Customer Rating: 
Summary: Poor communicator/Little information
Comment: I was not impressed with this book, especially as a beginner gardener. It is pretty poorly written. I found myself having to look up many terms as they aren't defined in the book. Little context or explanation is given to seemingly major aspects of gardening. For instance, when talking about fertilizing in containers, the author says, "the nutrient solution must be added and drained in the container once or twice a day." What nutrient solution? For what plants? What ratios? It never says.
I hoped the book would give special attention to vegetables grown in Florida such as peppers. The only special attention peppers get are 4 paragraphs in the back of the book that talk about how many peppers will feed a family; that they should be transplanted "with care"; and that they are still edible after turning red (ya thanks!) Note that earlier in the book on pg 43, there is a chart about how easily veggies transplant. Peppers are in the "easily survive transplanting" category as opposed to "require care." Since the back of the book says to transplant the peppers "with care," I see this as a basic contradiction in the book.
I'm not really sure this book will help anyone, novice or expert. It's not detailed enough to help an expert and it's not clear enough to help a beginner. With the author's poor grammar and lack of context, you spend more time scratching your head about what he means than you do learning anything.
I usually prefer to buy a good book to learn how to do any new thing but so far with gardening I find the internet to be a better source of information.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Finally! A User-Friendly Gardening Book
Comment: This beautifully illustrated book steers clear from all the "professional jargon" and actually allows you to get outside and garden!
In a nicely uncluttered way, it shows you through the use of simple illustrated tables WHEN to plant each type of vegetable and WHERE. It makes gardening fun again.
Hooray! No longer does one have to spend days reading about soils, biological make-up, beneficial bugs and the other things that make vegetable gardening seem like some mysterious technological feat.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Big Help for Florida Gardens!
Comment: As a new gardener, I was happy to read this easy to follow guide. It answers the basic questions, and gives great timelines to follow. It has full color pictures, that really help you to visualize what they are talking about in the text. It is not a fancy garden book, with all the scientific "mumbo jumbo". Just easy directions to follow for success. So far my garden looks great and I have had no problems thanks to this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Vegetable Gardening in Florida
Comment: Being new to gardening it has been a chore finding books I can understand about gardening. Many make promises but don't deliver information in a senible manner and I end up more frustrated than satisfied. This one delivers. The thing I love about this book is its simple easily understandable format. The book is loaded with color photographs that help me distinguish the different kinds of problems plants suffer from, making it a simple process in learning how to care for my plants and exactly what may be the problem.I like the way he layed out the charts in the back of the book. One section for cold crops and one section for winter crops. He even has a section for herbs! It takes the work out of thumbing through page after page, book after book, of when, what and where I can grow things. Thanks, Mr. Stephens, for taking the mystery out of vegetable gardening and making my life a little easier and a lot simplier.
