Monkey see Monkey do, I've got another book review

Katie at Gardenpunks just reviewed the perennial favorite (pun intended) Gaia's Garden, and I can't say I disagree with a single word she typed.

I like to hear myself talk, or type as it were, so it was kind of disappointed that I could not flex my more garrulous tendencies in response beyond a simple "right on, i agree, me too"

So I dug out one of my favorites to share.

The Self Sufficient Suburban Gardener by Jeff Ball is an out of print hardcover book from rodale press. Why it is out of print I will never know, perhaps it popularity during the initial print was not what rodale was hoping. It may have just been out before its time, regardless, its time has come.

While the book is by no means exhaustive, it is quite useful in one regard that I don't think has been truly filled and that is as a aerial view of sorts. It paints a roadmap of what the goal is for most of us. That being the transformation of our consumption only plots of land into something capable of providing a net gain beyond just a simple garden. Lots of people have gardens, this plan goes several steps further. This would be a great book to loan a friend who is more than a bit curious about "whats with the trees and stuff. "

Beyond its use in evangelism and outreach, it does one thing I think even converts like myself need. It breaks the whole project down into phases. Its easy to look at something like Path to Freedom and say "That is where I want to go with my life, but wow, there is a lot that needs to be done, where do I start and how do I get to steps 2,3,4 and so on."

Here's the caveat, if they wanted to make the book perfect it would have taken several volumes. It glosses over some things that really need deeper exploration. Were I to design a curriculum, this would be the trunk of the tree, and the discussion of each of the phases would require a different book to augment the material on any given branch. The basic intensive planting and bed preparation chapter needs support from something like "How to Grow more Vegetables..." The chapter about extending the seasons demands you read "Four season Harvest" to get the finer points.

That being said, as many of you may be suspecting, I love detail, charts, diagrams, deep deep detail. So perhaps a more courageous person could take this book, jump in head first, and be totally fine. But just because the roadmap is zoomed back does not make it useless. I refer to this time and time again.

It assumes the reader is convinced of the necessity of such things, and there is little beyond "save some money, eat some quality food" in terms of why these steps are necessary, if you need a convincer look elsewhere, if you need a map, look here.

Grade: A-

This actually gives me an idea, stay tuned.