Review by Martha Quillen
Gardening – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine –
Culinary Herbs for Short-Season Gardeners
by Ernest Small and Grace Deutsch
Published 2002 by Mountain Press
ISBN 0-87842-453-9
Organic Gardening in Cold Climates
by Sandra Perrin
Published in 1991, 2002 by Mountain Press
ISBN 0-87842-451-2
IF I WERE REALLY GOING to do a just review, I’d wait a couple of years and see if I could improve my garden by following the recommendations in these books. But in case you need advice now….
Organic Gardening offers advice on companion planting, composting, fertilizing, and preparing beds and soil for planting, plus tending, weeding, harvesting, seed collection, and pest control. But I expected something more.
Since this book is called Organic Gardening, I expected a lot of advice on how to control insects, mildews, fungus and the like the natural way, and Perrin’s book does offer some suggestions. It lists the common culprits, and gives some useful advice on using diatomaceous earth, insecticidal soaps, organic insecticides, predator species, and good quality seed to alleviate problems. But the author doesn’t really divide up the plants and write about their specific problems.
When I got this book, I hoped it would offer some expert opinions on some of the advice I’ve heard over the years — things like using garlic, cooking oil, mild dish soap, and the like to get rid of aphids and mites; or using a very weak solution of baking soda and water on leaves damaged by mildew. I thought it would be nice to know whether these commonly lauded household treatments are good remedies or not. But if that’s what you want, Organic Gardening doesn’t offer it.
Actually, this book tends to tell you how to avoid problems in the first place by using disease-resistant seeds and rotating crops.
Also, this book is totally about vegetables, which is all right, but I’d like to know more about tending fruit trees without using chemicals or pesticides (and rotating trees just isn’t an option). I’d also like to know more about tending flowers — especially roses and columbines, and I’d like some advice on getting rid of elms in the garden, along fences, and near foundations without poisoning the entire biosphere. (And yes, I’ve heard of a lot of elm-removing methods, but most of them sound ominously toxic — or downright explosive).
I’d also like to know if there’s anything you can plant with strawberries to make them less likely to attract ants, beetles, bears — and even dogs. My wish list, however, is definitely more than Organic Gardening offers.
All in all, most of the information in Organic Gardening is fairly basic, and some of it can already be found on the backs of seed packets and free at your local nursery. But even so, it’s a pretty straight-forward publication about vegetable gardening which offers some good, practical information in one convenient package. So if you need information to get your garden going, Organic Gardening could be helpful, and it’s written in clear, easy-to-follow prose. But it’s not particularly inspiring.
CULINARY HERBS for Short-Season Gardeners, on the other hand, is actually fun to read. Culinary Herbs doesn’t really offer any better advice than Organic Gardening on how to plant and protect your plants, but who cares? It’s beguiling.
Herbs gives several pages of information on each herb, including a description, cultivation notes, harvesting notes, culinary uses, craft uses, medicinal uses, and cautions (which include harmful reactions and allergies), plus information on relatives of the herbs, and bizarre historical facts and strange anecdotes about them. The book is illustrated in full-color, and the information is fascinating.
For instance, Culinary Herbs gives a whole new meaning to not having a green thumb. Did you know that Angelica was once believed to be the only herb that witches didn’t use? Or that growing Angelica could be used as a defense against accusations of practicing witchcraft? Or that Rosemary was believed to grow only in the gardens of the righteous?
And this book isn’t just for herb gardeners, either. It should be of interest to everyone who eats herbs. For instance, did you know that you can eat hops shoots like you would asparagus? Or that pregnant women should avoid several kinds of herb teas and shouldn’t eat dishes containing juniper berries? Or that many, many herbs act as diuretics?
Or that lavender oil is sometimes used to make tea, even though it’s a narcotic poison and may induce convulsions and death in large doses?
And for those who don’t grow gardens and don’t even like to eat herbs, there’s still a lot of interesting trivia here. For instance, did you know that Canada is the world’s major producer of mustard seed? Or that the name “Coriander” comes from the Greek word, “koros,” for “bug” because the herb supposedly smells like bed bugs? Or that hangmen used to eat catnip roots before an execution because it was believed that the leaves could make kind people mean? And for those who don’t do too well at trivia, sage was once said to impart wisdom and improve memory, and chervil was reputed to improve failing memory.
If you want to grow herbs, there’s information in Culinary Herbs for Short Season Gardeners to get you started. If you don’t want to grow herbs, there’s information to help you eat them. And if you don’t want to eat herbs, there’s information to entertain you. This volume is more than just a how-to gardening book, it’s diverting and attractive and might even make a great gift for some of those impossible-to-shop-for friends and relatives.
–Martha Quillen