The After-Dinner Gardening Book

Rating:
Summary: Find this book!
Review: Minding my own business gnawing on some litchi nuts I started to remember back to science class where you would grow things such as avocados in water. One always wonders why we are buying this if we can grow it. At least it would be fun to try. I did a pretty good job of maintaining a sweet potato vine for a while.
Well we are not alone "The After-Dinner Gardening Book" by Richard W. Langer Helps us from making the original mistakes and encourage us to experiment. So I turned to chapter 15 "The likeable Litchi from the Land of the Jade." There was an illustration as to what it should look like when finished and several pages of instruction.
There are 24 sections and a good index. This covers techniques and environments needed to grow several plants including bananas, coconuts, dates, loquats, litchis, papayas and many more.
So what are you doing after dinner?

Rating:
Summary: What are you doing after dinner?
Review: Minding my own business gnawing on some litchi nuts I started to remember back to science class where you would grow things such as avocados in water. One always wonders why we are buying this if we can grow it. At least it would be fun to try. I did a pretty good job of maintaining a sweet potato vine for a while.
Well we are not alone "The After-Dinner Gardening Book" by Richard W. Langer Helps us from making the original mistakes and encourage us to experiment. So I turned to chapter 15 "The likeable Litchi from the Land of the Jade." There was an illustration as to what it should look like when finished and several pages of instruction.
There are 24 sections and a good index. This covers techniques and environments needed to grow several plants including bananas, coconuts, dates, loquats, litchis, papayas and many more.
So what are you doing after dinner?

Rating:
Summary: Find this book!
Review: This book is an absolute hoot! Everyone is amazed that I can grow a grocery store pineapple and have it produce an actual pineapple. It is fun for the whole family and, if you follow the detailed instructions, you can successfully garden using food that you get from your grocer. It is well written and the instructions are easy to follow.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: This is a gardening book with a witty, narrative personality. Until it's reissued, and it should be, it's on my list of books to rescue from a burning building. Langer is a nom de plum according to my vintage 70's paperback and for the last 25+ years I've wondered, who is that masked man? In searching just now, I learned he has continued to sporadically publish cooking and gardening books into the 1990's under the name of Langer, always with an illustrator named Susan McNeill. The fact of the illustrator is of interest because Langer often mentions his wife named Susan in the book, her character emerging as the involuntary poster child for tolerance of spousal obsessions. I had wondered if their marriage, not to mention her sewing shears, had survived his early adventures in plant science. And yes, by the way, his advice is practical and I've gotten some plants out of it over the years.

Rating:
Summary: Fun and helpful
Review: What a fun book! Informative too. I couldn't put it down, and have since grown my *own* avocado plant with my toddler (we named ours Audrey). The stories associated with the author's experience with each plant are funny, sometimes hysterically so. My favorite was the image of him standing on a ladder forcefully throwing coconuts into a bathtub filled with saltwater to simulate coconuts falling out of a tree into the ocean. Don't worry, after describing how he experiments, he tells you the easier shortcuts (a ladder wouldn't fit into my bathroom anyway). Reading it makes you want to immediately buy and eat the exotic fruits he describes just for the seeds and the fun of trying to grow them (inside, my favorite place - no bugs, controlled climate, etc.). My only complaint is that the fruits are indeed largely exotic. The fruits in the book include mango, Chinese gooseberry, prickly pear, sugarcane, and pomegranate. I was hoping for some plain orange, lemon, or apple seed hints as well. Maybe other people are better at growing such ordinary plants, or at least less intimidated than me, but I loved having the plant-specific instructions that maximize the chances of success. Overall, I'd highly recommend this book, especially for those who would like to have a green thumb but just don't quite (like me) or for those who just like funny stories. Here's hoping for a sequel, even after all this time! :-)

Rating:
Summary: Fun and helpful
Review: What a fun book! Informative too. I couldn't put it down, and have since grown my *own* avocado plant with my toddler (we named ours Audrey). The stories associated with the author's experience with each plant are funny, sometimes hysterically so. My favorite was the image of him standing on a ladder forcefully throwing coconuts into a bathtub filled with saltwater to simulate coconuts falling out of a tree into the ocean. Don't worry, after describing how he experiments, he tells you the easier shortcuts (a ladder wouldn't fit into my bathroom anyway). Reading it makes you want to immediately buy and eat the exotic fruits he describes just for the seeds and the fun of trying to grow them (inside, my favorite place - no bugs, controlled climate, etc.). My only complaint is that the fruits are indeed largely exotic. The fruits in the book include mango, Chinese gooseberry, prickly pear, sugarcane, and pomegranate. I was hoping for some plain orange, lemon, or apple seed hints as well. Maybe other people are better at growing such ordinary plants, or at least less intimidated than me, but I loved having the plant-specific instructions that maximize the chances of success. Overall, I'd highly recommend this book, especially for those who would like to have a green thumb but just don't quite (like me) or for those who just like funny stories. Here's hoping for a sequel, even after all this time! :-)

Rating:
Summary: A How-to Novel!
Review: When cleaning out my mother's book case this little book grabbed me with it's cover and title. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down! It's so entertaining and engrossing -- from the author's reactions from his wife to his obsessive search for a more exotic seed to plant -- this book reels you in. The author's quest and passion are infectuos. I find myself examining fruit salads at dinner parties and asking my shoked host "Did you throw away the top of your pineapple? You know, it can grow into it's own plant!" I can't imagine that a book similar to this would exist nor what it's genre would be called... but if it's found please let me know!