Fruit and Nut Production

I don't even know where to begin with this amazingly researched book. The charts are worth the price of the book alone. My partner and I both work in the plant world, we love this book so much we each have one at our places of work for reference. There's info in this books that you just can't find online. It's GOOD.It's so good I'm not going to deduct for the 5 stars for the next points: 1) it's from 2007 and I'd love LOVE to see an updated version. Some of the info is getting out of date. 2) The binding is not great, I'm sure that was to keep it cheap but with heavy usage the pages fall out. I'd gladly pay more for a hardcopy version, with more color photos.This is the kind of book that you buy to save yourself from making very expensive mistakes when planning out your orchard / food forest. I definitely wish I'd stumbled upon it earlier.

Great item.

Competently done and okay as a textbook but with uneven and sometimes shallow coverage, especially of general principles of fruit and nut production. Better in the chapters on specific crops. Definitely oriented to commercial growers; not for hobbyists or backyard growers. Needs supplementary materials in a class with mixed backgrounds and interests.

Item received as described and when promised. Thanks!

Too often textbooks are written mostly as a collection of material extracted from other books. This one is written more from the personal experience of the authors and it shows it with all the hands-on items contained in it. Further, because Brenda Olcott-Reid has written for popular magazines, the book has a better flow and sense of organization than the usual text book. Some horticultural background is useful to be able to read the book, but anyone with a serious interest in growing fruit will still be able to get a LOT out of the book. From home to large scale commercial grower, this is an excellent reference and guide to growing fruit.

I was excited about this book as general reference for orchard care and management. I was hoping it would be a comprehensive source on the subject; similar to the way the Hartmann Plant Propagation book is my bible for plant propagation. However, I was disappointed. For a book that seemed more on the academic side I was shocked to see there were no sources sited and the suggested reading at the end of each chapter were usually only 4-8 references. This might seem like a small point but I often find the references really useful for further research on a specific point touched on in a text. There were parts of this book I found interesting but I had no way of knowing where that information came from or how to dig deeper on the topic. I know there are people looking for a more "layman's" reference book and don't care about such things. But, most of the information of that kind could easily be found in a book designed for the general public, and at a much smaller price. So, this book straddles a middle ground between a gardening book and a academic reference book. Unfortunately, it doesn't really excel at either.A small, but important point: I am a chestnut grower. I was interested in this book specifically because there are not many orchard management books that also include nut crops. I was saddened to see that chestnuts and hazelnuts were lumped together in the same chapter. Every other paragraph switched back and forth between talking about one or the other. It made it really annoying to someone who was interested in just one of those crops. It also made it seem like the culture of the two crops were very closely related. This is not true. In fact, a glaring mistake is the authors statement that chestnuts grow on neutral soil. It is commonly known, and stated in almost every reference to chestnut growing, that chestnuts need an acid ph to grow.I gave this book a 3 out of 5 because it does contain relevant information, has useful tables for variety and rootstock information, and it does a good job of listing pest and disease controls very specifically, i.e. name brands of inputs to use. However, if you're looking to produce fruit for yourself I would look to a book more designed for the layman, or local extension information for that matter. And, if you're a commercial grower there are more in-depth references for your specific species out there.

This recently published American book is predominantly focussed on commercial growers - if you are a home growing enthusiast you'll find most of the details regarding inter-row machine access, hulling machines, marketing strategies etc of little interest. There is one small chapter (7 pps in almost 600)specifically for interested amateurs. Elsewhere there is useful information on ranges of cultivars available in the US but of course many of these are only available locally and usually not internationally. Almost all of the pictures are black and white, and for many pests/diseases/conditions this often makes it difficult to fully appreciate the point being presented and to relate this to real plants in the ground. Another feature of the book is that it really only presents information on a limited range of cooler climate crops, without any coverage of more sub-tropical plants such as those that can be grown in southern Florida, Texas and California.

A very concise listing of all types of fruit and nut culture. With excellent descriptions and notes. For the price a must for your library shelf. As I grow fruit rootstocks (gb-online.co.uk) and I collect old varieties of fruit and nuts, this is an asset.