If you’re the kind of kitchen gardener who prides yourself on knowing your onions, then here’s a little quiz for you.

Did you know that it’s better to plant smaller seed potatoes rather than big ones, for the reason that it produces a larger and more evenly spaced crop, with fewer green (and thus unusable/poisonous) tubers?

Or that you should always go for smaller sets when it comes to planting onions, for the reason that they’re far less likely to bolt? No?

What about the fact that if you’re sowing a late crop of carrots, then it’s best to give them a more generous spacing (five to seven per square foot) than you would an earlier crop?

Or that the male flowers on a courgette plant always appear before the female flowers because they respond differently to increasing day length?

These, and a host of other equally useful and fascinating facts, can be gleaned from Complete Know and Grow Vegetables, the groundbreaking gardening book edited by Prof John Bleasdale and Dr Peter Salter, first published in two volumes in 1981.

Now, after several years out of print, it is available to buy as an e-book.

Drawn from many years of thorough research work by the former national vegetable research centre in Wellesbourne, Warwickshire, as well as other UK bodies, it takes the hard science of commercial vegetable growing and makes it accessible to home gardeners.

High queen

No less a personage than Joy Larkcom, the celebrated author and high queen of organic kitchen gardening, has acknowledged it as a crucial reference work for anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of growing your own food.

“Even today, over 35 years after some of the original work was published, when I’m thinking what size cauli do I want or what is the best sort of seed potato, I turn to it . . .

“It really is a goldmine for anyone interested in understanding the fundamentals of food growing and optimum results from their own plots.”

It's worth saying that both the world of publishing, and readers' expectations have changed a lot since Complete Know and Grow Vegetables originally appeared in print.

Labour of love

Converting it into an e-book was a labour of love for the now 88-year-old Bleasdale, its chief editor, but it still retains much of the appearance of the original text.

So don’t expect glossy, sumptuous photographs, or dreamy rhapsodies on the joys of organic food growing.

But what it may lack in style (and I, for one, rather like its straightforward, school textbook presentation), it more than makes up for in substance, providing a wealth of scientific information to a younger generation of kitchen gardeners almost certainly unfamiliar with this classic text.

Plus, thanks to the wonders of the internet, downloading it will cost you a mere £4 (sterling) on amazon.co.uk.