I've been checking out a few books from the library over the last few weeks (hell yeah digital library lending - check it out!), and I stumbled upon something truly wretched - The Vegetable Grower's Handbook by Huw Richards.
I was being a little mean at first when I saw his author photo in the front of the book, complete with his signature. "Haha" I said, "Look at this Silicon Valley looking bro sitting all clean and pretty in his garden, writing down his thoughts. I dunno if I wanna read this book now!"
But then the book opens up with asking me to make a mission statement for my goddamn garden, giving me examples from Google, Tesla, and LinkedIn, a fucking ominous sign if I ever saw one. I don't need to make a mission statement for my garden holy shit. The book proceeds in much the same fashion, complete with corporate jargon and watered down tech optimization techniques. There might have been good information in there, but the book felt like a mid-manager presentation, packed full of diagrams made from Noun Project icons and the stink of desperation for a promotion. The section on minimalism starting with "I watched a fascinating TED talk" makes it feel like this is something the Onion wrote.
It all made a little more sense when I found out Huw Richards started his gardening youtube channel when he was 12, and has made money off of it ever since. It's a channel that is 100% finely tuned SEO and marketing, right down to the arrows on the thumbnails, clickbait headlines, and perfectly manicured photos. It might be great for someone, but to me, it's purely antithetical to why I love gardening.
To balance it out, Lorene Edwards Forkner's The Beginner's Guide to Growing Great Vegetables was really nice! Broke things up by month, and then divided it a little further by growing regions. Each month teaches you about different growing and gardening techniques and other things, like how to compost, complete with illustrated diagrams. The back of the book has a vegetable encyclopedia for additional details and help.
Check it out (maybe from your local library?) if you've ever been interested in gardening!
