The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control: A Complete Problem-Solving Guide to Keeping Your Garden and Yard Healthy Without Chemicals

As a farm advisor with an extensive agricultural library, I find this book tops most of the text books I have. I recommend this well-illustrated and educational book to organic crop farmers, and to organic farm inspectors and certifiers. You won't be disappointed if you purchase it.

As a Master Gardener, I get a lot of questions about insects and plant diseases in the home/backyard setting. Unfortunately, bugs have always been my weakest knowledge area, so it used to take me forever to figure out just who the culprit was and the damage it could inflict. This book has been invaluable in providing excellent pictures so that I can quickly identify the critter in question, and understandable text to know what, if anything, to do next. I highly recommend this book for novices as well as accomplished bug people.

The book was very good from a technical standpoint but more than I wanted or needed. I was looking more for the home remedies to my garden problems. Things that I would normally have in the kitchen, such as soap, garlic, pepper, etc. It did have some of those remedies but there were many more technically more complex and commercially available fixes to my garden problems. I could have gotten this information from reading the backs of compound containers at the the garden supply store.
A good and well researched book but not what I was looking because the title led me to believe it was solutions without chemicals and most of the solutions are what I consider to be chemical.

I wish I had this book before I ever started a garden. You can look up info by plant or by insect. It will tell you how to grow a certain plant, what kind of soil you need. It tells you about any problems you may have and how to deal with them. It tells you how to water each type of plant and what insects you should attract for a plant type. All and all an excellent book.

Living in the tropics, I have had frequent failures starting up my organic garden due to pests taking it over. This year I have used some tips and "natural pesticide" recipies from this book with great success. It has also helped me identify "good" versus "bad" insects so I can better assess what treatment, if any, to use. I strongly recommend this book to anyone trying to start an organic vegetable garden!