The Organic Home Garden by Patrick Lima

Last year, I'd received an advance copy of this book from Five Rivers Publishing, an independent Canadian publisher, and I enjoyed it very much. I just realized that I'd neglected to post a review then, but now seems an opportune time, as I'm hoping to start work on my garden again, as soon as the piles of snow melt away!

I’ve kept a small vegetable garden in my backyard for the past 20 years. Some years are better than others, but I feel I could do more to have a more consistently successful garden. That's why I was excited to receive this book from LibaryThing's Early Reviewers program. Also, the author Patrick Lima used to write for Harrowsmith Country Life magazine, which I often turned to for recipes and gardening tips before publication ceased in the 90's.

The first thing I noticed was that this book is not like the other gardening books I own which I use as reference books. This one reads more like a memoir with plenty of useful advice. Reading it is like having a cosy chat with an enthusiastic gardening guru brimming with knowledge that he wants to share. At first I found the book disappointing because of the lack of diagrams, checklists and the like that I normally see in gardening reference books. (I must note that I had received an electronic copy of the book; it's possible that the print copy contains more of these elements.) Then, I just decided to accept it for what it is: an inspirational account of one person’s gardening experiences that, in the end, gave me a lot of information and ideas to ponder over when I start my vegetable garden this spring. Even though the author tries to give general time frames for gardening activities, the book seems best for the cooler parts of North America. A bonus is the collection of recipes that use the bounty from the garden.