Newspaper, Pennies, Cardboard, and Eggs--For Growing a Better Garden: More than 400 New, Fun, and Ingenious Ideas to Keep Your Garden Growing Great All Season Long

by Roger Yepsen, Organic Gardening Magazine

Transform a Good Garden into a Great Garden in One Season

What's the secret? It's a mix of ingenuity and efficiency, accented with fun! Newspaper, Pennies, Cardboard, and Eggs-For Growing a Better Garden contains more than 400 clever solutions for easing garden troubles, new techniques for turning around an underperforming garden, and innovative ideas that will amaze even long-time gardeners.

If you're looking to add more nutrients to garden soil, whip up a kitchen scrap smoothie and pour the juiced-up liquid right in the planting hole. If you need to chase away bulb-hungry voles, a little sharp-edged driveway gravel around the bulb will do the trick. And if digging potatoes is too tiresome, discover the no-dig, no-shovel method that lets you grow potatoes in a heap of straw mulch.

You'll also
- Intriguing and new plant varieties for sweeter corn, delicate salad greens, and handsome winter squash
- How to fill a shady spot with color, find affordable bulbs, rejuvenate peonies and perennials, and enjoy blossoms even when there's snow
- A creative arsenal for dealing with backyard weeds, including vinegar, hot water, plastic, and flames
- Ways to turn inexpensive items from the garden, closet, and pantry into indispensable yard and garden helpers

Filled with usable, earth-conscious, and creative ideas and tips, this lively book will help you discover how to work smarter-not harder-to cultivate a better garden, year after year. Let a few of these suggestions and projects take root, and you'll have the better-looking, more productive, and more rewarding garden in just one year.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Reference

352 pages, Paperback

First published December 26, 2007

Reviews

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A summer doesn't go by without me reading a new gardening book. This one, from Rodale Press, gave me a dozen new ideas to try, from making a spray from tansy or garlic scapes to use on cabbage worms, to instructions on how to smoke some of my peppers for chipoltes, and using sweet woodruff at the base of our trees (to cut down on weeds) to reusing the winter protection framework for summer bean trellising. Time to go try out some of those new ideas!

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chock full of gardening tips but there are so many that its hard to keep track. The kind of book you can pick up and browse a bit, every now and again. I picked up some good ideas, but I would have to actually own this book to get the full impact of all the gardening tips, there are just so many. Might make a nice gift for that avid gardener in your life.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent info

[Rhonda · Rating 2 out of 5]

this wasn't what i hoped it would be. the projects may have turned out just fine, but they were more complicated/time consuming than i thought they'd be. i did get a couple of tidbits out of it, but a friend wanted me to look up how to get rid of slugs and the book made no mention of them at all. instead, it mentioned pests i have never heard of. oh well.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Newspaper, Pennies, Cardboard & Eggs For Growing A Better Garden by Roger Yepsen (Rodale Inc. 2007)(635). This is gardening advice and money-saving tips using recycled and repurposed items found around the home. It features especially good cold frame designs. My rating: 7/10, finished 2008.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best way I can describe this book is that it's perfect bathroom book for gardeners: open it up to a random page, read a one-page description of something you might try, go "huh" out loud, put book down and immediately forget what it was.

[Priscilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so practical - using every day items to help our gardens grow better with less money spent.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of good gardening tips and projects. Fun book just to browse for ideas and inspiration.

[Megan Millington · Rating 4 out of 5]

More information than I could ever use so I go back to it each year as a reference.

[Emsmith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun reading with good suggestions.

[Cathy]

I use this book quite a bit..

[Jemma Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of good ideas. I think however that having so many means that few of them are explored in detail. The season extenders were quite helpful.

[Snickerdoodle · Rating 2 out of 5]

It had some good suggestions. Probably would've gotten more out of it if I'd spent more time with it, but it never really peaked my interest.

[Sallee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating little book that gives all kinds of ways to garden. I will certainly give some of the things a try. This is a book that belongs in every gardener's library.

[Teresa Morton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of wonderful tips for inexpensive gardening.

[Ant · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOTS of good tips in this book.

[Vegmers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of interesting tips and ideas for this year and future years of gardening.