Reviewed by annieb123 on
Grow Your Own Medicine is an herbal and guide to medicinal plants and herbal medicine. Released 25th Jan 2022, it's 143 pages and is available in hardcover, paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately. For Kindle Unlimited subscribers, this book is currently included in the KU subscription library to borrow and read for free.
This is a well written and accessible beginner-friendly guide (with recipes and tutorials) to herb gardening. The authors have taken care to not only provide an herbal listing with 21 different plants and their cultivation and uses, but also to give readers the necessary info to help the plants thrive: culture, harvesting, preserving, and uses for each of the included plants.
There is a short overview over hardiness zones as well as climate and humidity which is impressively broad in range: the authors include zone maps for the USA as well as Europe, South America, Canada, Australia, and the UK. They've specified regional characteristics as well, indicating where some of the plants are protected or restricted.
There are no photos in the book, however, it's full of clear and well rendered illustrations. The botanical illustrations show relevant stages of growth and the active parts of the plant which can be utilized. Each of the plants in the herbal contain ID name (common and botanical (Latin) nomenclature) as well as keys for uses: medicinal, culinary, teas, perfume, etc.
The tutorials and recipes include tools and ingredients in a bullet style list. Measurements are in American standard units, followed by step by step instructions.
Five stars. This would be a superlative choice for public or school library acquisition, community garden/allotment member libraries, or the home gardener's library.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 8 February, 2022: Finished reading
- 8 February, 2022: Reviewed