300 percent more antioxidants than grocery store varieties, plant Rubel blueberries.
• For maximum flavor and sweetness, harvest beets early and carrots late.

Grow for Flavor is more than tips from a gardening expert. It overflows with practical information and inspirational advice -- an essential for all gardeners.