Tuesday, April 22, 2008 | by nathan

The New Seed Starter’s Handbook by Nancy Bubel

I wanted something to help me get started again, to help me to believe in gardening after Sam ate all my plants. This book was, in a lot of ways, exactly what I needed; full of helpful, practical advice that was really easy to follow.

The problem, however, with buying any kind of hobbyist volume - even one that professes to be for beginners - is that it’s written by expert hobbyists. In this case, Nancy Bubel is an excellent gardener, but she is an excellent gardener in part because she owns a large tract of land and because she makes a living from doing this. Hence, she has almost unlimited funds and free time to care for a garden, and the book almost seems to be written for people who have the same kind of time to invest.

Fact is, I don’t have time to try eighteen different types of compost, and I really don’t have the money or yard space to do some of the more elaborate setups she describes. As with many gardening books, she offers a lot of advice that should perhaps come with a disclaimer, something like, "Plants want to grow. That’s why they exist - to grow, to flower, to produce fruit, and, finally, to produce seeds." Instead, by supplying a lot of really elaborate ways of caring for plants, from very specific, circuitous ways of layering the soil in one’s garden to how to build drip-irrigation systems, she seems to imply that anything you put in the ground will rot and die if you don’t follow her advice.

Still, overall I’d absolutely have to recommend the guide. It definitely helped me as I restarted all my seeds, and while I’m sitting here decrying her occasionally overly-elaborate growing methods, I did take her advice almost word-for-word when I built a growing shelf complete with grow lights. I never would’ve thought to do so in the exact way she described, so for the most part, I have to say I’m incredibly grateful to and for this book, as I think I may have a really good harvest once I start putting everything in the ground.