Tomatoes Garlic Basil by Plantsman Doug Oster

Doug Oster, a plantsman and garden author, who loves to cook the fresh food he grows, has written a kitchen garden book for like-minded people. Tomatoes Garlic Basil: The Simple Pleasures of Growing and Cooking Your Garden’s Most Versatile Veggies is a soft-cover how-to vegetable garden book interwoven with recipes and family tales with a hint of Italian ancestry.

The premise of Tomatoes Garlic Basil is based on the question: how to simply grow three basic fresh vegetables in the garden then, in the kitchen, turn these foods into easy to cook dishes? For the gardener and cook, the book’s index enables readers to easily locate garden information and food recipes. The general index is subdivided into tomato, garlic, and basil garden topics and organic pest control and a separate recipe finder, also subdivided into dish categories.

Vegetable Garden Basics

Tomatoes Garlic Basil is filled with basic garden instructions, as well as facts about each plant. Oster illustrates his garden facts with family stories garden readers will relate with. The index easily allows gardeners to find pertinent planting information whenever needed.

Oster starts his advice with the foundation of sound gardening practices, soil preparation and compost building. Readers will quickly become aware of the contrasts; feast-for-the-eyes recipe photos along side the written words, for example, commenting on the smell of compost.

Tomato Gardening

Oster relates in story form his affection for all things tomato in Tomatoes Garlic Basil. His enthusiasm for growing this vegetable is infectious. Oster offers a list of his favorite tomato plants, but reminds gardeners that even the best can be usurped by a new suggestion. He favors heirloom varieties embellishing each idea with a tale of tomato history.

In Tomatoes Garlic Basil, the Pennsylvanian author explains organic methods in growing tomatoes, the benefits of beneficial insects and the problem with tomato hornworms, for example. In Oster’s tomato pests chapter, he lists the insects and suggested corresponding organic-wise controls.

It is clear that the plantsman considers himself an organic gardener. Not only for Oster’s previous book, Grow Organic, but also for his family story recounting the day he found his young child eating something in the garden. It is one of the few stories that will leave the reader holding their breath, if for just one moment.

Planting Garlic for Recipes

While bright red tomatoes may initially grab the reader’s attention, Oster lends no less attention to the section on garlic. It is his explanation of the greens, harvesting the scape and Oster’s favorite garlic plants that will equally interest the gardener and cook. There is no shortage of recipes using garlic as the main ingredient in these chapters.

Storing and Preserving Basil Plants

In the basil plants section, Oster pays particular attention to storing and preserving basil. Cold climate gardeners who love to grow basil and cooks who love to cook with it will find these sections required reading, as basil is an annual plant.

Although the Pennsylvanian author covers seed starting throughout Tomatoes Garlic Basil, there are specific chapters on starting basil seeds and growing basil indoors. Oster lays out ideas for succession planting, allowing gardeners to have a continuous supply of basil plants to harvest.

Garden Writer in Pittsburgh

Doug Oster is a garden writer who lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When he is not busy, Oster digs in the soil on four acres in hardiness zone 5.

Otherwise, on Thursdays Oster is on Pittsburgh Today Live on KDKA TV Channel l2, Sunday mornings he can be heard at 7 a.m. on KDKA Radio 1020 AM and weekly his web video series ‚”Digging with Doug” is on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s web site. In 2009, Oster won an Emmy for Outstanding Documentary for the PBS show he wrote, hosted and produced entitled “The Gardens of Pennsylvania.”

Kitchen Garden Book Tomatoes Garlic Basil

Written by Doug Oster, Tomatoes Garlic Basil: The Simple Pleasures of Growing and Cooking Your Garden’s Most Versatile Veggies was published by St. Lynn’s Press, March 1, 2010. The kitchen garden book has 272 pages filled with 65 color photographs and 31 family-tested recipes, some contributed by professional chefs. Gardeners who like to cook the fresh food they grow can use ISBN 978-0-9819615-1-4 to locate this kitchen garden book.

Readers, who love to cook the fresh food they grow, may consider growing tomatoes and peppers in a salsa garden.