Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades: The Complete Guide to Organic Gardening

Solomon lives in Tasmania now, but every few years still updates his guide for gardeners in the North American Maritime Northwest, first published in 1980. He discusses the usual topics of conventional beginning organic gardening books--soil, composting, water, seeds, predators, and so on--but approaches it all from the particular conditions encountered in the region, such as no sun in the winter and no rain in the summer, and nutrients washed out of the soil by a thousand years of endless rain. Perhaps underlying all other problems, he says, is that Native Americans in Cascadia did not farm and so had only one lesson to teach European settlers about agriculture there, which they have ignored ever since. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Steve Solomon has been writing and revising Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades since 1979. He lives in Tasmania, OR.