The book I read to research this post was Grow Your Own Fruit And Vegetables For Dummies by Geoff Stebbings which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book is a how to guide to growing fruit and vegetables but also covers extensively the wide variety of crops that aren't available in the shops and also the different varieties available of well known fruit and vegetables. These varieties will often grow in a climate that the conventional type won't grow in but often have differences like colour and taste. An example of this is the ben species of blackberry from Scotland which are named after mountains. These plants are hardier and more disease resistant than conventional species while still providing similiar fruit. Another fruit is the loganberry which was the result of crossing the raspberry with the blackberry. These fruit are considered to be the earliest example of a hybrid fruit and still retain the white centres of raspberries which means few are eaten raw. Another plant some people are tempted to grow is the kiwi fruit tree which can grow so huge it can swamp your entire garden so wants to be cut back quite aggressively regularly. This plant is actually from Asia although some are grown in New Zealand and the name kiwi is a blatant marketing ploy having nothing to do with kiwis. It is a close relative to the gooseberry. I really enjoyed this book which is quite a decent length and packed with information. A final interesting thing in the book is fertilizer has a special code on it by law. On a typical fertilizer it might say 7N 7PH 7K and this relates to the amount of chemicals in it in order of Nitrogen, Phosphorous & Potassium. These letters are the same as the symbols on the periodic table. If you want a fertilizer with extra nitrogen it will say something like 14N 7PH 7K and it's a similiar case with the other 2 chemicals. This is relevant if you grow certain crops or have certain soils where the chemicals have to be balanced out.