Book Review: "Gardening Indoors"

Book Review: “Gardening Indoors”

This book by George Van Patten is subtitled “The Indoor Gardener’s Bible”. Like the Bible, this book requires fairly intensive interpretation and still lacks clarity. The author does a great job of impressing the reader with his extensive knowledge. Unfortunately he does little to share much of the practical portions of that knowledge.

There is a great deal of technical, chemical and biological information in the book. While it is interesting, it is not very useful. The useful information is left out. For example, it is strongly suggested that he gardener have a moisture meter (referred to in the book as a “water meter”). It does not give any indication anywhere about how much moisture should be in the soil for any purpose.

I do not mean to say there is no useful information in the book. I think there is enough knowledge to justify the $19.95 price. I am not sure there is enough useful information to justify the effort of separating the wheat from the chaff.



David Segrest is an International REALTOR in Charlotte, NC. His email is david@segrestrealty.com , His webpage is http://www.segrestrealty.com , and his international real estate blog is http://dointernationalrealestate.blogspot.com/.