When I picked up The Dirt Cheap Green Thumb: 400 Thrifty Tips for Saving Money, Time, and Resources As You Garden, I expected a book with instructions for a DIY composter and home made soap spray for killing aphids. And while Rhonda Massingham Hart's book does dish out these tips, her book is really much more about good, old fashioned gardening techniques. You know, the kind where you grow things from seed, learn to divide plants, garden with plants that will thrive in your location, and so on. There are tips for maximizing what God has naturally given your garden, understanding your gardening zone, learning how much sun various parts of your garden receive, selecting pollution-resistant plants, understanding your soil and making it work for you, and all those other details that make gardens so much more successful. (And more successful means you'll waste less money on plants that won't work in your garden and amendments and fertilizers that aren't needed.)

Other topics include knowing how much water your plants need, using rain barrels, and minimizing water loss. Hart also helps gardeners decide what tools they really do - and don't - need, collecting and storing seeds, how to start plants from cuttings from friend's gardens, and how to know whether that plant that's on sale is really worth paying for. She explains how to start seeds successfully, how much and what kind of fertilizer your garden needs, how to compost, and how to cheaply and effectively fight pests. You'll also find tips for building inexpensive benches and birdbaths, cloches, trellises, cold frames, root cellars, and more. There are even canning and freezing tips. Intermediate to advanced gardeners probably won't learn much from this book, but it's a superb addition to any beginner's book shelf. The information is organized in brief sections, making it easy to digest and refer to as needed, and solid gardening advice is offered throughout. And, as is appropriate for a book with the phrase "dirt cheap" in it's title, the book is inexpensively priced, too. Just $7.88 at Amazon.com. I doubt you'll find a better deal in the gardening book world.