Earthly Delights: Tubs of Tomatoes and Buckets of Beans

Rating:
Summary: Save your money!
Review: When it comes to the specifics of growing plants this book is pretty skimpy. If you are an absolute beginner to gardening this is not the book for you. The book expects you to already know a pretty good amount about gardening because the instructions are vague and you need to fill in the blanks yourself. He seems to spend more time talking about building trellises, planting boxes and cabinets than he does plant growing. The book also seems targeted more toward people who have a large deck or some other area larger than the average apartment building balcony or fire escape. So apartment dwellers may not benefit as much. Also this book seems more oriented to people who want to grow vegetables for ornamental purposes instead of grocery bill savings. He spends a lot of time describing how to build an acrylic window greenhouse into the wall of a house and a glass door cabinet designed for growing plants indoors. I'm weary about that because vegetable plants need a lot of sunshine to produce well. I had to move some of mine from an outdoor patio to an even sunnier location in the yard, so I can't imagine them doing well indoors. At the back of the book he offers some recepies and quickly discusses what he calls "Mexican Vegetables" like; Cactus, Chayote and Jicama. There is also a list of 13 seed suppliers and a few beneficial insect suppliers. You might pickup a few good ideas from this book but overall I don't think it is very good. The only part I liked was the section on growing your own sprouts, like bean sprouts, alfalfa sprouts etc. (By the way "mung bean" sprouts are the ones used in Chinese foods like fried rice.) For that section only I give the book one star. Actually I'd give it 1 1/2 if that were possible. A MUCH BETTER book is MOVABLE HARVESTS The Simplicity and Bounty of Container Gardens By Chuck and Barbera Crandall. ISBN 1-881527-70-0.

Rating:
Summary: Save your money!
Review: When it comes to the specifics of growing plants this book is pretty skimpy. If you are an absolute beginner to gardening this is not the book for you. The book expects you to already know a pretty good amount about gardening because the instructions are vague and you need to fill in the blanks yourself. He seems to spend more time talking about building trellises, planting boxes and cabinets than he does plant growing. The book also seems targeted more toward people who have a large deck or some other area larger than the average apartment building balcony or fire escape. So apartment dwellers may not benefit as much. Also this book seems more oriented to people who want to grow vegetables for ornamental purposes instead of grocery bill savings. He spends a lot of time describing how to build an acrylic window greenhouse into the wall of a house and a glass door cabinet designed for growing plants indoors. I'm weary about that because vegetable plants need a lot of sunshine to produce well. I had to move some of mine from an outdoor patio to an even sunnier location in the yard, so I can't imagine them doing well indoors. At the back of the book he offers some recepies and quickly discusses what he calls "Mexican Vegetables" like; Cactus, Chayote and Jicama. There is also a list of 13 seed suppliers and a few beneficial insect suppliers. You might pickup a few good ideas from this book but overall I don't think it is very good. The only part I liked was the section on growing your own sprouts, like bean sprouts, alfalfa sprouts etc. (By the way "mung bean" sprouts are the ones used in Chinese foods like fried rice.) For that section only I give the book one star. Actually I'd give it 1 1/2 if that were possible. A MUCH BETTER book is MOVABLE HARVESTS The Simplicity and Bounty of Container Gardens By Chuck and Barbera Crandall. ISBN 1-881527-70-0.