Customer Reviews

Vegetable Gardening in Florida

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Being new to gardening it has been a chore finding books I can understand about gardening. Many make promises but don't deliver information in a senible manner and I end up more frustrated than satisfied. This one delivers. The thing I love about this book is its simple easily understandable format. The book is loaded with color photographs that help me distinguish the different kinds of problems plants suffer from, making it a simple process in learning how to care for my plants and exactly what may be the problem.

I like the way he layed out the charts in the back of the book. One section for cold crops and one section for winter crops. He even has a section for herbs! It takes the work out of thumbing through page after page, book after book, of when, what and where I can grow things. Thanks, Mr. Stephens, for taking the mystery out of vegetable gardening and making my life a little easier and a lot simplier.

This beautifully illustrated book steers clear from all the "professional jargon" and actually allows you to get outside and garden!

In a nicely uncluttered way, it shows you through the use of simple illustrated tables WHEN to plant each type of vegetable and WHERE. It makes gardening fun again.

Hooray! No longer does one have to spend days reading about soils, biological make-up, beneficial bugs and the other things that make vegetable gardening seem like some mysterious technological feat.

As a new gardener, I was happy to read this easy to follow guide. It answers the basic questions, and gives great timelines to follow. It has full color pictures, that really help you to visualize what they are talking about in the text. It is not a fancy garden book, with all the scientific "mumbo jumbo". Just easy directions to follow for success. So far my garden looks great and I have had no problems thanks to this book.

I was not impressed with this book, especially as a beginner gardener. It is pretty poorly written. I found myself having to look up many terms as they aren't defined in the book. Little context or explanation is given to seemingly major aspects of gardening. For instance, when talking about fertilizing in containers, the author says, "the nutrient solution must be added and drained in the container once or twice a day." What nutrient solution? For what plants? What ratios? It never says.

I hoped the book would give special attention to vegetables grown in Florida such as peppers. The only special attention peppers get are 4 paragraphs in the back of the book that talk about how many peppers will feed a family; that they should be transplanted "with care"; and that they are still edible after turning red (ya thanks!) Note that earlier in the book on pg 43, there is a chart about how easily veggies transplant. Peppers are in the "easily survive transplanting" category as opposed to "require care." Since the back of the book says to transplant the peppers "with care," I see this as a basic contradiction in the book.

I'm not really sure this book will help anyone, novice or expert. It's not detailed enough to help an expert and it's not clear enough to help a beginner. With the author's poor grammar and lack of context, you spend more time scratching your head about what he means than you do learning anything.

I usually prefer to buy a good book to learn how to do any new thing but so far with gardening I find the internet to be a better source of information.

Katrina Vitkus, illustrator, made this book work. Page vi says the photos came from sources including Marshall Breeze, the UF/IFAS Entomology Department, the National Garden Bureau, Marcia K Oehler, Dole, The Herb Garden, and (of course) Katrina Vitkus. This book has ten pages of the most useful photos of garden pests I've ever seen. That section is followed by four pages of information on recognizing diseases, and then a photo of what "root knot" looks like. The information on each disease is brief, and limited to how to recognize each disease or fungus, but is very clear--especially in conjunction with the photos. The photo of nine kinds of tomatoes strongly reminded me of the lovely photos in the Baker Creek heirloom seed catalog, which I didn't order early enough this year.

Apart from the pest and disease photos, this is best seen as an idea book. There are some good charts here, but if you want hard, complete information about growing a specific plant under specific conditions, you should look at Tom MacCubbin's books.

This is the go-to book for Florida gardening! If you are new to FL and want to raise vegies, this is the book you need. Even if you have gardening expertise, you will need some more info for Florida gardening as it is quite different!

Just waht you need if you want to start a garden in Florida. Sandy soil is a big problem along with figuring out what time of year to plant. This book does just that and is filled with lots of good information on every thing you might want or need to know to get your gardent started in a tropical place like Florida.

This book is a must have for anyone who wants to know what and when to plant in Florida. It is a very user friendly book and has lots of good photos along with lots of good information. My porch roof leaked and mine got wet and ruined and I immediately ordered a new one. I would not be without it!

I ordered this for my dh for Christmas and he LOVES it. We've just begun vegetable gardening and it's a wonderful resource. He was thrilled to get it.

This book has the kind of information you need to grow your own food in Florida. Growing vegetables in South Florida has many unique requirements - this book helps you understand what those can be and how to mitigate issues you come across in your day to day gardening.
Good book overall - it could be a bit longer with more detail in some areas but still a very useful addition to your library.