This latest addition to the ...For Dummies "RM" gardening series is ripe with down-to-earth advice and tons of illustrations for growing a wide variety of tasty veggies -- from green beans to yellow squash.
-- Detailed guidelines for planting by climate, soil, and water needs
-- Tooling up -- great tips for selecting the best gardening equipment
-- Basic training on combating garden pests and other nuisances
-- How to design a vegetable garden for any size space
-- A complete reference of online resources and mail-order suppliers
-- Illustrations and full-color photos to inspire gardeners of all skill levels
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.
