Vegetables, Chickens and Bees by Carson Arthur: Book Review

Digest this: You can do it!

By Renaldo Amato

Vegetables, Chickens and Bees: An Honest Guide to Growing Your Own Food Anywhere is an entertaining and informative look into the world of cultivating your own food. In a time where DIY culture and green living trends are on the rise, author Carson Arthur delivers an easily digestible gateway into this rewarding niche.

Purely on look and feel, I give Arthur a solid 10 out of 10. Beautiful photography, easy to read typography, and material organized in a way that clearly had me (the reader) in mind. If the belief is that content is king, then readability is surely the queen. This has to be my favourite characteristic of this book. As a piece of reference material clearly aimed at beginners, I find it important the material isn’t intimidating and this turned out to be an excellent segue into this hobby; especially for the uninformed like myself. Solid backgrounds, clean colours and subheaders galore make scanning this book for relevant information a breeze. And most important of all - pictures! I love the pictures here because it pulls me into this world and they are also very useful, providing a nice frame of reference for the slew of concepts that are covered.

The largest portion of this book is dedicated to growing your own vegetable garden. Topics range from growing in different levels of sunlight to everything you need to know about watering. Growing plants is a labourious process and requires a lot of know-how to execute effectively. This is where Vegetables, Chickens and Bees shines. Arthur packs a tonne of information into each section but keeps it light with humour and good story-telling. I’m a particular fan of the section where Arthur goes over 19 specific fruits and vegetables and how to take them from planting to harvest. This is what really brought the gardening portion home for me. As a beginner, it is easy to get overwhelmed in something new. I appreciated the in-depth look into specific vegetables as opposed to generalizing gardening as a whole. It allowed me to narrow down a select few I was interested in growing and allowed me to explore the nuances of that particular plant. For me, this type of specific instruction is necessary in reference material.

Equally as integrated, the process of raising chickens and bees can seem even more daunting than vegetable gardening. With the same beautiful layout and humour-laden paragraphs, Arthur brings this book to a nice finish with its section on chickens and bees. From the kinds of chickens you can own to dealing with angry queen bees and everything in between, the quality of information doesn’t change. All text is supported with pictures, graphs and tables to help give you a nicely rounded understanding. Another fantastic element (that comes through particularly well in the this section of the book) is the recounting of real life experience.

Arthur is very knowledgeable in this field and his experience provides a valuable dimension to the literature. I would go as far as to say his personal experience provides a much needed relatability to his book and is a figurative glue, tightly bonding together the other elements of his story. This book would definitely not be the same without it.

What Arthur manages to do well in this book is deliver a very accessible piece of content. Other books and reference material in this genre are always susceptible to being dry and difficult to consume. Growing your own food, raising chickens and tending to bees are already daunting tasks by nature. The research shouldn’t be. He manages, with some degree of finesse, to juggle many complex concepts and he doesn’t seem to lose his footing.

Image by pixabay.com/rihaij

While I don’t feel this is the last thing you’ll need to read about this subject, I do believe Arthur is dominating the market for content available to beginners. There is plenty of information packed into the pages. More than enough to get you started on your journey! Arthur definitely knows what he is talking about. ~