Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades
   Steve Solomon
  1989 Sasquatch Books, Seattle WA USA
   ISBN: 091236520X


From Asparagus to Zucchini: a book for everything you need to know about growing vegetables in the mild, wet climate of the Maritime Pacific Northwest.

In composing a review of a book we have used constantly & incessantly over the years, my husband murmured that I should describe our copy. Wherever we've found a portion that pertains to our patch of earth in a valley on the edges of a National Forest, I've stashed a marker. Sometimes it's an emery board, a letter from England, pages from scratchpads with recipes for slug bait or maps of our raised bed plantings for a year, postcards from friends warning us about their impending visit. This book is now double in thickness yet these markers allow me easy access to what I need most often.

We have enjoyed every penny we invested in Steve Solomon's Complete Guide to Natural Gardening. When we've got a problem, there's usually an answer right in there. When we're wondering about our climate, or our soil or our expectations for a harvest, given our climate, Steve Solomon's got the answer, more often than not.

When we came to plant this recently logged little acre, no cultivated vegetable would make beyond sprouting its two first leaves. While this earth, this thin layer of forest duff did support a dense underbrush of the odd Cascara, Holly & Mountain Ash trees above Salal, Salmon, Elder, Thimble & Huckle berry bushes above Trilium, Oxalis & False Lily-of-the- Valley & a host of maritime spring flowers, after a logging that churned what little soil lay upon the clay & gravel there was no strength to grow human food. Our first year we couldn't find a worm one. Then we started composting yurts.

That first winter we scoured our local book store & found Steve Solomon's Growing Vegetables West of the Cascade. We both read & reread it during our long rainy season. For my husband, all the information about botany & the science of soil made instant sense & I would see him standing in the fine marine mist, staring out at the saturated earth, thinking.

I used this book to ponder on the types of vegetables & maintenance both of us could & would enjoy. My husband knows I love to browse at dawn & dusk, he's not what I would call a veggie mate although once our salad beds begin to bear, I can always entice him with a vast bowl of fresh picked lettuces & Toppings & he is one happy fellow.

What we learnt & applied from Steve Solomon's Growing Vegetables usually works for us, especially since we invested in raised & covered beds. Being in the shadows of tree farm lands, we lose any growing sunlight from October through February. In fact, we have quite a celebration when the sun begins to shine upon our beds again. That usually happens two weeks before the chipmunks return.

Also by Steve Solomon: The Year in Bloom; Water-Wise Vegetables and Winter Gardening in the Maritime Northwest.
(04/12/99)

Rebecca