Patrick Lima

I grew up helping out in my parents’ large garden, and last year I finally attempted one of my own. Some things worked (delicious bush beans through September) and others didn’t (my poor eggplant and pepper starts never got above 4 inches tall). Reading The Organic Home Garden I now have some ideas as to why some of my plants failed, what I can do differently, and other great plants to try – I can hardly wait until July to start fennel! This book was written in a very accessible way by an author who, by trial and error, now has a magnificent looking and bountiful garden. The book is nicely broken down with similar plants forming their own chapter and takes you through seeding to harvest, with a few recipes at the end for your bounty. There were several pictures throughout the book; I wish these had been labeled better and been more plentiful. As a gardening novice I found this book to be very helpful, but a more experienced gardener might be looking for something more scientific or detailed.… (mehr)

The Organic Home Garden : A Step-by-Step Guide To Growing Food / text by Patrick Lima, Illustrations and photography by John Scanlan. Neustadt, Ontario : Five Rivers Chapmanry, 2011.

Reviewed for the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program from an electronic Advance Reader Copy.

This is a useful book, full of great info for the novice organic gardener, but even an experienced gardener like me will learn a few things, and it’s written in an engaging, chatty style. I enjoyed learning about the development of the author’s garden at their rural Ontario property. There are some tasty-looking recipes, too. It is not a 100% new book – it’s a revised and updated version of an older work.

There were deficiencies in the e-ARC that made it hard to review properly – notably that all the pictures were out of context at the very end of the book and all in black and white. It also lacked an index, and a lot of the punctuation appeared as gibberish characters and made reading a chore. I assume that in the proper for-sale version these problems are corrected but I haven’t checked to be sure.… (mehr)

I really, really want to read this book.

But it came in an EPUB form that I can't read on my Kindle. The email with the book suggested that I download and use a program called Calibre, which I did. Calibre appears to work beautifully: converting the file to MOBI and sending it to my device. The file even shows up when I search my F:Kindle drive from my laptop. BUT I can't find it on my Kindle.

I've spent hours (literally) trying to work this out and am totally frustrated I suppose I could read it on my laptop, but for several reasons, this is extremely awkward and also frustrating.

So sorry I can't give a review (which likely would have been stellar, given the authors' previous books), but there it is. Perhaps in future you could convert the file first and send it in 2 or 3 different formats in attachments. That worked with another ebook I won.… (mehr)