Hartmann & Kester's Plant Propogation: Principles and Practices

This was a difficult book to find for a class, and insanely expensive. I found this at a great price, and had it shipped to daughter at college. When I went to sell it I realized it was an Economy Edition (I was offered $1.69). This one was cheap for a reason - the inside pages were in black and white. It worked and I'm grateful I found it.When I mentioned the resale my daughter said 'What a pain in the neck, that book was in black and white'. Considering the cost of college tuition and the enhanced information and added educational value this particular book offers in color, I probably would have paid for the color version.If you want to avoid the black and white economy eighth Edition, verify the ISBN. The economy edition is ISBN:978-81-203-5024-3. Hope this helps your purchase.

This economy text book will save you money but just know that the paper isn't the higher quality that is usually seen in text books and that the illustrations are not in color which is a key feature of the 8th edition. I did not know these things when I purchased this book. Also there were stickers on the cover hiding text that says "For sale in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka only". I thought that was kind of weird. I asked the seller about this and they sent me an attachment of some supreme court judgement that supposedly makes it ok.. but I wasn't about to read this 70+ page legal document to verify it. I compared the pages to sample pages of the regular copy online and the pages I looked at matched so I think I'll be ok. I couldn't have even rented this book for this price so that is why I am keeping it.

I purchased this text for an undergraduate plant propagation lab course (in 2014), and while I mostly used course-supplied materials for the actual class, it is nice enough to look at and seems sufficiently thorough to justify keeping in a professional reference collection. (I can't say I have read it cover to cover though.) I also will likely find use for it in my personal gardening and plant cultivation hobby. My professor (an avid horticulturist) expressed a favourable opinion of the book as one that he finds worth keeping an older version of and finds useful. No used versions were available around my campus that I could find, which I took as some indication of past students hanging on to theirs.(As noted by other reviews, it is not a theory text on plant biology, but rather an academic reference for horticulture - this should be pretty obvious by the title though.)I bought the loose leaf binder version to save money, as with all texts it does seem somewhat overpriced. I would have preferred a hard cover copy if money was no issue, as with most binder text the pages are thin and prone to tears at the ring holes.

The item received was the international edition, NOT the US edition. Even though I had searched the US edition’s ISBN number on Amazon, this item showed up and it wasn’t clear to me in the listing that it was a different book. This book is meant for sale in several foreign countries, and has lower quality paper and black/white graphics rather than the color graphics of the US edition, but the Amazon listing did not clearly state that. The listing only called it the “Economy Paperback – Same as US Edition”, but for my purposes it is NOT the same. The text is English and seems identical to the US edition. Someone used tape to try and cover up the statement “For sale in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka only” on the back cover of the book. I was able to easily peel the tape off to reveal this information. This might be a good value if you don’t need the color graphics and photos, but just be aware of the differences.

Buy this book only if you are really into plant propagation. This is not a book on plant science or plant biology, it is on horticultural practices. You will learn how to graft, plant, prepare soils, how to identify the best greenhouse structures, etc. I feel they put way too much information in this textbook, but I guess Landscape or Environmental Science managers will benefit more than a Genetics and Biotech major. I took this class as an elective and was not expecting to only learn how to graft plants. Cool experience though!

I started using this book during my undergrad and as a grad student I keep on using it. It is a great reference for new professionals, as of writing this I am still working on my M.S. in Agronomy&Horticulture and I find that I most frequently reference back to this book when I need to get accurate and concise information. It does cost a lot as others have mentioned, and for a hobbyist I think it would be way too much. But for my situation I find it to be invaluable.

I found this book difficult to read and understand even though I was taking a propagation class at the same time. There are multiple places where the book contradicts itself or was just plain wrong according to my professor. However, there is a lot of great information in there if you work at it and have a strong interest in large scale plant propagation.Also, none of the pictures were in color which was a disappointment.

The book's pages are like tissue paper. You can see through most of them to the next page. All in black and white. This is clearly a knock off, but it has the information you need and it's not a ridiculous price like the official printing. As usual with Amazon, the book came thrashed with bends all over the cover and scrunched up pages.