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Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed with purchase
Review: First, 1/3 of this book is bibliography, ie. stuff I most probably have no use for. Secondly its a very dated book, lots of line drawings (not very good ones at that) that looks old, and no photos. Also its a very hard book to read, there's like 2 chapters devoted to convincing you of their philosophy (plus loads of new age crap), and every chapter is like that. The style and language used does not make it easy to understand what it is the author is trying to say. Sometimes I have to read and re-read a paragraph a few times to understand. For a guy that reads technical specifications everyday for a living, this is BAD writing.On the plus side, there's a lot of technical information if you can filter out all the propoganda and understand what the author is saying. I really find this book hard to read, but the title really tells me the author was very good at marketing. If you need technical info, and have the patience to filter out the other stuff, and don't mind paying for lots of pages thats useless to you, get it.
Rating: 
Summary: Farmers love this book
Review: I have only flipped through this book, but I wanted to balance the past few reviews with what I've heard from organic farmers in Northern California, who have expressed positive words that this is a Great, practical beginner resource about sustainable farming. To me, that's pretty convincing feedback.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Guide to Gardening
Review: I own and have read many books on gardening. John Jeavons has put together THE TEXTBOOK for beginners and advanced gardeners alike. I like the simple illustrations of such basic activities as double digging the garden, composting, and possible layouts of the garden. At the same time, I find the tables of detailed info on each plant an excellent resource for planning my own garden. I guess that some gardeners will feel intimidated by all the info, I sure did at first, and one other reviewer seemed to as well. But I can't imagine passing up this book for that reason!
Rating:
Summary: Tired of weeding, fertilizing, watering constantly?
Review: I spent a few hours reading this book and was rewarded with 7-foot high tomato plants with big flavorful fruit, beautiful herbs (a couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary were just the thing for a New Year's coq au vin I still remember fondly), beans, peas, lettuce, flowers and more, all from four 4x20 garden beds. All (organic) fertilizing is done before planting, and I only have to weed *twice* a year. If this sounds like the kind of gardening you'd like to do, then this book will show you how. (The automatic watering I came up with myself - buried soaker hoses made from recycled tires a couple of inches deep in the beds and hooked them up to a hose on a timer.)
Contrary to a couple of comments, I didn't find the book at all difficult to understand - quite the opposite. Here, try one great idea on for size:
The roots and leaves of each plant fill a circle. (The book tells you the size of that circle for just about every common garden plant, plus more than a few uncommon ones.) Space your plants so that all the circles are just touching. (You can picture what this looks like by using coins.) That way, each plant has enough room to grow and thrive, while at the same time all their roots and leaves form a "living mulch" that crowds out weeds.
This really works - as I said, I only have to weed twice a season. And how difficult was that to understand? This book is full of great, clearly explained ideas like that, with all the information you need to put them into practice yourself. And someone gave it two stars because it uses *line drawings*? Please.
The reviewer who called it a gardening Bible had it exactly right. If you're thinking of buying a gardening book, do yourself and your garden a great big favor - make it this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for the average gardener..
Review: It doesn't need to be this hard or this complicated.
If you really want to grow lots of vegetables in a small space, get "square foot gardening" by Mel Bartholomew. Simple, easy and productive. This is just too much work for too little return IMHO.
Good luck and go out there and get your hands dirty!
Rating:
Summary: very technical
Review: this book contains a lot of technical information such as
"the avarage number of pounds of a crop eaten by each american in a year," and "the ph soil balance of crops" it is not for casual practicionars, i would recomend it only to serious farmers, but to them, it would be eccelent.
Rating:
Summary: This book is Great!!
Review: THis book I would suggest to anyone that wants to learn how to produce a productive vegetable garden. I used to plant in rows with mixed results, but once I started composting and using the rasied bed meathod along with planting in blocks instead of rows, well I have enough to can and make my own home-made condiments now. I HIGHLY reccomend this book!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent resource for food production
Review: This book is an amazing, overwhelming wealth of information.
I'm not sure I totally agree with all the advice - he's somewhat
anti-manure and recommends transplanting everything twice. It
mentions things like phase of the moon planting, but it's not
dogmatic about these more offbeat ideas. The real value is
the charts for the growing needs, spacing, etc. for every plant
and grain and tree, with suggested layouts and rotations; and
how it targets sustainably suppling real food for people, in
quantities needed to live on, rather than just growing the odd
vegetable for fun.
They are, I believe, in Northern CA so more appropriate for me
in Oregon than many of the Rodale and other east-coast authors.
Rating:
Summary: Concise, Thorough Guide to Gardning for sustinance
Review: This book was loaned to me by a friend who has used it's techniques to produce high-yield growth in his gardens. I have always wanted to have a self sufficent garden, and land for this, but have always thought I would need a number of acres to do this. I am now planning on purchasing a home with one acre and am confident that with the techniques detailed in this book, I will be able to produce good crops for home-grown organic vegetables. There is so much information here on composting, conpanion planting, how plants and thier root systems grow and interact, how to make the garden beds, why beds and clumps are better and yield more produce than planting in rows, soil composition, garden implements and more. There are diagrams for everything you need to know presented in such a way that it's easy to understand and implement. There is so much information here, it would be usefull to a complete beginer like me or an experienced gardner. Happy Planting!
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Summary: My "Gardening Bible" is covered with dirty fingerprints!
Review: When I first bought this book I read it cover to cover, dreaming into the night of all the wonderful seeds I could begin to sprout.... but every year I pull it out as a reference for a companion planting guide as well as planting by phases of the moon.
(By the way, the reviewer that called this book "New Age Crap" was wrong wrong wrong.)
The author takes old concepts (such as planting by lunar cycles) and encourages one to try it. I did, and am very pleased year after year with the results. I think the reviewer (HL - a self-procliamed "technical specifications reader") who did not care for the style of the book should stick to reading and let us gardeners stick to the dirt!
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