An excellent book on growing organic fruit, vegetables, and herbs. A particularly good resource if you want to grow herbs.

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Product Description

Here is the only single-volume reference that supplies all the information necessary to plant a successful organic food garden. Before it was a book, THE FACT-HUNGRY ORGANIC GARDENER was organic gardener Tanya L. K. Denckla's private database, the distillation of years of hands-on, real-life, dirt-under-the- fingernails experience in growing her own vegetables, herbs, fruits and nuts. Interest in organic gardening is increasing, and The Fact-Hungry Organic Gardener is the one book that answers all the questions that sprout up among novice, intermediate, and even experienced gardeners.

Plants are arranged in an A-to-Z format that makes it easy to pinpoint the information you need. Each entry provides specific information on planting, watering and fertilizing, when to harvest, how to store the produce - even which plants profit by getting a headstart in a greenhouse.

And fully half of the book is dedicated to organic remedies that can prevent or combat plant diseases and garden pests. Hundreds of common diseases and pests are arranged alphabetically, and each entry explains which plants are likely to be affected and how to recognize the problem, and then offers a variety of well-tested natural remedies.

This is an easy-to-read, authoritative, accessible resource that lets you find answers to questions quickly so you can spend less time skimming gardening books and more time enjoying your garden.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33930 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781580173704
• BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
• Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

From Booklist
Denckla's guide to growing organic food covers 765 varieties of vegetables, herbs, fruits, and nuts. There are instructions on temperature, soil and water needs, planting depth and space between plants, propagation, harvesting, first and last seed-starting dates, storage requirements, and support structures when needed. With each entry is a list of selected available varieties. Denckla also tells gardeners how to control 201 pests and diseases organically. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“…a practical guide to growing fruits and vegetables the organic way.” – Seattle Post- Intelligencer

 

”Denckla’s guide to growing organic food covers 765 varieties of vegetables, herbs, fruits, and nuts. There are instructions on temperature, soil and water needs, planting depth and space between plants, propagation, harvesting, first and last seed-starting dates, storage requirements, and support structures when needed. With each entry is a list of selected available varieties. Denckla also tells gardeners how to control 201 pests and diseases organically.”

 

Booklist

 

"A great gift for any vegetable gardener who prefers Earth-friendly methods."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

About the Author
Tanya L. K. Denckla is a gardener, writer, and professional mediator specializing in environmental policy. She has extensive experience in grassroots community organizing and is the former director of two non-profit organizations involved in urban and community forestry. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is a Senior Associate at the Institute for Environmental Negotiation at the University of Virginia.

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Customer Reviews

Easy to use - Rodale, move over
I have owned my copy of Rodale's classic, Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, for well over 30 years. It has been my garden bible.

But times change. Denckla has created a much handier growers' resource. In this book, she catalogues 765 varieties of vegetables, herbs, fruits and nuts and offers controls for 201 pests and diseases, but better than the numbers is the way she presents the information. For each species there is a clear, concise directory for every aspect of planting, culture and storage. It is really easy to use. The single best feature may be the planting charts for annuals that make it simple to calculate when to start the first and last seeds of the season, based on last and first frost dates. Rodale's classic will never be far away, but from now on I will pick up Denckla's first.

As an organic grower for nearly four decades and a garden columnist, I'm a pretty good judge of this genre (my own collection of garden writings came out in 2008, Garden My Heart: Organic strategies for backyard sustainability). The only place I take serious exception to Denckla's advice concerns moles, which she treats as a garden pest. Moles are garden allies, consuming vast quantities of beetle larvae and other members of the enemy camp.

Good book - very thorough and well organized
I would have given this book 5 starts except that the section on pest control, which is very important to an organic gardener names the pests and suggests control solutions but shows you no pictures of the pests so if you don't know what the various insects (or for that matter diseases) look like, that's not helpful.

Otherwise the book is well organized and contains a lot of useful information, especially in regard to what plants are allys and incompatible

Great book, but leaves out a few things
Tons of fabulous information in this book, but it unfortunately leaves out quite a few things that I am interested in growing... bananas, oranges, tangerines, avocadoes, mangoes, lemons, limes, and starfruit to name a few. It is, however, the best resource for herbs that I've seen so far.