BOOK REVIEWS

Managing Pests and Diseases
A Handbook For New Zealand Gardeners

Rob Lucas
Craig Potton
$NZ39.99
Reviewed by Robert Gordon

THE revised version of this comprehensive, accessible guide is written for New Zealand gardeners by horticultural lecturer and author Rob Lucas.

The excellent layout and clear pictures aside, it is refreshing to have a handbook that doesn't automatically advise gardeners dogged by garden nasties to pour on the pesticide.

The book details many pests of bedding plants, houseplants, vegetables, fruit trees and shrubs including natives. Fungi, bacteria and viruses come under the author's microscope, too. All this is put together in a thoroughly readable style with hints on control bullet-pointed throughout.

There are clear instructions on how to use the book to find the information you need and the two chapters Clean and Green and Safe at Home are outstanding.

Lucas pulls no punches. For instance, take this "point to ponder": "If you always need to apply pesticide cocktails, then you are the problem ... one appropriate spray applied at the right time, might be the appropriate choice." But this is not a "preachy" book - it's an indispensable bible for all gardeners who have plant health at heart.

Reproduced with permission from the former Weekend Gardener magazine. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the RNZIH