Customer Reviews

The Gardener's A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food: 765 varities of vegetables, herbs, fruits, and nuts

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are a novice or an expert in gardening, this book is the book for you.
Where this work truly shines is in the organization. Many a gardener may sympathize with me when I recount of the intense frustration in finding a simple, organized book on growing food that actually contains USEFUL information.
Too often a book supposedly containing everything you need to know leaves out vital knowledge on certain plants.
In this volume, vegetables are all grouped under 'Vegetables', fruits, nuts, and herbs the same. Each species has it's own little section including all you need to know about growing that plant: start dates (counting back the number of days from your local last frost date), diseases, pests, ally plants, companion plants, incompatible plants, plant varieties, seed sources, temperatures, frost vulnerability, how to transplant, when to direct seed, how many per person, you name it- it's there. An absolutely amazing resource, and one that I use constantly.
So why the four stars?
Well, this book does have a couple drawbacks. In the section on organic techniques at the back of the book, there are no pictures of the beneficial insects or pests, simply word descriptions. (Though these are quite descriptive and extensive.) This is unacceptable, as pictures are vital to correctly identifying a pest, beneficial, or disease. I did use it to identify cucumber beetles, but it would be much more difficult for other species. The organic, homemade spray recipes were helpful to me, but I do wish more were included.
Another reason for the lower rating was that certain varieties of plants were neglected, such as Swiss Chard, while other lesser known varieties (albeit few) were included in their stead. I am planning on growing Swiss Chard and would have loved this info. Some herbs were absent as well. In my opinion, these are minor flaws, and I would rather have a separate book to combat garden enemies that has been specially devoted to the subject anyways.
I would like to let you know that this book is more for the Northern Hemisphere concerning food varieties- tropicals are quite neglected in this work, but as I'm not interested in them, this is not a bother. (At least to me.)
All in all, for the ordinary homestead and backyard garden, this book is truly a gem, and the best organized work I have seen with information that is easily understood. Highly recommended.

Tons of fabulous information in this book, but it unfortunately leaves out quite a few things that I am interested in growing... bananas, oranges, tangerines, avocadoes, mangoes, lemons, limes, and starfruit to name a few. It is, however, the best resource for herbs that I've seen so far.