The Complete Book of Garlic: A Guide for Gardeners, Growers, and Serious Cooks

This book was one of the best book purchases I've ever made. This book is THE authority on garlic. The information is detailed, the images are luxuriously abundant (as well as beautiful). Even if you are only interested in a few aspects of garlic, whatever you are looking for will be treated with definitive answers. One thing that impresses me very much is the description of all garlic varieties. All the variety entries include an image of the garlic type as well as specific information about its origin, flavor, best uses, etc. It's rare to come across a reference book as good as this one. If you want to learn as much as possible about garlic, then this book is a good investment.

The Complete Book of GARLIC by Jed Jordan Meredith. A beautiful book with fantastic photographs. And tons of information for the curious garlic fan to the the level of professional horticulturalist/botanist. Enough information for a college credit course, I am not talking about the basket weaving type here, but real science. The standard book, until this one, was Growing Great Garlic: The Definitive Guide for Organic Gardeners and Small Farmers by Ron L. Engeland , which I hated. That one was too negative and written in the old hippie know-it-all style of the 70's. Buy The Complete Book of Galic, you will love it, and I believe that it will become the new standard on the subject.

I found this book to be very informative, it is well laid out chapter to chapter with excellent information on the species of garlic as well as the different characteristics of each verity. There is well written information for growing and choosing the various types of garlic. I have also purchased and read Growing Perfect Garlic. And found the Complete Book of Garlic an excellent addition to the information offered in learning everything one would need to know when starting on the endeavor of growing and cooking with garlic. I find myself going back to read chapter after chapter as a reference quite often. I highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to learn as much as they can about this wonderful Herb.

I'm not brave enough to grow my own garlic, and like most Americans, I'm only familiar with the white bulbs available in the grocery store. When my botany class required a 6 page paper on a plant, Garlic seemed as good a choice as any. The more I learned, the more passionate I became about the plant's possibilities. Meredith's book, combined with other research, helped me write what feels like an A paper, but more than that, to narrow down my research focus. I have a better idea than ever to know how to do what I want to accomplish because of the breadth of information presented in this amazing book.

I bought my copy in 2019. The price since has really gone up. It is still worth it if you want to learn about garlic growing. It is the best! The photos are also very well presented. That said, it has not been updated and is missing information on things like soaks before planting, Mycorrhizae, hybrid varieties, new information on curing, effects of climate change, etc. That means with the knowledge in the book, you still need to do more education. Garlic is easy to grow and easy to screw up. This book will really help.

This is the most comprehensive book that I think COULD be written about garlic. It is most def a "coffee table book" in that it is big and heavy and not well suited to lying in the hammock to read with a glass of iced tea. I'm not all the way through it, but have actually been reading it page by page in addition to using it for reference. We grow 25 different varieties of garlic (more as the years progress) and are a relatively small specialty farm. This has been a good resource as we have only been growing garlic for about five years. Always like to learn more and my customers appreciate all the little factoids I can share with them thanks to this book. Highly recommend for any garlic grower or food history buff or gardener or anyone who wants to be one of these things.

Very dense and informative, almost to a fault if you're just looking for row spacing and bulb depth. You can find that on the interwebs for free. This book has a lot of detail about varietal origins and botanical history, which I find interesting and informative. I gave this three stars because of two reasons. One: alot of growing advice but not much information on how seasonal variations can effect growth and crop yields. For instance, this winter is almost non existent in parts of the north east, how will that effect my crop? Idk, nothing on this topic. Two: Too many opinions about varietals. This book has great descriptions on many varietals of garlic, yet once the author is about to wrap up a detailed description of a certain varietal, you occasionally get an opinion that contradicts everything you just read. It makes it confusing and difficult when deciding on which bulbs to pick up at your next garlic festival. Maybe if there were a range of opinions instead of just the authors, that would be nice because everyone has different taste. Otherwise a great book for beginners to really get some knowledge on the garlic hobby as a whole, and a cool coffee table book if that counts for anything. ehh, maybe four stars.

This is somewhat an absolute approach. And were humble too. Nowdays I am just very skeptical toward any books, but what must be said now is that this book is a true normative guidebook for carlig as a mean of "Bible." As my first shopping via Amazon I am just satisfied, or let us say it is so hard to find any attributes. by torsti aarela varsinais-suomi finland

Best garlic book overall I have read!

Excellent book for all garlic lovers and growers Merideth gives details of most of the popular breeds. The historical trail is also interesting.

This is a full book of information on various types of garlic and how to grow it and you will be hard-pressed to find a book as good as this on the complete garlic story

We have found The Complete Book of Garlic by Ted Meredith to be an excellent publication. We grow organically over 30 named garlic varieties. Regular customers appreciate the blemish-free bulbs that we also sell at garlic festivals and farmer's markets. We are very fussy about bulb and soil quality, cover crops and crop rotation. Lawrence Henrey