Grow What You Love ─ 12 Food Plant Families to Change Your Life

An accessible guide that shows how easy it is to grow your favorite produce.

Grow What You Love is designed to be a simple guide to growing vegetables, herbs and more that will add to the flavor and variety of fresh produce choices throughout the year. Aimed at novice and experienced gardeners alike it will be an image-driven, how-to adventure from an expert gardener and communicator with an enthusiasm for an authentic life.

The colorful book will begin with an exploration of Emily's approach to gardening and how it can fit into modern life with little time and effort. She will go on to give advice on how best to choose food plants that readers love, or can discover, and follows with simple methods for garden-to-table growing, including a selection of her favorite seasonal recipes. The result for readers will be a garden-fresh bounty for any time of the year.

The book will feature three elements interspersed throughout:

The Plant Directory
Plants from a dozen categories will invite readers to choose, mix and match to their tastes. Examples are Tender Herbs, Woody Herbs, Root Vegetables, Beans, Tomatoes, Summer Squash and Cucumbers, Winter and Summer Salads, Berries, Hardy Greens, Edible Perennials and Flowers, and Companion Plants.

Each plant choice will include an introduction to the vegetable, bush fruit or herb, recommendations on the author's favorites, and growing instructions. These will be clearly laid out in straightforward texts organized into Plant, Fix, Pick, and Varieties to Try.

The Simple Act of Growing
Includes features on plant diversity, organic growing, companion planting, saving seeds and more. Emily is an experienced teacher of organic gardening to all ages. She knows how to present information in clear and engaging language. Throughout the book she will explain how to attend to all garden needs, for example, Garden Anywhere; Soil Building and Composting; Sow Seeds, Grow Cuttings, and More; Smart Watering; Cultivate, Prune, and Follow Nature; Prevent Pests; and Continue Growing.

Seasonal Recipes
Emily's online and print coverage often features her simple and tasty recipes, which include preserves. A selection of her best will be interspersed throughout the book. Examples are Fava Beans, Greens and Fresh Herb Toasts; Best-Ever Blueberry Pie; and Spring Greens with Jicama, Cilantro and Lime.

Emily is an expert gardener with extensive experience. In Grow What You Love she will demonstrate how easy it is to grow fresh foods in abundance using minimal time, and even in minimal space. It is sure to be a perfect choice for today's readers that enjoy fresh homegrown organic produce.

The author's built-in online audience -- www.passthepistil.com, social media (Instagram 13,400, Twitter 7,444 and 44,600 Likes, 238 YouTube subscribers) -- and on television and in traditional press (such as Garden Design Magazine) will contribute to the book's presence and support the concept and message of Grow What You Love.

Emily Murphy is the author of the foodie-centric garden blog Pass The Pistil, and one of Garden Design Magazine's "most loved" blogs of 2015. Emily is a web series host, a contributor to Better Homes and Gardens, a garden design and organic gardening consultant, and a teacher of organic gardening. Emily holds a degree in Ethnobotanical Resources from Humboldt State University where she also studied botany and environmental science.