Taken from Eclectic Gardener @ www.teachinggarden.org
Written by Alan Hickman

During the battle of the beetles, in last year’s potato patch at the teaching garden, we hand-picked thousands and thousands of Colorado beetles and their grubs and eggs from the developing haulms. We took off all the Colorado beetles we could find but there was a whole zoo of odd-looking creatures inhabiting the area, all of them with either too many legs or not enough legs to be cute, and these we left unmolested.

It was not that anyone was particularly enamored with miscellaneous invertebrates, it was just sheer ignorance. Nobody knew which ones were pests and which ones were useful predators. In an effort to identify which creatures were what, everything that stood still long enough was photographed and the images were posted on the school’s website www.teachinggarden.org. Of course, nobody responded with enlightenment and ignorance prevailed.

A couple of weeks back when I received an email from Lone Pine Publishing, offering a copy of their latest publication Garden Bugs of Ontario (ISBN 978-1-55105-508-4) for review, it seemed like a marriage made in heaven. I’d got bugs to identify and they’d got a book to tell me what they were.

At first things looked promising. A quick flip of the pages revealed lots of large coloured paintings of insects, beetles and other things that I wouldn’t like to meet on a dark night if they were my size. Almost the first page is a ‘Quick Reference Guide’, a pictorial arrangement by what the specimen looks like; dragonfly-looking things, pages 42 - 48, grasshopper things with long back legs, pp. 40 - 51, weevily things with long noses, pp. 102 - 105. I figured that I could cope with that.

When I get a book, the first things I read are the preface, the foreword and the introduction; these are the sections which explain, among other things, why the book was written, what it is about, who the book is written for, and bring the reader up to speed with the basic knowledge required to begin reading what is to follow. These sections are like the steps which lead up to a building’s front door.

Not only does the pre-text prepare the reader, it serves also to remind the people writing, illustrating and editing the work just what the book is to be used for and who is going to use it. Garden Bugs of Ontario has neither preface nor foreword and the lack of formal definition, of what and for whom, is apparent throughout the book. One has the feeling of a constant pull-pull between people who are writing informative text and editors who are trying to dumb it down.

Not knowing who the reader is results in text like: "little garden beasties", "mini superheroes ... battling the evil pests" and keeping "our entomology buddies happy", language which a purple dinosaur might use to talk to six-year-olds, and: "The nervous system consists of a ventral nerve cord with a series of ganglia. In the head concentrations of these ganglia form a small brain." which might read well in first year university.

The first line drawing in the book is of an earthworm carefully annotated with mouth, anus, segment, prostomium, clitellum and setae. What’s a prostomium?

Any worthwhile technical book has an extensive glossary, so, flip to the back of the book and ... nothing. Look in the table of contents and a glossary is listed. Go to page 208 and there it is, all two pages of it. Unfortunately, the forty-five defined words don’t include worm bits or ‘ganglia’.

I did read the entire twenty-eight pages of the ‘introduction’ but things didn’t get any better. The extensive "IPM Decision-Making Process" (Integrated Pest Management) is better suited for a student working towards a diploma in horticulture than an average home gardener. The piece on pesticides is an informative and balanced assessment, quite lacking the hysteria often associated with the subject, but it is the last thing in the pre-text and only the most dogged of readers are likely to get that far.

Lacking any guidance from the publisher as to the purpose of the volume, I tested the book using my own rather simplistic need. In our picture gallery, to which should I say: "Hello little bug, welcome to the garden", and which should I knock off the plant and stamp on?

I really didn’t need the book to tell me that there were grasshoppers or Colorado beetles, and I really wonder if whoever wrote: "The easiest and most effective means of suppressing this beetle is to remove the egg masses in May and June." has ever actually tried. Hand picking is backbreaking work and the beetles can lay eggs faster than anyone can find them.

That there was some sort of lady bird in the picture collection was also no surprise, but as to which one, the book was no help. What was interesting was the admission that "..lady beetles are not the best or most effective aphid predators. Store bought lady beetles disperse away from your yard shortly after release."
Apart from the foregoing three, I couldn’t identify any of our garden inmates using the book. Perilus bioculatus, a spectacular looking Colorado beetle predator, is not mentioned and I looked in vain for information on the hugely destructive Tomato Hornworm - Manduca quinquemaculata.

In all, I was disappointed. The writers and illustrators put a lot of time and talent into this book but the whole is less than the sum of its parts. For me, this book is like a quilt made of petit-point patches, each skillfully crafted by expert needle-workers, that has been tacked together by an apprentice using a bodkin and pieces of string.

Day -3 breezy and cooler with rain 5mm Winds ENE25km/h P.O.P.80%
Night -6 light rain/snow up to 1" cloudy Winds WNW17km/h P.O.P.20%