Customer Reviews

Grow the Best Peppers: Storey's Country Wisdom Bulletin A-138 (Storey Publishing Bulletin ; a-138)

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

 

 

Great little pamphlet. Quick to read, a lot of helpful information that I didn't find elsewhere in larger gardening volumes. Highly recommended.

I like this little book. I come back to it now and again for stuff I forgot. It covers basic things like spacing, starting peppers indoors, disease, harvesting, storage, and some information like species, classifications, days to harvest etc. It is not a big book. It's more of a pamphlet. (32 total pages) Hence the reasonable price. It is not going to be a book that would cover more then what you might 'google' on the internet. However, it is handy, and an easy read.

I am an urban gardener and I have been very lucky with my last 9 harvest EXCEPT for my peppers. Whether it be a sweet bell or a spicy Chili pepper I have always come up short on these plants while the rest of my garden seemed to thrive. I love to cook and I love spice, so my disappointment each year has grown into more and more frustration, I had even tried the pre-potted peppers at the garden store. Still no peppers. I purchased this little book in hopes of finding out why, and sure enough, I did. Peppers are a finicky bunch, and I was not paying close enough attention to the needs of the plant. This book, although small, is very informative and had some very good information. Like the fact that a pepper plant can be self pollinating and in some cases may need help (if number of plants is low) in order to produce the pepper. Now it does not give you the history of the pepper, or every little detail on how to grow, but any gardener with dirty nails will find this book useful. It goes into drainage, bringing peppers indoors, and soil type and food for your plants. A well rounded, useful little handbook

I enjoyed this publication overall. It was quite informative, but not exactly complete. Quite a few varieties of peppers dont make it into this pamphlet, including the wildly famous ghost pepper (bhut jolokia). However, it is overall a decent book with some helpful tips for growing.
There were a couple of things that were counter to what i thought i knew. The most obvious was that the author suggested growing your pepper plants so that they touch each other. He stated that they produce better individually when you do so. I have actually done this with three of my plants to test this out. So far, they have grown quite a bit larger, but as of yet, they havent begun to flower, so i cant speak to the veracity of this yet. When i can, i will update this.

Some of the other info is common knowledge to pepper enthusiasts, but helpful for the layman or garden farmer. Such info includes stressing your plants to promote more hotter and larger pepper growth, and of course the fact that the hotter and drier the environment, the hotter the pepper.

The booklet, Grow The Best Peppers, provides all the basics needed by growers new to growing either sweet and hot peppers. The entire booklet, is easy to read and understand, and can be read in just 30 to 40 minutes.

This little book was completely useless to me. It doesn't explain any of the terminology used; so, if you didn't grow up on a farm, you're hopeless with this book. I was so disappointed. For the most part, I had already read most of the few helpful tips in this book on the internet. Do yourself a favor and find a beginner guide or search on Google for awhile. I never opened this book again. Oh yeah, and my peppers died.