Rodale's Basic Organic Gardening: A Beginner's Guide to Starting a Healthy Garden by Deborah Martin

I've been picking at this one for the better part of a month. I realized sometime in January that I needed a better garden reference than I had. I like the idea of gardening, but in practice I'm not very good at it. One doesn't really have to be in order to have a productive garden since in the end the plants want the same thing I do...for them to grow. However, I could get more out of my garden with a little guidance. So, I went looking and came up with Rodale's Basic Organic Gardening.

If I had too little information before, now I feel like I have too much. The guide is full of 'should-do's' and 'keep-in-minds.' It is half primer and half reference guide. It is, in fact, so full of information that I find it all spinning around in my head.

There are chapters on soil care, garden planning, seed starting/transplanting, and basic maintenance. These chapters are easy to read and helpful if a bit overwhelming. There are also chapters of plant indexes, beneficial and harmful insects, and trouble shooting. These chapters are organized more like a reference material and don't lend themselves to easy reading. While full of information, reading them straight through makes much of the information easy to confuse where if I were using it as a reference index for specific info would find it very useful.

Over all, I'm happy with the book and suspect it will be very helpful in the next few years, but I need time to digest it and will probably have to read it again somewhat more selectively while I'm creating specific action plans