Comments on: The Truth About Organic Gardening: Book Review

By: june

june — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:36:58 +0000

Thanks for reviewing this book! Its now on my wish list. My husband and I have often gotten into mini squabbles about what is organic. He’ll often value my opinion more if I have a print resource to back it up. So this will be a great book for both of us!

By: Nan Ondra

Nan Ondra — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:30:57 +0000

Excellent review, Kathy, as we’ve come to expect from you. I can see that I definitely need to check out both of Jeff’s books!

By: Dee/reddirtramblings

Dee/reddirtramblings — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:58:18 +0000

Really good review Kathy. I have peonies, and they aren’t massed together, and they still get botrytis. This is in spite of the fact that I clean up their debris too. I’m not taking my peonies out, and I hope you don’t either. I love them for their early spring cheer.~~Dee

By: Carol, May Dreams Gardens

Carol, May Dreams Gardens — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:53:14 +0000

I enjoyed your review and now I want to read this book. I don’t have problems with botrytis on my peonies, thank goodness. One of them is one that my Dad grew on the side of our house and it would not be possible for me to get rid of it no matter what disease it ended up with. Not Possible.

Would this make a good read for the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club sometime, maybe in the fall?

By: Benjamin

Benjamin — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:48:30 +0000

Very helpful review, Kathy. Thanks. Since I’ve just started my 1500 square foot garden, I’m concerned how to start right, to get myself in the habit of doing x and x every year. Sometimes I think that yes, which is better, organic or the other? I especially struggle with this as concerned to my silly lawn, wanting it to be green enough out front to fit in and not let on what’s going on behind the fence.

By: Annie in Austin

Annie in Austin — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:21:36 +0000

Hi Kathy – I now have a visual of you squinting with covered ears.

The book sounds interesting but after nearly 9 years here, I wonder how much of the specific advice would work in Austin… a substantial proportion of the available organic garden products are made in Texas, and advice for us tends to not be found in the main paragraphs, but in the comments attached to an asterisk.

Your post does make me wonder about my success in avoiding peony botrytis in Illinois. I’d assumed that cutting the stems below ground each fall and getting rid of the foliage made the difference. Maybe the real reason was that I didn’t like peony hedges and planted them all over the place, making small vignettes with other plants.

No way could I rip out that 20-year old ‘Bev”, but I might use a poacher’s spade in fall to sneak out a chunk from one edge, cut off the stems, wash off the soil and plant it somewhere else as an experiment.

Unfortunately there can be no experimenting with peonies in Austin!

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

By: Gail

Gail — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:39:25 +0000

I am with you on the not wanting to dig up your peony bed…right now I am trying to save the phlox in my garden. something is disfiguring this beautiful plant and I just can’t bear to dig them all up and trash them.

As others have said, this is a great review. Very personal and real.

Gail
clay and limestone

By: Ellis Hollow

Ellis Hollow — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:59:38 +0000

I’m ambivalent on the issue of garden ’sanitation’. I’m sure with certain diseases under certain conditions, it helps. But I tend to also think that inoculum (like weed seed) is pretty much ubiquitous.

Sure, you can reduce the amount of inoculum. But if the conditions are right for disease (susceptible host, right temperature and moisture), the spores are there ready to exploit the situation.

So being a somewhat laissez-faire gardener, I tend not to fret too much about dead plant material and whether it died of ‘natural causes’ or was killed outright before its time. If I had Kathy’s botrytis problem, I might behave differently.

I wish I could remember the title so I could quote it properly, but a fairly recent book on insects in the garden (I seem to recall by some California entomologists?) recommended not being so darn fastidious. If you want to develop populations of beneficial insects, it’s best to leave most of the dead plant material right where it falls. So if you keep things clean to prevent diseases, are you at the same time setting your garden up for insect infestations?

By: mss @ Zanthan Gardens

mss @ Zanthan Gardens — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:38:27 +0000

Great review! I love your confession, “I confess to plugging my ears and squinting my eyes shut…” What an honest and personal take on reading a book. Your writing is so refreshing, a great example of why blogs are so interesting compared with many garden magazines which are essentially infomercials.