To cover everything from artichokes to zucchini, bay to thyme, and citrus to nuts, with recipes to promote their use is a tall order.
Although food writer Kate Fraser tries valiantly, she falls at the first hurdle, artichokes, offering no recipes for either the globe or Jerusalem varieties.
She gets to her feet, runs smoothly from beans to carrots, but stumbles again over cauliflower and celeriac (no recipes) before making another good run from celery to leeks.
There are no recipes for lettuces, marrows, melons, mushrooms or New Zealand spinach, spinach, squash, swedes or turnips.
There are some good dishes, notably heritage contributions such as "Three-generation Tomato Soup", but they seem uneasily married to the Auckland nouvelle cuisine of the other recipes.
The gardening advice - not credited to a writer - is as patchy.
The asparagus plant, we are told, is often called asparagus fern, which is incorrect, as the name is applied to an ornamental plant (Asparagus plumosus, A. densiflorus or A. sprengeri), not the edible A. officinalis.
We are told to sow carrots from August to February in cold districts - September to January would be more realistic -and there is no mention of carrot fly or how to deal with this insect, which is a problem in much of the country.
There are numerous other examples of too little information giving a somewhat inaccurate picture of what the gardener, especially the novice vegetable grower, needs to do.
The idea of marrying recipes to fruit and vegetable and herb growing is good in theory, but in practice it really does not work. Pass on this one.
