cover image Rodale's Vegetable Garden Solver: The Best and Latest Advice for Beating Pests, Diseases, and Weeds and Staying a Step Ahead of Trouble in the Garden

Rodale's Vegetable Garden Solver: The Best and Latest Advice for Beating Pests, Diseases, and Weeds and Staying a Step Ahead of Trouble in the Garden

Fern Marshall Bradley, . . Rodale, $26.95 (472pp) ISBN 978-1-59486-308-0

This encyclopedic collection of gardening advice is, in the Rodale tradition, purely organic, albeit with a no-nonsense, 21st-century attitude. Extensive attention is given to tantalizing techniques such as cover cropping and dealing with deer damage (including what to protect, repellants and scare devices, and 10 kinds of antideer fences). The vegetable entries are equally comprehensive, with sections detailing "Crop Basics," "Secrets of Success," "Preventing Problems," "Regional Notes" and "Troubleshooting Problems." Drawings of pest-infested plants are helpful, and Bradley covers the gamut of solutions, from timed planting to crop rotation, barriers to repellants, wisely advising prevention as the first tactic and using (organic) insecticides as a last resort. The book is extensively illustrated with attractive drawings, although the choice of what to depict is sometimes mysterious; the image of flowering arugula is lovely, for example, although readers may wish they could see a picture of, say a disease called "aster yellows." the "new growth... pale and bushy, forming a witch's broom." For any gardener who needs to keep track of "crucial care" for squash, how to control cucumber beetles with a vacuum cleaner or any of the myriad details that arise every day in the garden, this book is a must. (Feb.)