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Editorial Review Book Description
Here's a fully revised edition of this regional bestseller- considered to be the definitive food gardening manual for the Pacific Northwest.This is the bible of vegetable gardening for anyone turning the soil west of the Cascade Mountains-from Western British Columbia to Northern California. It includes the basics of soil, when best to plant, the art of composting, what varieties grow well here, which seed companies are reliable, information on handling pests, and an extensive section on the cultivation of each vegetable. ... Read more Customer Reviews (14) 
Best guide for Northwest veggie gardening!
Solomon's guide is not only hugely informative, it's also fun to read and I have termed him to friends as the gonzo gardener.He will guide you through soil preparation, best vegetable varieties, fertilizing and composting.We have 1/3 acre and we have dedicated certain areas to gardening and have really enjoyed our successes (and learned from our failures).The organic fertilizer recipe give by Solomon is very good and have we only really needed to supplement my tomatoes with Dr. Earth tomato/vegitable for its calcium content.This guide is ambitious yes but I wasn't put off by it as a novice gardener and now that I am the garden expert of my friends I am happy to recommend it.This book will guide you through the basics as well as the details of organic gardening in the maratime Northwest.
Most likely the only vegetable gardening book you'll need.
Most of the previous reviews contained all the information about this book you'll need to make your decision to purchase or not to purchase.
Without a doubt I concider this my best gardening book. And just wanted to get my five stars posted and bow to the author for a great work! Thanks, Steve.
A book that will be referenced over and over again
The first time I read this book, I glazed over the section on soils (too involved - I originally thought).The rest of the book was far more interesting since I was more concerned about the best watering techniques, laying out the garden, organic methods, specific instructions for different crops, etc.Since then I've read the soils section at least a half dozen times and am astounded at how simple the formulas are and what a difference it can make.This is a book that will be referenced over and over again.
Recent OSU Master Gardener Graduate
I recently completed OSU's Master Gardener course and this title was recommended as supplemental reading.Further enticed by Amazon's low price, I purchased it and found it to be a very comprehensive and informative handbook for our unique maritime climate here in the Northwest.Unfortunately, most books about gardening are written for regions with more cooperative weather than our constant November-March rains and our extended winter periods where we never see the sun.How refreshing to read information that is relevant to where we live, written by someone who has personally compiled data on test gardens and founder of the wonderful Territorial Seed Company (www.territorial-seed.com).
That being said, I will add that while the author's personal asides were occasionally amusing, I found him mostly self-congratulatory and sometimes downright insulting.I also found his extended passages about taking on the 'plant's point of view' and the "magic" of the garden (he suggests that some people are able to make homespun soil amendments work by sheer force of will, much like Dumbo's magic feather) completely irrelevant and frankly quite ridiculous.It was these digressions and others like them throughout the book that has prevented me from giving the book five stars.As has been noted by other reviewers, the author uses a 1000 sq foot garden as his standard, a highly unlikely proposition in a city garden.Obviously the techniques described in the book would be no different if applied to a smaller garden, or could easily be scaled back.
The one essential book for the Northwest vegetable garden.
Steve Solomon, who founded Territorial Seed Company in 1980, is arguably the world's leading authority on non-commercial-scale organic vegetable gardening in the Pacific Northwest.Mr. Solomon has experimented with all of the variables in vegetable gardening, in our mild Maritime climate, and he reports the results with an admirable degree of honesty and integrity.His book - plus the Territorial Seed catalog - is all that's needed to achieve excellent garden results (for the first few years) with the least input of capital and labor.
That said, I've gardened in Seattle for 15 years, and Mr. Solomon's book has two serious flaws:
1. As other reviewers have noted, Mr. Solomon is dismissive of city gardening on a 200 or 400-square-foot plot.The city gardener must sift through many chapters of advice that applies only to homestead gardens of 1/2 acre or more.
2. After a few years the organic gardener will begin to experience mysterious crop failures - seeds that fail to germinate.Mr. Solomon attributes this failure to symphylan infestation - I suspect that soil-borne seed pathogens (Pythium, Rhizoctonia, etc.) may also play a part - but in any case, this book does not offer any viable solution for the CITY gardener.We city gardeners can hardly afford to garden on only half of our too-small plot, leaving the other half fallow for 3 or 4 years, waiting for the soil to return to equilibrium.(The Seattle Tilth trial gardens have suffered this fate, with no solution in sight.)
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