Practical Gardener's Guide to Growing Vegetables, Fruit and Herbs

View other editions of Practical Gardener's Guide to Growing Vegetables, Fruit and Herbs.
View books by Richard Bird.

A BEAUTIFULL BOOK, BUT ERRORNOUS!!! - Rated
This book on the face of it has some very nice practical pictures and illustrations. However, this is not one useful for the novice.

Flicking through it, I have already found an inexcusable error. It states that Winter squashes can only be stored for up to three weeks. Okay so this is a typo and they probably mean three months, however, three months is still wrong. I have half a dozen winter squashes I grew myself 6 months ago waiting healthilly and patiently to be devoured in the dining room.
Some winter squashes are even storable for up to a year in ideal conditions (without the use of a freezer). See winter squash 'nice long' in the Organic Gardening Catalogue, highly recommended for both organic and non-organic gardeners.

In the scientific and factual world, books and papers (scientific particularly) are supposed to be proof read by an expert and this kind of mistake should have been picked up on!

Basically, if you are new to the world of growing your own food avoid this book like the plague until you know your stuff, only then would I highly recommend one for the bookshelf as it has some useful planning ideas and prep advice that I know to be correct.

My advice to the author: bring out another edition and get several experts to really proof read it and not ones who just say they have done so to shut you up.

This advice comes from someone who spent most of his working life in a garden centre, turns his garden into an allotment every year and reads heavilly on the subject (numerous books and four different veg magazines per month (expensive but worth it, I like to keep up to date and there's always something new to learn).