Organic Gardening Book Reviews: The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food

Posted by Katie Elzer-Peters
March 17th, 2009
Filed in Organic Book Reviews
Tags: books, garden planning, vegetables

With my new vegetable gardening project this spring, I have been reading a bunch of gardening books.  You name it, I have it or have read it.  I personally helped Chris select the books for the Organic Gardening Bookstore.  They are all good ones.  It is my mission to eventually review them all.  This is review number two, so it will be a while! (Side note: I actually bought this book at the Cracker Barrel.  I couldn’t believe they actually had books I might want to read there. I love their pecan pancakes, but books?)

The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food

Published by Storey Press, originally written by Tanya L.K. Denckla and published under the name “The Organic Gardener’s Home Reference.”

The title is a mouthfull.  Thankfully, the information in this big book is much easier to swallow than the big name.  One of the blurbs on the back of this attractive edition is from Ed Smith, author of The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible, a classic gardening reference.  He says “If it isn’t in this book, you don’t really need to know it.”  Pretty high praise coming from someone who has his own highly recommended vegetable gardening book.  I tend to agree with Mr. Smith.  From the stack of books I took out into the garden with me last weekend to plant, I referenced this one much more than any of the others.  The design of the book, almost as much as the information contained within it, makes it a must-have reference for vegetable gardeners.  The illustrations in the book are all beautiful woodcuts by Stephen Alcorn.   Cindy McFarland did the art direction.  Together with Tanya Denckla’s text, the elements come together as a reference that is as fun to read as it is useful.

Information Layout

The book is divided into six long chapters.  Chapter 1 gives an overview of organic gardening techinques.  Chapters two through four have details about vegetables, fruits and nuts, and herbs, presenting the information in standardized, chart formats.  This is great because you know exactly where to look for the information you need, after you have reviewed a few vegetables.  Finding the plant you are looking for is easy, becaus the names of the plants are in something like 72 point font along the edge of the pages.  You can flip through and easily find what you are looking for.  For each plant, the book includes the following information:

• Name (scientific and common)
• Family
• Summary of growing
• Optimum Growing Temperature
• Soil and Water needs
• Measurements for planting, mature plants and spacing
• Pests
• Diseases
• Allies
• Incompatibles
• Seed starting times
• Storage requirements
• Harvesting
• Descriptions of selected cultivars and varieties

Organic Pest and Disease Control

In addition to the encyclopedia of plant information, Chapter Five is a comprehensive guide to organically managing problems in the garden.  Becoming familiar with the information in this section will help you learn how to identify plant diseases (different types of spots, wilts, mosaics and other viruses), pests, and other problems.  The section includes information on identification, location of occurance, plant hosts and treatment options for almost every conceivable pest and disease.  You might think that the absence of color photographs of each issue would be a detriment to the effectiveness of this section, but it is not.  The author is quite descriptive, making up for the lack of color photographs.

Allies and Incompatibles

I particularly like Chapter Six, the section with information about allies and incompatibles.  I am trying to grow my garden so that plants help each other fight off pest and disease problems.  The charts listing allied plants and incompatible plants proved very useful as I was planting my early crops in anticipation of later crops.  (Growing nasturtiums where I plan to plant cucumbers (if they ever sprout!) and sweet peas where I will later plant tomatoes.)  Not only do the charts list compatible plants, additional information on how the plants help each other, which pests and diseases the ally plants deter, and the mechanism by which they do so is included.

I would recommend The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food for anyone who is venturing into vegetable gardening for the first time, or the first time in a new area.  If you are making the transition to organic vegetable gardening, the information about organically controlling gardening problems is invaluable.