Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I wanted to like this book. I really did. I am a hobby gardener who has been [successfully] gardening for decades. I want to move from hobby gardening towards growing as much of our food as possible. I also don't have much money to do this with, so a book that was subtitled "Growing Food in Hard Times" seemed like the perfect fit for me. First, I agree with some other reviewers about the negative tone of the book. The author seemed very self satisfied with his methods and felt that he was FAR more intelligent than anyone else out there gardening. He spends an inordinate amount of time in the book bashing everyone who holds an opinion different from his. Ironically, I agreed with a lot of what he said, but I didn't like all the negativity. Second, this book makes gardening sound *impossible* to do: - He recommends very specific kinds of fertilizers, made to his exacting specifications, full of stuff I'd never heard of [ie: "4 1/2 parts less-potent coprameal, supplemented with 1 1/2 parts tankage"] [p. 21] He goes on to explain a bit what this is - tankage is apparently ground up scraps of animals left over from slaughterhouses. OK. I have NO idea where the heck I'd find such a thing [or that I'd be willing to use it on my organic garden]. Or coprameal [I'm still not sure what this is, exactly]. - He makes it sound so incredibly hard to amend your soil in order to grow anything - in fact, after going on page after page with very specific and complicated instructions, making it sound impossible, he says that he just personally bought a truck load of top soil and had it delivered to his farm and dumped on his garden - at a cost of $1,200 for one load. I don't know about you, but "hard times" for me would mean not having $1,200 laying around to drop on top soil for my garden... [heck, I don't have $1,200 laying around during "good times". LOL!] Third, he goes on and on about balancing soil nutrients - if you don't do exactly what he says and use exactly the ratios of the products he recommends, your soil is going to produce nutrient deficient plants and you are going to end up with all kinds of health problems. He includes a nasty anecdote about his friend "Ken", an avid gardener whom he feels has unbalanced soil nutrients. As a result, in the author's opinion, Ken's children have messed up teeth and jaw development. [Which was just a discourteous and mean spirited story to share, in my opinion]. Personally, I just don't think Mother Nature is this stupid that she needs us to "fix" her with some very specific equation of additives - I'm sure soil deficiencies CAN develop, but people have been gardening and surviving just fine for millennia without his special mix of soil amendments.... my grandparents did. Fourth, his chapter on plowing up the garden bed made me bonkers. The only method he recommends is hand digging the whole garden to a depth of 12 inches [I'm planning a really big garden where there is existing sod - this would take me forever the first time around]. If you do anything else, he feels that you are doomed to failure. If you use a tiller or a plow, he says you are going to create a "plow pan" 5 or 7 inches under the soil that is going to form a rock hard surface that will keep your plant roots from growing deep enough. So tillers and plows are BAD. Ironically, 4 pages later, he ridicules the raised bed method, which requires 2 feet of digging down, according to him. He feels that digging that deep is a waste of effort, and says "Over time the second foot will become looser without any extra effort on your part as worms transport the organic matter you put into the surface, and as plant nutrients leach into the subsoil [which chemically loosens clay...]. [p. 57] So, worms and leaching work in a raised bed but somehow won't work with a bed you've tilled mechanically? Maybe I'm missing something here, but that seemed contradictory to me. Fifth, to do everything he says you have to do, you are going to need to spend a *fortune* on soil amendments, special things to balance your soil nutrients, and maybe bringing in several loads of top soil [at $1200 a load]. And then, according to him, the seeds or seedlings you are trying to use are probably from an "unethical" seed seller and won't work anyway. Sixth, just about everything in the book is negative. If you buy seedlings, you are an idiot. If you buy seeds, you are an idiot. [He gives a very short list of seed companies that he considers "OK" to buy from, but this is based on research he did in *1989* - two of my favorite seed companies - Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co and Select Seeds - weren't even founded back then. Companies that did exist back then have probably significantly changed in the last 25 years. I did not think this list was useful.] If you start your own seedlings, you are probably going to do it wrong [because you are an idiot?]. Only buy the expensive tools because quality is better than low price, and he knows you are going to want to buy the cheap tools [because you are an idiot?]. [I agree about buying quality, but the condescension was obnoxious.] The book just goes on and on with negative things that can and will go wrong with this garden venture. Seventh, I just didn't think the book was written well. In some places it is incredibly dry. In other places, the author just goes off on long rants about how he disagrees with this or that. I found this book difficult to read on many levels. There IS some good information here. It was good advice to be cautious about where we buy seeds from, for example. Some of the information on growing individual vegetables was helpful. If the book could have been cleaned of the negativity and rants, I think it would have been worth my time [though still demoralizing and discouraging]. The author is unquestionably knowledgeable, but his delivery was very much lacking, in my opinion. I am completely mystified as to how this book got so many glowing reviews... At the end of this book, I basically have the feeling that I can't possibly grow anything, it will be completely impossible to have a successful garden, and I should not even bother. That was not exactly the "inspiration" that I was looking for when I bought this book. [Updated 1/4/2015 to add: I FINALLY found the book I wanted on this subject: "The Resilient Gardener" by Deppe. If you were looking for a book that actually teaches you to feed yourself in simple and straightforward terms, THAT is the book you want. :) I LOVE it! So extremely helpful!]