Customer Reviews

Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a very well written book. There are 23 chapters, each devoted to a single fruit or berry -- all of which are considered "lesser known" to at least the American gardening culture. The chapters all contain a lot of information on lore, characteristics, planting, culture, propogation, and harvest.

What is missing are: listings of particular cultivars that do well in certain regions of the country, certain microclimates, etc. Further, little attention is paid to climate in general with the exception of a few references to USDA zones.

Still, I recommend this book to you with the caution: find out (from a grower or a high-quality nursery in your area) which cultivars are known to work in your area. Consider a line drawn from Monterey CA to Jacksonville FL. For those living above this line, the only real concern is which varieties taste better. For those living below this line, you have the additional question of which varieties will bear fruit and actually survive.

Lee Reich has complied a wonderful, detailed listing of "the fruits less planted". His style is very readable and the photos and illustrations compliment the written material very well. Detailed information on plant descriptions, cultivation, propagation and recommended cultivars. His vivid plant descriptions are enough to make your mouth water, and he has purposely focused on fruits that are relatively low maintenance and disease free. Plants also vary in size, so there are options for those who use containers to those who have room for full grown trees. I enjoyed the book very much, and look forward to adding many of these plants to our homestead.

I got this book a few years ago. It is fun to read, very informative, nicely illustrated. Both my wife and me are still frequently use it and recommend it to other growers. We now have 16 of 23 fruits described in the book. Even for the fruits we knew about we learned a lot of interesting.

I've gleaned much useful information from this easily read item.

The how-to illustrations are clear and should be easily understood both by old-timers like myself and novices in the greatest hobby known to mankind, HOME GARDENING.

I found this book to be fascinating - I had never heard of more than half of these fruits and Mr. Reich's writing style made me want to order most of them. Since I am a new at-home gardener, my plans may be a bit delayed.

The book is both informative and very interesting to read - it drew me in just as any good piece of fiction might. I have already purchased copies for fellow adventurous gardeners who appeciate trying new things. I also own Mr. Reich's 'landscaping with fruit' which I recommend for an overall big picture approach to raising fruit.

Mr Reich's book is a great source of inspiration to those who want to do something different in the spaces that God has given them care over. Did you even want a hedge that you can bake a pie from? Would you like to grow a Chinese date in your side yard? Do you want to surprise your neighbors with fruits that they have never heard of? This is the book for you. Buy a copy of this book today and replace that Bradford Pear tree that blew down with a useful, beautiful fruit tree that will put a smile on everyone's face. You might also want to look into Lee's brand new book "Landscaping with Fruit"

Overall, I thought this book was excellent and contains great information on the uncommon fruits. Specific pruning recommendations for each plant are great because this info is hard to find elsewhere. I'm not giving this book 5 stars because the start of each chapter does not list the zone and size of the described plants. If this information was included, it would be much faster for me to determine which plants I could use without having to scan the chapter or search online.

I've gotten so many ideas for fun projects. I discovered that right here in Kentucky we have a large research program on pawpaws at Kentucky State University (http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/), and I've ordered several trees. The only problem is what to try next. The book is well written and, for me, more exciting that a good mystery book.

Excellent book. Learned much. Plan to expand my traditional orchard. Will keep on my reference shelf.

After reading Mr. Reich's other book (Landscaping With Fruit), i got pretty excited about trying to grow a few of the plants it discussed. However, the 2-3 page description of each was only enough to get me interested, and not enough to guide the actual selection and maintenance of the plants.

To address that problem, i got this book. It contains a subset of the fruits listed in the other book, ignoring the more common plants and instead focusing on the ones for which a gardener might be hard-pressed to find reliable information. (For example: even the edible plants expert at my local nursery had no idea juneberries were edible.)

Each chapter focuses on a specific plant, and provides a thorough overview. Everything from the history to the plant, its growing habits, cultivation techniques, soil and sun preferences, and so on are listed. For the more baffling fruits (pawpaw, medlar, etc) there are even tips on how to get to the edible parts of the fruit. A center section has 50-odd color pictures of the plants and the fruits.

What keeps the book from being perfect is that Mr. Reich has way too much information in some places, and way too little in others. In several of the chapters, there's a protracted discussion of how breeders might want to try to modify the plant to get better, hardier, or tastier fruits. I doubt many backyard gardeners have the sort of time, energy, space, money, and resources to engage in a selective breeding program. Likewise, i doubt anyone planning to engage in a selective breeding program needs a book as general as this. In other chapters, Mr. Reich wastes hundreds of words saying what a few sketches could have shown. The section on how to prune hardy kiwis was baffling, and though it did contain three very simple sketches, they only added to the confusion by having very little to do with the text. (If i'm lucky, his other book, The Pruning Book: Completely Revised and Updated, will tell me what i need to know about pruning kiwis.)

While it's easy to skip the sections discussing potential future potential breeding directions, the verbal quagmire in other sections leaves the reader certain that there's something dreadfully important buried within, if only they could untangle the words.

So, in all, if you want to try your hand at growing jujubes or beach plums or several other esoteric fruits, you'll learn a lot from this book. Unfortunately, it may not be the only book you need. And, as always, if you can, find a local knowledgeable person who can save you the trouble of finding out the hard way if any of the diseases or pests mentioned run rampant in your area.