Product Description

No patch of earth is too small to create a delectable vegetable garden when you have Vegetable Gardening For Dummies to help get you started. If you?ve always wanted to grow your own mouthwatering tomatoes, luscious lettuce, crisp, colorful carrots, and virtually any produce you love, you can make that happen with a little planning and care (not to mention the expert advice you get from this book!). After you taste how good homegrown vegetables are, you?ll never settle for supermarket produce again!

Vegetable Gardening For Dummies guides you every step of the way with detailed instructions for everything from planning and preparing to planting, protecting, and harvesting. You discover ten almost "foolproof" vegetables to grow, and you find out how to enjoy new crops for months with succession planting. An entire chapter is dedicated to growing vegetables in containers on your roof or balcony if you don?t have a yard. More than a hundred illustrations throughout the book and tons of colorful photos provide inspiration and ideas for your own vegetable garden. Whether your goal is to grow all of your own food or simply to sneak a few edibles into your ornamental garden, you can find out all you need to know inside the covers of this book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #862765 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 392 pages

Amazon.com Review
The ubiquitous For Dummies series, while not known for pretty illustrations or lush photography, does manage to pack the maximum amount of information into an easy-to-read format--something that gardeners with an eye on the financial bottom line love. For vegetable gardeners, the right information is especially important, because if you don't end up with edible food on the table, you've failed. Charlie Nardozzi and the National Gardening Association editors seem comfortingly aware of this fact, but they also want to make vegetable gardening fun and interesting, and to that end there's a lot more here than just the standard tomatoes and zucchini. Bok choy, fingerling potatoes, kabocha squash, daikon radishes--they've included just about every vegetable you might be able to think of, with pithy recommendations of the tastiest and easiest-to-grow varieties.

The book's first three chapters deal with deciding what to plant, where to plant it, and when. Nardozzi then turns the bulk of the book--nine chapters--over to the vegetables themselves: the tomato (the most popular vegetable for the home gardener); the pepper and eggplant; root crops; legumes; vine crops; cole crops, such as broccoli and cabbage; greens; and sweet corn and unusual vegetables. A special chapter goes to nonvegetables like herbs and berries. The book's third section is devoted to gardening techniques, which more experienced gardeners may want to turn to immediately. There's good, solid information here on irrigation, mulching, reading a fertilizer label, companion and secession planting, and much more. As with all For Dummies titles, the resources listed in the appendix are comprehensive and up to date, and the index (without which any reader might be lost) is complete and useful.

From the Back Cover

Now updated — your guide to growing fresher, healthier food at home

Want to start a vegetable garden but don't have a green thumb? No worries! This practical, hands-on guide gives you the tools to grow and enjoy your own vegetables, from selecting the right spot for your plot to preparing the soil to harvesting and preserving. You'll confidently plant your veggies, give them the care they need, and pick them at the right time!

• Go ahead and veg out — from carrots to cabbage and from peppers to potatoes, discover the best varieties of vegetables to grow and the specifics on how to grow them

• Enjoy other edibles — grow berries and herbs to add flavor to your garden

• Get down and dirty — review the latest techniques for proper watering, mulching, fertilizing, succession planting, interplanting, and container gardening

• Say goodbye to pesky pests — keep your plants pest-free and healthy using the newest, safest methods

Open the book and find:

• A new 8-page color insert

• Updated illustrations

• The benefits of growing vegetables

• Ideas for different garden themes

• A garden-planning guide

• Different varieties of vegetables

• All you need to know about seeds and transplants

• How-tos on techniques for increasing your bounty

• The best tools of the trade

• Practical tips on harvesting and storing veggies

About the Author
; Charlie Nardozzi has been around vegetable gardens ever since he was old enough to follow his grandfather around the potato patch. After spending his young years in the shadow of his Italian grandfather's farm in Connecticut, helping to bale hay, feed pigs, pick apples, and weed potatoes, he moved to Vermont to go to school.

He graduated from the University of Vermont in 1981 with a degree in plant and soil science. The next step was to see the world, and Charlie spent nearly three years in the Peace Corps in Thailand, helping farmers grow everything from rice (not that Charlie felt he really could tell them how to grow rice) to garlic, chili peppers, and mangoes. He returned to the United States and received a master's degree in education, again from the University of Vermont. After working as a landscaper, at local nurseries, and at the County Cooperative Extension Service office, he ended up as horticulturist at the National Gardening Association and has been there for the past ten years.

Not only does Charlie write for National Gardening magazine and contribute to many of the ...For Dummies® series gardening books, he has a local call-in gardening question-and-answer radio show, is often seen on TV as the gardening expert on such shows as HGTV's Today at Home, and gives talks to gardening groups across the country. Heck, you'll even see him on the National Gardening Association Web site, answering questions there, too! At home, he tends demonstration gardens with his herbalist wife Barbara, stepson Zander, daughter Elena, and Toby the cat.

Customer Reviews

Very informative
Like the rest of the books in the Dummies series, this book takes a light-hearted approach to a heavy topic such as gardening. By focusing on vegetables the content remains helpful and informative. The book was divided into sensible sections--the basics, what to plant, how to plant, and so forth. I appreciated the instruction on gardening beginnings such as constructing a bean pole and what tools a novice needs. The last half of the book talks about specific vegetables, and has handy information on what grows best where. I believe this makes a good first-time gardener book or a companion to a book with more pictures.

Any Gardener's Must-Have Book
I have other gardening books, but none of them are as easy-to-follow or as comprehensive as this one. The text is so much fun, it's easy to read cover-to-cover. Yet, if you need specific information on a certain type of vegetable or technique, the index is very easy to use. The appendix gives the dates and growing seasons for every major (or minor) city in the U.S., as well as additional resources and catalogs to consult. A wonderful resource for a novice or an experienced gardener.

A must have for every gardener!
This is a great book for any vegetable gardener. It is easy to follow and you don't have to read it from start to finish. It is laid out so you can go to the sections that interest you the most. I am a first year gardener, and I got many, many compliments on my first ever vegetable garden, thanks mostly to the help of this book. A must have!