Customer Reviews

Growing Citrus: The Essential Gardener's Guide

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I have a very large library of citrus books, and have never regretted buying any of them. That is, until I bought this one. My copy arrived a few days ago, and I find a few errors and several other disappointing things.

1. He says calamondins produce numerous SWEET fruit. I have eaten a lot of them, but I have NEVER had one I would call sweet!

2. He says lemons are used for blah blah, and also other nefarious things. My dictionary says nefarious means extremely wicked. No idea what the author meant by this.

3. He says calamondins are used for blah, blah, and some other bizarre things. But, he never tells us what bizarre things.

4. What is supposed to be a picture of Flying Dragon is just a regular trifoliate thorny tree.

5. The coverage of citrus varieties is pretty weak - many of the best varities (Page mandarin, for example) are not mentioned.

These seemed to be a bit odd for what is supposed to be the essential guide to citrus. There are numerous better books on citrus than this one. It does have a number of pretty pictures, but the amount of wasted white space could have been better used.

Maybe I am just getting to be a grumpy old man and these are just minor things that don't bother anyone else.

I always assumed that growing oranges, lemons, grapefruits, and their more exotic-sounding cousins like tangelos was only for people living in hot places like Florida, but this book explains how the rest of us can grow them too. As the book explains, the key is to take the plants indoors when it's frosty outside: for instance, citrus plants can go in a container on the porch during the cooler parts of spring and fall, and in wintertime they come all the way into the house where they make pretty and intriguing houseplants. When there's no danger of frost, they can go out in the garden. Overall I found this book to be highly useful, the advice was right on target while the photos inspired me to grow these plants I never would have considered before. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow something interesting and delicious.

This book is a must read! Informative, easy to read, easy to assimilate into your citrus knowledge (the beginner to the advanced grower.). The author (who is a citrus guru.) takes us on a journey around the citrus growing world, with lots of wonderful pictures, and key history of the origin of most cultivars. Have you ever wondered the origin of a grapefruit or where the oldest living Washington Navel is, it's in the book! What kind of soil does citrus like, or how cold can different cultivar s endure? What is a orangery, how and when did citrus arrive to Europe and the United States. I was happy to see my home state of California's UC Riverside (A great citrus Mecca.) and their incredible work, incorporated into this book. Exotic citrus cultivars are covered in the book, (Buddha's Hand, Etrog, Bergamont, Eremocitrus.) which has motivated me to try to grow them. This book was such a easy read, I could not put it down!