Vegetable gardening is an enterprise fraught with adventure and peril. Well, okay, that’s only true when you pull up a weed and a cloud of bumblebees boils up from a nest underground. Otherwise, gardening is a pretty good way to spend your time, and you also get delicious vegetables. Don’t Throw In the Trowel! guides the Midwest gardener, month by month, through the many gardening tasks that need to be done. This book helps you be more effective, plots out your month-by-month to-do list, and keeps you up to speed. Melinda R. Cordell has worked in horticulture half her life, including a stint as city horticulturist in St. Joseph, Missouri. A simple and well laid out guide to vegetable gardening. "What a delightful read this is! This lady certainly knows her onions!There is a wealth of practical knowledge to be had in this book. Nothaving kept a veggie garden for a number of years, It both remindedthings I already knew and informed me of many things I didn't. It is anideal guide for both new-comers to the gardening world, as well asestablished gardeners." -- Ty from Wales "Loved her style -- almost felt like having her right here chatting with me or in a very small, friendly classroom -- a quick & easy read. I also liked her month by month approach -- I am never thinking in February when it is cold& wet that I really should be getting seeds started for setting out in spring & that to do so, I'd better have gotten the stuff ready even sooner. She also covers square foot gardening, maintenance of equipment, etc. I have been making veggie gardens since I was a kid & even swapped an engine out in my 4x4 truck myself years ago, so I am not a novice, but still found the book useful & interesting. She also gives links to other useful resources, seed & info sites, etc." Let me start out by clarifying that my thumb has never been green whatsoever,yet I still try to garden every year. Despite my clear lack of skills, I always have grandiose ideas for a beautiful vegetable garden. It turns out that perhaps my biggest room for improvement was just learning from my previous mistakes! This year, I have started to keep a journal so I can see next year what went wrong and what not to do again. Who knew you could forget what you did an entire year ago? I'm certainly nowhere near where I would like to be, but I wish I had had this book years ago, if only to make me feel a little better to know that "plants are very forgiving" and to just keep trying through trial and error. I can't recommend this book enough. Other gardening books are intimidating, but this one is practical and often times pretty funny. Two things: First: You know more about gardening than you think. Second: A garden - the soil - the plants - all of these are very forgiving.When it comes down to it, you can do pretty much anything to these.(Though, actually, bulldozer races through the garden are out of thequestion.) A garden is forgiving. Plants are built to put up with a lot of nonsene. It's part of their nature. They obviously can't getup and walk away, so they're made to endure. But some plants are betterat getting along than others are. The trick is finding out which onesthese are. That was part of my outlook, as city horticulturist:If it won't grow for you, why then, it can go away somewhere and wilt.Life is too short to spend on fighting with plants that you don't like. I carried that over into my work in my vegetable garden. I went afterplants that were easy to grow and take care of, and I used methods thatgot results with as little work as possible. I mean, there is alwayswork to be done around the garden. You've got to pull weeds and squashaphids and dump soapy water over the eggplant when it catches fleabeetles and try to keep up with all the strawberries. But I found thatthere are ways to make the work less backbreaking, and I outline them in the book. Also I included neat illustrations from old seed catalogs,just for fun. I enjoyed writing this book, and I hope you get a lot of good out of it and even learn something while having fun. Vegetable gardening is an enterprise fraught with adventure and peril.Well, okay, that's only true when you pull up a weed and a cloud ofbumblebees boils up from a nest underground. Otherwise, gardening is apretty good way to spend your time, and you get tomatoes. Don't Throw In the Trowel!: Vegetable Gardening Month by Month guides the Midwest gardener, month by month, through the many gardening tasks that need to be done.This book helps you be more effective, plots out your month-by-month to-do list, and keeps you up to speed. Melinda R. Cordell has worked in horticulture half her life, including a stint as city horticulturist in St. Joseph, Missouri. Melinda R. Cordell worked in most all aspects of horticulture - in garden centers, in wholesale greenhouses, as a landscape designer, and finally as city horticulturist, where she took care of who-knows-how-many-gardens around the city as well as the K