The Allotment Keeper's Handbook is a no-nonsense guide to managing your own organic vegetable patch. Packed with invaluable advice, from how to choose an allotment and test its soil to knowing your chickweed from your chicory, it offers an enjoyable and inspiring shortcut through the trials, errors and frustrations of starting a kitchen garden. Dispensing with the strict calendar-based advice usually found in gardening manuals, Jane Perrone steers a carefree course through the gardener's year. Featuring a full chapter devoted to harvesting, a history of allotments, an exhaustive section on crop rotation, 'spotlights' on unusual vegetables, fun monthly projects and a glossary to cut through garden jargon, this book is all you will need to get growing.