How to Get Your Lawn and Garden Off Drugs: Pesticide Free Gardening for a Healthier Environment

This book was is intended for Canadian audiences, but is sufficiently general to apply just about anywhere. It focuses on the absolute basics, laid out in easy to digest steps. It is relatively un-preachy, confining itself to facts rather than extended rhetoric on the merits of 'toxin-free living.'There are 5 simple chapters, plus glossary, resource listings (for Canadians), and additional reading recommendations at the back. After a brief introduction to organic gardening principles, the author proceeds to cover the ABCs of soil chemistry, maintenance & development, lawn care, garden care, basic trouble-shooting, and how to switch from commercial regimens to an organic schedule of feeding and maintenance.What I liked most about this book was that it was a standalone work with a realistic viewpoint about what most people will achieve through organic gardening. Many authors seem to see organic gardening as the first step to saving the world. Too often cracking the cover of a book on organic gardening is perceived as an invitation for a two hundred page lecture on eco-philosophy ending in an overly-optimistic promise that Followers of the Way will soon be harvesting 5 lb tomatoes & have the most perfect yards on the block. Rubin does an excellent job of sticking to the point, which would be soil preparation, garden planning, lawn care, insects, fungi, and plant diseases.