Moving into the digital age, the Handbook's 2d Edition is now also available in e-book form. I bought the e-book a month ago. I find it quite complete and useful. Although I somewhat miss the heft of reading the “paper book”, with the digital version I can find something I'm interested with just a click…and everywhere it occurs in the Handbook. I've now loaded the Handbook on every digital device I have except for my phone…and I'm thinking about that too. It's easily readable on my inexpensive 7” tablet (Android OS), laptop (Windows 7 OS), and desktop (Windows Vista OS). For Apple owners, the description of the e-book says that it is formatted for Apple's iPad. I ordered it online from UCANR, and within a few seconds of paying for it with my credit card, I downloaded it and loaded it to my computer. With some available, free software I also loaded it onto my tablet and laptop. If this is your first e-book, you like me, will probably also need e-book reader software on your computer. Many good ones are readily available and free for whatever computer and/or operating system you are using.
Once you are into e-books, especially for gardening and horticulture, there are numerous e-books available for a wide variety of interests and cost, including free. For example, two free e-books that I've found of interest that you might also be interested in are described below:
Knott's Handbook for Vegetable Growers
… from Amazon… “The leading one-stop reference for commercial vegetable growers for more than 50 years Rooted in tradition, branching out to the future. For more than half a century, Knott's Handbook for Vegetable Growers has provided generations of commercial growers with the most timely, accessible, and useful information available on the subject…”
This handbook is definitely for the serious vegetable grower and should be a useful addition to UC publications. If you are interested and probably already an avid home vegetable gardener or maybe a “newbie” wanting even more detailed vegetable growing information, you should find this handbook of interest …and the price is right. While it is commercially available for purchase (new it is > $65), it can also be downloaded from a University of Missouri Extension web site for free without any obvious restrictions. http://extension.missouri.edu/sare/documents/KnottsHandbook2012.pdf
Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding
…from Amazon.. “With Hybrid, Noel Kingsbury reveals that even those imaginary perfect foods (..of our memories…) are themselves far from anything that could properly be called natural; rather, they represent the end of a millennia-long history of selective breeding and hybridization. Starting his story at the birth of agriculture, Kingsbury traces the history of human attempts to make plants more reliable, productive, and nutritious—a story that owes as much to accident and error as to innovation and experiment.
This e-book interested me as I've recently been following the GMO food discussions on the web. Kingsbury is a well-known landscape architect, designer, and author. This book provides a readable introduction of the history of how our foods evolved over the last thousand years… leading up to the current (and probably forever) discussions of GMO foods. The book can be obtained free from the University of Chicago Press this month (April 2015) at the following link:
http://www.bibliovault.org/cgi-bin/DeliverADE.epl?transid=Bt9BJ8ODLtGHjImd
This free download comes with DRM (digital rights management controls) that might cause you to have to jump through some hoops to download and read it, i.e. read the publisher's instructions closely. I believe the book is worth it. You will also have learned some interesting facets of manipulating e-book formats as well.... good training for the future...
Here's to some great e-book reading… and learning… and for free.
Steve Morse
Contra Costa County Master Gardener
Apr 20, 2015