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Rating: 
Summary: No Vegetables what a bummer
Review: Do not purchase this book if you are looking for advice on starting vegetables, because even though veggies are annuals that bloom, they are not covered in this guide. If you prefer to reference your plants by the common names (e.g. Lilly of the Valley - not Convallaria) or a color photo, then this book will be hard to use, because the plants are ordered by their taxanomic/latin names and all of the drawings are black and white sketches.If you are able to find the plant that you are looking for, then the propogation/seed starting information is pretty good. Bottomline, probably not the best book if you are just beginnig to experiment with the hobby of growing your annuals from seed.
Rating:
Summary: No Vegetables what a bummer
Review: Do not purchase this book if you are looking for advice on starting vegetables, because even though veggies are annuals that bloom, they are not covered in this guide. If you prefer to reference your plants by the common names (e.g. Lilly of the Valley - not Convallaria) or a color photo, then this book will be hard to use, because the plants are ordered by their taxanomic/latin names and all of the drawings are black and white sketches. If you are able to find the plant that you are looking for, then the propogation/seed starting information is pretty good. Bottomline, probably not the best book if you are just beginnig to experiment with the hobby of growing your annuals from seed.
Rating: 
Summary: Indispensible
Review: I am a plant propagator, both at work and at home, and I have access to all the seed starting handbooks. This is the one I turn to the most often. It's comprehensive and easy to use. In fact, if it included vegetables, it could pretty much stand alone. The only thing that would make it a little better would be illustrations of the seedlings.
Rating: 
Summary: Good on the seed, but not on the bloom
Review: I have been planting flowers from seed in my home for almost 5 years now. Last year I had over 1400 seedlings on multi-level shelves under flourescent and natural light in my dining room. (Boy do I need a greenhouse!) So this book was not a lot of new information to me. A lot of what is listed can be found on the back of a seed packet, but it's not practical to sit on the floor of my favorite garden supply store and read every seed package for suggestions before I buy it. (This is important, because I'm not interested in refrigerating my seeds 3 weeks before I plant them or doing other such preparations required for some seeds.) One major thing missing from this book was photography. There were drawings, but I'm sorry to say that they were mostly a way of breaking up the monotony of the text rather than a reference tool. On the good side, this book did an excellent job of providing the proper germination environment, and each plant had a quick reference in a shaded box that listed the type of plant (annual, perennial, etc), its hardiness zone, and its flowering season. This allowed me to quickly eliminate the plants that were inappropriate for my zone. The regular index wasn't very useful, but one wonderful addition was an index of the common & latin names. I refer to this when looking at some of my books that include the full color photography I was missing. (Almost makes up for it....almost!) Of course, there is the standard hardiness zone map, but they also added a map each for the probable first and last frost dates. (Nice!) Also included was a directory of seed companies and their addresses. All in all, this book does a good job of covering the seed part, but a poor job of covering the bloom part.
Rating:
Summary: Good on the seed, but not on the bloom
Review: I have been planting flowers from seed in my home for almost 5 years now. Last year I had over 1400 seedlings on multi-level shelves under flourescent and natural light in my dining room. (Boy do I need a greenhouse!) So this book was not a lot of new information to me. A lot of what is listed can be found on the back of a seed packet, but it's not practical to sit on the floor of my favorite garden supply store and read every seed package for suggestions before I buy it. (This is important, because I'm not interested in refrigerating my seeds 3 weeks before I plant them or doing other such preparations required for some seeds.) One major thing missing from this book was photography. There were drawings, but I'm sorry to say that they were mostly a way of breaking up the monotony of the text rather than a reference tool. On the good side, this book did an excellent job of providing the proper germination environment, and each plant had a quick reference in a shaded box that listed the type of plant (annual, perennial, etc), its hardiness zone, and its flowering season. This allowed me to quickly eliminate the plants that were inappropriate for my zone. The regular index wasn't very useful, but one wonderful addition was an index of the common & latin names. I refer to this when looking at some of my books that include the full color photography I was missing. (Almost makes up for it....almost!) Of course, there is the standard hardiness zone map, but they also added a map each for the probable first and last frost dates. (Nice!) Also included was a directory of seed companies and their addresses. All in all, this book does a good job of covering the seed part, but a poor job of covering the bloom part.
Rating:
Summary: Indispensible
Review: This is an indispensable book for the home seed-starter. I teach plant propagation classes in addition to starting a thousand seedlings in my basement every year and this is the book I recommend. An encyclopedic format with plant-by-plant listings of both indoor and outdoor sowing requirements, transplanting and care information, plus line drawings of each plant make this an invaluable reference guide!
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