Gardening

With an increasing awareness of what they eat and the provenance of their food, people nowadays often raise such questions as where does the food come from? How is it produced? This concern over food ingredients and origins has resulted in a burgeoning interest in growing one's own food, both for the satisfaction in having done it oneself and for the assurance of food quality and safety. But how to grow one's own food in the midst of an urban metropolis? How to do it without a real garden?This book points the way, especially for beginners and those who may only have a balcony or a rooftop and are limited to growing in containers. It is not just about gardening in a narrow sense. It delves into the growing of plants as a multidisciplinary activity involving not only botany, but also zoology, geology, meteorology, philosophy, ornithology, and more. The book sends a strong environmental message for a reevaluation of modern lifestyle.

Living in a crowded city need not mean uprooting one's connection with the earth. City gardens are proliferating at a healthy rate, and plants can be enjoyed on a rooftop, balcony, terrace, or a simple window sill. There are, of course, special difficulties to gardening in cities: special solutions are needed to solve these problems. Urban Gardening was written to address these issues. It will interest first-timers to try it for themselves, too.

The book is subtitled "a Hong Kong gardener's journal". If you live outside of Hong Kong, do not let that put you off. Urban gardening techniques are the same all over the world. Readers may discover some well-loved plants they were familiar with back home, or wish to grow their own Chinese vegetables. Pak choi, white radish (lo pak), kai lan, and many others can be grown wherever in the world you find yourself—if you know how. This book will help.

This book introduces the methods, ingredients, and delights of urban home gardening for beginners as well as avid gardeners interested in growing healthy, organic, and tasty food. Appealing to those who have access to garden, balcony, and rooftop spaces and to those who grow vegetables in containers, this expanded second edition includes new photographs and updated material showing how to nurture and harvest avocados, chayote, dill, dragon fruit, and pak choi. Arthur van Langenberg also offers hands-on recipes for transforming home-grown natural ingredients into delicious dishes and sauces, including Macanese sweet potato pudding, fig syrup, and green tomato chutney.