Don't get this book if you are interested in learning how to garden. That is not the book's purpose, and Jeff Ball even states that you should go out and get a good reference or three on gardening, and goes so far as to recommend some. The focus of this book is how to save money by raising your own food, even if you only have a small back yard. There are lots of tables that show how much supplies cost and the value of the food you'll produce, but these are of course woefully out of date given the book's 1983 publication date. And cost savings is probably not most people's impetus for gardening today anyway.
A lot of the book is about planning rather than doing, and treats broad subjects (like "Saving Seeds" and "Storing Vegetables in the Winter" so briefly (a page or two) that it's hardly worth reading. There is a helpful section in the appendix that lists the ideal germination and growing temperatures for common vegetables, but that information is easily found on-line and hardly worth the price of the book. If you want to learn how to plan, implement, harvest, and store a garden that will feed your family all year, get Dick Raymond's Gardening Year and save your money on this one.
A lot of the book is about planning rather than doing, and treats broad subjects (like "Saving Seeds" and "Storing Vegetables in the Winter" so briefly (a page or two) that it's hardly worth reading. There is a helpful section in the appendix that lists the ideal germination and growing temperatures for common vegetables, but that information is easily found on-line and hardly worth the price of the book. If you want to learn how to plan, implement, harvest, and store a garden that will feed your family all year, get Dick Raymond's Gardening Year and save your money on this one.
