It was so busy and grey and cold compared to Italy, and I realised I really needed to find a way to be in some part of Nature to survive it,” he says. Four and a half stars. Full of information. This would be a superlative choice for public and school library acquisition, home use, allotments/gardening groups, smallholders (with or without urban locations), and similar. The language and spelling are UK English (marrow, aubergine, etc), but will pose no problems in context for readers elsewhere. Tutorial and recipe lists have measurements given in metric units with imperial (American) units in parentheses (yay!).

This is a beginner’s handbook for organic urban gardening. If you have seen Vitale’s videos on social media, you know how empowering and motivational a gardener he is. Rebel Gardening brings us all the action. Not only is the book put together in the best way, but the instructions or guides to create your garden are also helpful. To apply this method to your growing space, if you have a lawn or weeds all over the ground, just put a layer of cardboard on top of it, making sure that the cardboard doesn’t have any tape on it (if you’ve reused a delivery box, like me, for example!). Ink should be fine, as in most cases it is vegetable ink on brown cardboard and not shiny as it often is with bits of plastic. In reality, Vitale, who says he had originally dreamed of becoming a tattoo artist, was a long way from the nearest wild river, mountain or lake, never mind his home. He was renting a house with barely any outdoor space in North London, and so he started growing chillies in a pot on the windowsill. One of Vitale’s gardening heroes is Charles ‘No Dig’ Dowding, author of multiple best-selling gardening books, whom he first met through a mutual acquaintance at the tail end of 2021. “I have always admired him and so I had gone to an open day with a friend of mine who had done many courses with him, and he introduced us.” Add another layer of well-matured compost, tamping it down by walking over it to make sure it’s firm. While walking on it, you won’t have to worry about compaction because the soil is strong enough to support the construction.

Guerilla gardens

The one area that didn’t work for me is that in his quest for sustainability he uses quite a lot of containers I wouldn’t consider optimal, especially for organic gardening. Not only does he use lots of plastic containers with no talk about how plastics degrade and are taken up in the soil, but he recommends planting food crops in old tires (lined with plastic). I commend him for reusing materials and caring for the environment, but I personally would not feel great about using those materials to grow food and wish he’d at least discussed the topic for new gardeners who might not know about potential health risks. Those of us growing for children or pregnant women need to be especially mindful of the risks.

Alessandro Vitale - aka Spicy Moustache - on how growing what he eats and wasting nothing connects him to nature Did you know cardboard could kill weeds for you? It’s just one gardening practice that Alessandro Vitale, a Londoner by way of Italy with a lifelong passion for growing things, champions in his new book, Rebel Gardening: A Beginner’s Handbook to Creating an Organic Urban Garden, for both its regenerative benefits and novice friendliness. Begin by adding a layer of less-decomposed compost (see Note, below), which is less mature and less rich in nutrients, to a raised bed. Alternatively, you could add a mix of mushroom compost, mature horse manure and/or store-bought compost. Do you live in the city and yearn for the space and time to grow your own food and live more connected with nature and the seasons? Rebel Gardening shows that anyone can grow a garden of delicious organic fruit and vegetables, wildlife-friendly wildflowers and abundant herbs in absolutely any urban space with a bit of know-how. This is a wonderfully laid out book and one that is ideal for those new to gardening or us that have been doing it for years. As new techniques are developed it is always good to have a look at how we can do more for our own garden and also the environment around us.

Artist list

I've been following Alessandro, aka Spicy Moustache, on Tiktok since I've been on the app. His deep voice caught my attention first and his urban gardening tips and zero-waste attitude kept my attention.