Customer Reviews

The Ortho Book of Gardening Basics

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

 

 

This book is a great source of gardening information. It starts with garden design including a nice color chart and covers just about anything you can think of from pruning your trees to starting a lawn, soil testing, seed starting, tools you will need. It is very well written. You don't need to be an expert to understand it. The pictures are beautiful and it includes many, many useful diagrams such as how to test your soil to how to build a trellis. If you enjoy gardening this is a great book to have.

In preparation for an upcoming move, I brought many of my gardening books up to the computer to post them for sale. I'm a fairly advanced gardener and homestead on a few acres, so I felt like I had absorbed the information I needed and was ready to pass along the book. As I looked through this book of Gardening Basics, I realized it was a keeper. I do know most of the information described within the book, but the photographs alone are worth my keeping it. There are beautiful images of designs, flowers, plants, and gardens, that I can draw from when creating my own landscaping. Each section is thorough and informative, with good charts for succession planting, garden planning, harvesting planning, etc.

I give it four stars instead of five because (a) it features ortho products and I only do organic gardening - no pesticides are needed, and (b) it recommends tilling. Tiling disrupts the microstructure of the soil and the organisms must reshuffle themselves back into their proper places. Beneficial nematodes and microorganisms and earthworms belong where they belong, which is not up at the top of the soil. Tilling actually compacts and compresses the soil, rendering your garden worse. Just add compost and soil amendments and continue planting on top, and you'll be fine. I've done organic no-till gardening for 15 years and can add my testimony to the thousands out there that neither pesticides nor tilling is needed.

Other than the product placement of Ortho and the tilling, this is a comprehensive and beautifully illustrated book.