The Gardener's Gripe Book [Paperback]

Abby Adams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 5, 1995

Perennials that behave like annuals, gone within a year or two. Lettuce that bolts right when you're in the mood for a salad. Deer, hedgehogs, slugs, and bugs. And then, all the know-it-alls who tell you how easy it is. Gardening may be America's most popular leisure activity, but it is also the most frustrating, aggravating, and time-consuming-by no means the simple idyll-with-dirt sold by gardening gurus. As lifelong gardener Abby Adams points out in her tongue-in-cheek book, you can't trust the experts, nothing looks like it does in magazines and catalogs, trends change more often than hemlines, and Mother Nature always wins. Literate, funny, studded with quotes and ironic observations, here is a series of honest takes on dozens of subjects that all gardeners will relate to.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Perennials behaving like annuals, dead and gone after just one season. Neighbors' tomatoes that always come in a week earlier than yours. Fickleness, hard work and ethical dilemmas (you've live-trapped the woodchuck -- now what?). It's gardening, Abby Adams loves it, and in a book as perceptive as it is funny she shares a lifetime's obsessions with its mysterious ways.

From Publishers Weekly

A very funny down-to-earth gardener takes a swipe at gardening pretense and vows to "tell no lies." With Will Rogers-style good will and common sense, pet peeves grow into a belly-laugh of a book. The well-organized myriad of topics includes: a respectable and entertaining history of gardening ("From Eve to Martha Stewart"); the wrongfully maligned lawn and its environmentally-correct alternatives (e.g., meadows-in-cans-"It is better to tear your money into little pieces and scatter them to the wind"); dirt (a soil analysis by an extension agent is like an astrologer saying "you have 3 planets in your 6th house, when all you want to know is whether or not you should get married"). Equally amusing are ventings on vegetables, perennials, "tree$" and garden enemies (don't miss the repellent recipe calling for Japanese beetles in the blender-"this is the fun part"). Longer chapters are spliced with essays such as "Gourmet Gardeners" who "clip recipes from gardening magazines (this is equivalent to gleaning medical advice from Vanity Fair") and "Smell" ("'Aromatic' herbs mostly aren't"; paperwhites and hyacinths are "olfactory offenders"). A welcome, resounding reveille for gardeners who have dwelt too long with glossy pictures and impossible expert advice.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Workman Publishing Company (January 5, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156305647X
• ISBN-13: 978-1563056475
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,145,493 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny and practical too, July 23, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Gardener's Gripe Book (Paperback)

For those who like a little humor with their labor, Abby Adams' wry tone strikes just the right note. With chapters titled "From Eve to Martha Stewart," Tree$" and "Enemies List," this self-proclaimed non-expert takes her reader through the anxieties and triumphs of taking a garden from seed to harvest, peppering her own hard won advice with extensive quotes (many hilarious) from the "experts."

She explores the question of lawns, quotes an Englishman on perennials ("A perennial is a plant, that, had it not died, would have returned the following year") shares what she's learned about soil ? "Good soil is like good looks ? something you're born with."

This is an enjoyable, readable little book which also happens to be packed with good advice and even better quotations. Perfect after a long day's hard gardening.