You Grow Girl™

It’s been a month since my new book, “Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces” hit stores and a whole heck of a lot has happened during that time. I won’t go over everything — I just want to mention a few highlights for longevity.

The first big news is that the book has gone into two reprints since launching! It is available in all major bookstores within the US and Canada and lots of small bookstores including garden centres, art stores and comic book stores that I really admire and respect, and has also been picked up by major retailers including Crate and Barrel and Anthropologie. Anthropologie, guys! I actually jumped up and down and squeed a little when I heard the news and I am usually so cautious about these sorts of things… I never do that.

Even more thrilling, I recently found out that it is the current #1 selling gardening book in Canada! “Grow Great Grub” is the little book that could!

Several bloggers wrote glowing reviews of the book. Thank you so much. I have to tell you that one of the scariest things about making a book is releasing it into the world. I can’t speak for anyone else but I am scared and nervous when I sit down to write the first words. I get REALLY scared the week I am due to hand in the manuscript. I get INSANELY scared the week it is due on store shelves. Only I know what I went through in the process of making the book. I know what I originally wrote but had to cut for length, what the publisher wanted to change, or how that one picture is not the better one that I really wanted to use but couldn’t. Only I know the book that I set out to make and whether or not this book is THAT book. Those experiences are such a big part of how I feel about it that it is difficult, almost impossible, to separate myself and have an opinion or judgment about the final product as it is. But all that matters once it goes out there is whether you, the reader, can read it, want to read it, and whether or not you find it useful.

I wrote an article on growing exciting and out of the ordinary cool season greens for a brand new garden magazine called “Garden Making.” Remember that over-ambitious bloody dock plant I wrote about last year? It’s in there along with a few other greens that made my top 5 list last year. Pretty exciting that a new gardening magazine is giving it a go when so many others are folding. I really respect founder Beckie Fox for taking the risk and going about it in a fair and conscientious manner to boot. I’ll be at their booth this coming Saturday, March 20 at Canada Blooms signing copies of “Grow Great Grub” between 10:30 and noon. Come out and say hi if you’re there.

I was on the Steven and Chris show a few weeks back taping a segment on growing vegetables in pots and in the ground. Everyone in the studio audience received a copy of the book courtesy of Clarkson Potter. I also brought remaining seeds and buttons from the launch party to giveaway. The best part was chatting with famous Canadian sex educator Sue Johanson in the green room! Unfortunately, I was too shy to ask for a photo.

And then there was this: About mid-Feb there was an article in O Magazine. I knew it was coming but I understood it to be an article about growing herbs. I was as shocked as anyone to discover they’d also written a little bit about my background and even mentioned my grandmother’s balcony potatoes. I didn’t think being featured in O Magazine would be a big deal on a personal level, and was surprised by my trembling hands and tearing eyes while I read the article out on the street minutes after purchasing a copy of the magazine at a newsstand. What took over in that moment was my child self, a little girl who never imagined that people like Scylla and I could be featured in such a mainstream and widely circulated publication.

I’m kind of proud of us.