Taken from Eclectic Gardener @ http://www.teachinggarden.org/
written by Alan R Hickman

With the Obamas digging up a patch of teh White House south lawn for a vegetable patch and with noticeably reviving interest on the part of home-gardeners in the growing of edibles, the latest batch of books from Lone Pine Publishing will likely prove to be good sellers.

The three books presented for review: The Canadian Edible Garden, by Alison Beck, The Canadian Garden Cookbook, by Jennifer Sayers Bajger and James Darcy, and Fruit & Berry Gardening for Canada, by Louise Donnelly and Alison Beck, all share the general features of teh garden-related series of titles being released by Lone Pine. Compact size, durable soft covers and lavish, high quality and colourful illustrations on every page, make these books hard to resist as impulse purchases.

For once, I am not going to bleat about arranging plants by grocery store names. These are books about plants which produce food so I have no problem with filing tomatoes under "T" and not under "L" for Lycopersicon.

The text headings carry both a vernacular name and the plant genus, and the indexes for both plant books are much improved on some of the previous volumes in the series, being indexed by both food an dbotanical names. Knowing which plants belong to what genus is important for a grower because closely-related plants tend to share common pests and diseases.

In hindsight, it might have been a good idea to include the family of each of the plants because the genus may not tell the whole story.

For instance, the general reader would have no indication that potatoes and tomatoes are closely related - in the family Solanaceae. They might be surprised if they follow potatoes with tomatoes, in a crop rotation and the tomatoes get infested with overwintered potato beetles.

Had there been some foresight, the Hardiness Zone and Frost Free Days maps, identical in both plant books, could have been made at least somewhat useful. About 90 per cent of the maps areas are in zones 0 to 2a. The remaining map area, with all the major population centres, is so small that it serves no practical purpose at all.

The introduction to Edible Garden offers a quick scan of general gardening practice but, when it comes to pests and disease, it simply panders to the current phobia of effective control methods.

This is not a book about cosmetics, it is about being able to put food on the table and, in real life, the choice is often quite stark: use effective pest controls or don't eat.

Integrated pest management is basic good horticultural practice. Siting appropriate plants in appropriate places and keeping them healthy makes perfectly good sense; however, if a useful sized patch of potatoes is planted and if it starts to be defoliated by Colorado beetles - as it likely will be - all the IPM will count for nothing if the last step, effective chemical control, is not available. Imagine what would happen if hospitals abandoned all their 'toxic' drugs and then told patients to just wash their hands, eat 'good' food, and eschew living in a slum.

The introduction to Fruit and Berry Gardening contains a generally practical overview of tree planting and maintenance.

"One year of staking is sufficient for almost all trees, and staking should be removed at that time." As a sentence, it sucks; but, the writermeans well and, after one growing season, most trees will certainly benefit from standing free on their own roots.

In the pruning section, the authors make a point of describing the correct way to use secateurs. " .....orient the secateurs or loppers so the blades are to the plant side of the cut and the hook is to the side of the branch or cane being removed." It may have been just good luck but the accompanying photograph shows exactly that. If anyone cares to look, the illustration on page 135 of Edible Garden is of secateurs being used backwards.

Thumbing through the Garden Cookbook 'Parsnip Breakfast Hash', with parsnips, sweet potato, red pepper and green onions, looked simple and appetizing. I substituted turkey kielbasa for back bacon - I don't eat mammals - added a couple of poached eggs and it served as a respectable supper dish.

On the following page, 'Pea and Ricotta Crostini' looked like an interesting crunchy side dish to go with the hash and I even had some basil seedlings off which I could snip a few leaves for the topping.

Halfway through the list of ingredients was "lemon oil (see p.31)" and that is where things started to unravel. Page 31 is 'Lemon Shortbread - topped Blackberry Cobbler'. There is no mention of lemon oil, and neither 'lemon oil' nor 'oil, lemon' is listed in the index.

In the introduction, the author explains that "....we've organized the recipes alphabetically by what is grown in the garden....". It sounds like a nice idea but would 'Fava Bean Risotto with Morels and Pea Vines' be arranged as F, B, M, P or V? As that particular recipe is preceded by 'Ginger Pickled Green Beans' and followed by 'Halibut with Hot and Sour Beet Relish', it seems that B, for bean and beet, was the magic letter.

If the physical arrangement of the recipes results in jarring juxtapositions, the index is both incomplete and incomprehensible.

If you want a soup recipe, don't bother looking under S: try C for Chilled or Cabbage or A for Asparagus.

All in all, the authors expertise and knowledge seem to have been subordinated to other considerations.

One is left feeling that all these books have been designed more for selling, than for using.

Day +19 sun and cloud light late afternoon drizzle Wind SW20km/h P.O.P.40%
Night +6 partly cloudy Wind WSW12km/h P.O.P.29%