During my time at Timber Press, I’ve seen many titles come up for discussion. Most of our titles are self-explanatory — buy a book entitled Japanese Maples, and you will find it to be chock full of Japanese maples. (Truth in advertising!) Some titles, however, are a bit vague. Niwaki? What does that mean?  In these cases, it’s the subtitle to the rescue! (A perfect example of the subtitle clarifying the title is the Diagram Prize winner Bombproof Your Horse, whose subtitle is Teach Your Horse to Be Confident, Obedient, and Safe, No Matter What You Encounter. Makes a lot more sense with the subtitle, doesn’t it?)

In the realm of self-explanatory titles, I would say that our latest, What’s Wrong With My Plant? (And How Do I Fix It?) is pretty darn self-explanatory. (Though I do kinda wish that the last part was in all caps. I think it would add an important soupçon of drama!)

The book has an interesting layout — it’s like the Choose Your Own Adventure of plant maladies. Part 1 has flow charts that you use to diagnose your plant’s disease. Luckily, I have a diseased plant in my garden, and a series of “yes” or “no” questions leads to a diagnosis of (yuck!) aphids on my kale! (Well, I already knew that. But it was a good test case.)

The diagnosis page tells me that I can go to Part 3 for a picture of the problem, and Part 2 for a cure. The picture of aphids helpfully mentions that aphids come in all different colors, which is nice to know, since the ones I have a gray and the ones in the picture are green. On to the Solution!

Part 2 cures aphids for me. It advises spraying the aphids with water, hand-squishing them, shaking the plants to get them off, and (my favorite) vacuuming them. (One wonders if perhaps a dedicated vacuum would be best?) If I should decide that the aphids are bad enough that the 5 pages of low-impact cures will not work and drastic measures are required, the book provides a good 8 pages on various organic pesticides, offering words of advice and caution on each.

I was pretty pleased with my Choose Your Own Aphids adventure.  It makes plant problems almost fun — it’s temping to pick a different answer, and see what malady you get if you choose a different path. I don’t know that I’ll ever intentionally infect my plants to see if I can track them in the book, but you never know. Maybe plant detective work will prove too fun to resist!