book reviews Weeding needed in gardening book

Compilation of columns provides ‘cheerleading’

and children’s stories and is a retired nurse. She emphasizes growing healthy food, organic and pesticide-free. She also provides lots of encouragement to novice gardeners in a cheerleader role she seems to relish.

A Maine Garden Almanac: Seasonal Wisdom for Making the Most of Your Garden Space

By Martha Fenn King, Down East Books (2023)

REVIEW BY TINA COHEN

THERE ARE A LOT of books I end up reading because they have “Maine” in the title. Even if not for review purposes, I’d probably grab them anyway, be they fiction or nonfiction, familiar author or new name.

Martha Fenn King is someone I hadn’t heard of, although she has written a gardening column for her local newspaper, The York Weekly. A Maine Garden Almanac compiles those columns.

Besides having a vegetable and flower CSA, she has written poetry

This book might appeal to those looking for that enthusiastic support, some advice on growing techniques and varieties of veggies, and a better understanding of the bugs and weather which can wreak havoc in a home garden.

This is a kind of folksy “down home” book that isn’t intended to be great literature. And it isn’t an authoritative book on growing food like those of another Mainer, Eliot Coleman.

King thanks her editor but the book has some flaws an editor should have caught—her punctuation is frustrating, for example. I noticed a Bangor Daily News article excerpting a chapter of hers that included an editorial note: “This has been lightly edited for clarity.” The whole book would have benefited from that kind of help.