Warm-climate gardening: Tips, techniques, plans, projects for humid or dry conditions

Springtime always brings a new crop of enthusiastic gardeners, and these two books will help those in pursuit of an edible garden. In The Harvest Gardener , McClure, a botanist and garden writer, discusses a wide range of topics, including seed selection and start-up, soil improvement, site selection, succession crops, pests and diseases, and harvest storage, preservation, and preparation. McClure intersperses her conversational and personal text with boxed charts and quoted advice from more than 50 contributors. While a true beginner may be overwhelmed, most gardeners will enjoy the cornucopia of information provided here. More concise in writing style and gardening technique is Riotte's Successful Small Food Gardens , which is a slightly revised edition of her 1977 Success with Small Food Gardens (Garden Way Pub.