Book Review
Greenhouse Gardener's Companion,
Growing Food and Flowers in Your Greenhouse or Sunspace
By Shane Smith, Paperback, 497 pages.

For most avid gardeners, the greenhouse is an essential part of their overall growing strategy. Whether simply used as a place for starting flats of seedlings each spring and wintering-over a few favorite plants, or taken to the extreme of creating a year-round tropical paradise, the greenhouse expands and enhances our growing opportunities and pleasure.

While it's not rocket science, growing food and flowers in a greenhouse presents some different challenges than we normally experience in our outdoor gardens. Shane Smith's recently revised Greenhouse Gardener's Companion is a comprehensive resource that will quickly get you on your way to successfully managing your own greenhouse, however modest or complex it may be.

In close to 500 well-illustrated pages, Smith draws on 20 years of experience to take you through everything you'll need to know to get started growing food and flowers indoors with a strong emphasis onÑbut unfortunately not a total commitment to-using organic methods. For Smith, the greenhouse garden is more than just a way to extend the growing season. He also sees it as providing "food for the spirit" with its positive psychological effects. Anyone who has spent any time in a thriving greenhouse on a cold spring day will know what he's talking about.

While Smith does a good job of covering all the requisite topics like design, layout, heating, supplemental lighting, planting schedules and soils, there are two chapters in this book that really stand out. The first, called "A Closer Look at the Plants" profiles more than 300 varieties especially suited for greenhouse cultivation. Another chapter that both beginning and experienced growers will find extremely useful is "When Things Go Wrong." Here he covers the gamut of diseases and pests that one might encounter in a greenhouse. Smith provides excellent descriptions and illustrations to identify problems and a broad range of cultural and biological controls to help solve them.

While, of course, there is no substitute for hands on experience, being able to take advantage of the trials and tribulations of a seasoned greenhouse gardener like Shane Smith will save you a lot of time and effort as you extend your gardening efforts indoors. Greenhouse Gardener's Companion is both informative and entertaining reading and merits a place in any serious grower's reference library.    S.V.