Lee Reich provides a valuable guide to uncommon fruits and berries, which add an adventurous flavor to any garden. Though names like jujube, juneberry, maypop, and shipova may seem exotic at first glance, these fruits offer ample rewards to the gardener willing to go only slightly off the beaten path at local nurseries. Reliable even in the toughest garden situations, cold-hardy, and pest- and disease-resistant, they are as enticing to the beginner as to the advanced gardener. This expanded sequel to the author's celebrated Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention offers new fruits, new varieties, and new photos and illustrations to entice the reader into an exciting world of garden pleasure.
Lee Reich, PhD started out pursuing an academic career, a trajectory that came to an abrupt halt during his second year in graduate school while studying quantum chemistry. He dropped out, moved to Vermont to ponder, and, after a year, immersed himself in the study and practice of agriculture: reading popular and academic works, entering graduate school, and gardening like a madman.
After three graduate degrees, work work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Cornell University, and much dirt under his fingernails, he went off on his own as a freelance horticultural writer, consultant, and lecturer.
Out in the backyard, the garden developed and garnered awards ("Prettiest Vegetable Garden: from Organic Gardening magazine, "Best Vegetable Garden" from National Gardening magazine), and was featured in the New York Times and Martha Stewart Living. The garden also grew: Lee now considers himself a farmdener (more than a gardener, less than a farmer), tending his farmden in a small river valley in New York's beautiful Hudson River Valley.
