• Gardner, Jo Ann. Living with Herbs: A Treasury of Useful Plants for the Home and Garden. [The Countryman Press: 1997.]

      Of all the books on herbs that I've read, and that means most of the books about herbs, this one is my favorite. Jo Ann Gardner grows herbs in Nova Scotia, on a farm on Cape Breton Island (but that's not why her book is my favorite). Her husband is named Jigs (but that's not why her book is my favorite, though that is a wonderful name). Mrs. Gardner writes about what all the other herb writers write about, and draws on the same sources (truth be told, herb writers borrow and steal more stuff than any other sort of writer except maybe Shakespeare or Milton).

       This is my favorite book about herbs because in a genre that is long on both thievery and the First Person Singular, Mrs. Gardner mixes her own place and her own herbs with general information and appreciation. Most herb writers do little more than bounce the rubble of herb lore and add some personal experience; she does these things very well -- better than the rest.
  
       The other measuring stick to lay against a stack of herb books is presentation, and Mrs. Gardner's book is pleasing in its clean layout, crisp drawings, and pleasing heft.
  

Garlic

I grow my garlic 3 inches apart in rows 6 inches apart.

• Engeland, Ron L. Growing Great Garlic: The Definitive Guide for Organic Gardeners and Small Farmers. [Filaree Productions: 1991.]

       Unlike herb writers, garlic writers rely mostly on personal experience, perhaps because there is not a vast literature from which to steal. Engeland's book is as close as you will get to the facts about garlic, and he does a competent job of explaining the difference between hardneck and softneck garlic, including the appropriate Latin names.

      I like the book because the person who wrote it comes through clearly, and he shared his love of what he grows. As a dedicated backyard garlic grower, I appreciate these things in a garlic book.

      By singling out three books on garlic, I have depleted the ranks of the books that remain, but that does not diminish the quality of the three I've chosen here.

• Crawford, Stanley. A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm. [HarperPerennial: 1992.]

    Garlic demands consistency and dedication from its grower. The circle of cultivation has no gaps, though one must jump in somewhere -- such as Columbus Day. In this part of the world, that is the optimal time to plant garlic, so the cloves establish themselves for winter but don't have enough time or waning warmth to actually pop up above the soil.After planting day, I forget about my garlic until spring, when the thought of the crop to come during July reminds me of this book, which I read yet again.

    Crawford moved to New Mexico during the Back-to-the-Land days of the 60s, and he and his wife raised a couple of kids and built an adobe house, and somewhere along in this process he was the recipient of a muddy pail of wild garlic, which he planted.

    Later he realized that this was a crop he could grow intensively on his few acres, giving him half the year for his writing. He figures that his five acres or so of garlic at one time constituted one of the larger garlic farms in the country -- when so-called gourmet garlic, the hardneck variety, was less well-known, less widely cultivated, and less appreciated than it is now.

    Crawford writes with an ease that makes one envious, and he meets my demand that the writer present a pleasing, candid persona. Crawford has also written a fine book about his community water ditch, Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico.

• Aaron, Chester. Garlic Is Life: A Memoir with Recipes. [Ten Speed Press: 1996.]

   If Ron Engeland is down to earth, and Stanley Crawford is somewhere up in the clouds, then Chester Aaron has to be right in the middle of everything.

    In telling his story about garlic, he draws on dialogue, fantasy, story-telling, narrative prose of the highest order, and the precision of Betty Crocker. And there are excellent photographs and some recipes worth the price of the book. And he also meets my first demand that a writer be someone I want to meet and feel that I have, in some sense, done so when I'm finished with the reading.

    And his bruschetta is simple and wonderful -- toasted bread that you slice yourself and rub on both sides with a fresh clove of garlic, adding a drizzle of olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. I add some dried basil.

• Bartholomew, Mel. Square Foot Gardening. [Rodale Press: 1981.]

       Of all the gardening books that address alternatives to long rows of vegetables, this one is the best, and possibly the earliest. The idea is to make a super-soil and crowd the plants, and to sow in succession, and to sow only what you need. The result is a big harvest from a small garden.

      Using a diamond pattern for planting, and four-foot-square planting modules, you can garden with a minimum of hand tools and have no need for tillers or esoteric, useless tools sold on late-night TV. I use 2x4s to frame 4-foot by 4-foot squares in my 20- x  25-foot garden. My tools are a spade, a digging fork, a hoe, a potato digger and a hand cultivator. That's all. With two-foot-wide walkways and 12 4-foot squares, I've followed this method since 1997 with satisfying results.

      Bartholomew has an engineer's sensibility and brings it to bear on the subject in all its aspects. Once you read his book, you really don't need to read another, unless you what to know more about organic gardening (you do, right?). The Internet has a lot of good information about both square-foot gardening and organic gardening.