| Customer Reviews
Beginners Beware At best, this is a book an experienced gardener might pick up at the library to glean a few useful ideas about biointensive gardening (I found nothing that isn't presented better elsewhere). At worst, unsuspecting beginners will think this book is the authoritative source it claims to be, try to implement it's convoluted techniques, and fail miserably.^M
A Good Introduction to Biointensive Gardening A revised edition of Lazy-bed Gardening (1993), The Sustainable Vegetable Garden is a concise and easy-to-read introduction to concept of biointensive gardening. Essentially a resurrection of ancient farming practices, biointensive gardening is supposed to increase yields (the authors claim four times higher than one should expect from a standard garden) while maintaining a garden ecosystem that preserves the vitality of the soil for future gardens and generations of gardeners. For one to be able to subscribe to the system that Jeavons and Cox outline, one really has to have a sizeable garden plot, so that one can grow calorie-crops as well as compost-crops, so in this respect the book is not suited for the typical urban backyard gardener with only a few square meters of plot. One thing that really put me off was the suggested calculation method for determining the numer of seeds that need to be planted in order to attain an optimal yield-rate. Overall, though, I really enjoyed this book, and it has led me to rethink my approach to gardening.
An Engineer Plants Onions This is neither a book for beginners nor a book for experienced gardeners. There are some valuable concepts, quickly presented, but the book fails to connect with real life. | 
