The After-Dinner Gardening Book

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! :-)

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.

I bought this book in a discount rack - and thought it was delightful. Tried growing lots of the suggested plants and had great success. The book was so much fun - I found six new copies and gave them as Christmas gifts that year - and all the recipients were just as delighted with this 'find' as I was! A must for anyone who likes growing things, or has wondered how in the world do you get that Mango seed to germinate.

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.