Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

While I commend the author for trying to make gardening simple enough for a child to do, in trying to 'dumb down' gardening, he has over-simplified it to the point of misinformation. Although he brags about how many poor countries are using his original SFG method, how many poverty stricken people are going to be able to afford to follow his new advice, to ignore the free soil already in in their gardens and farms, in order to buy commercially made vermiculite, or have bulk peat moss shipped into their areas, or to buy bagged compost, so they can make their own "Mel's Mix"? They have a hard enough time affording healthy seeds every year or enough clean water! To help people become food self-sufficient, we need to help them be able to grow their own food with the materials they have on hand, not demand that they buy OUR materials. He also states that compost has all the nutrients plants need, and that we no longer need to know about soil pH or mineral-based fertilizers. To begin with, commercial compost is made from a wide variety of materials, some are nutritious to plants and others are simply fillers to bulk up the bag for sale. The bag's label might tell you what raw materials the compost is made of, but not what the exact proportions are or what trace minerals are in it. They are only required to list N-P-K. Some nutrients that plants need are not able to be absorbed by the soil's roots unless the soil is the correct pH for that plant. Some plants, like fruit-bearing trees, need the micronutrient boron and other plants don't like it at all. Tomatoes need extra calcium to avoid blossom end rot, corn needs extra nitrogen, root crops need extra phosphorus, etc. Seedling plants need different trace amounts of minerals than their fully grown 'parents'. Saying that all plants need the same nutrients is like saying that a newborn infant, a male teenage athelete and a middle-aged pregnant woman, since they are all human, all need the same kinds and amounts of food. I think Mel does gardeners a disservice by assuming we are incapable or too lazy to learn what plants need to thrive.