Melinda R. Cordell has 10 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Don't Throw In the Trowel!: Vegetable Gardening Month by Month.
Don't Throw In the Trowel!: Vegetable Gardening Month by Month
Summary
At last, help for home food gardeners. The simple, month-by-month layout of Don't Throw in the Trowel will help gardeners grow a bounty of vegetables, fruits, and herbs. Grow luscious tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, melons, and more, and enjoy all the fresh produce (and give the surplus to family and friends) that your garden grows using these easy tips. Don't Throw In the Trowel!: Vegetable Gardening Month by Month is fun for every locavore who wants to cart tomatoes out of the garden by the wagonful. Even if you've never been a farmer or a gardener before, this vegetable gardening audiobook covers everything you need to know to get started. Here you can find specific information about starting seeds, transplanting, mulching, organic fertilizers, dealing with pest and disease problems, compost, and of course, information about different vegetables and helpful advice on how to grow them. You can also find information about square foot gardening, beneficial insects (and insect pests), easy ways to keep weeds down, and ways to extent the growing season into the winter months using cold frames and floating row covers. What's more, the methods used in this audiobook are those to save time (and save your poor back and joints). Gardening can hurt sometimes - as the author can attest after having been felled by a bad back during her horticulture days. This audiobook is full of ways to keep you from ending up the way she did. Many organic methods actually help make gardening easier. For instance, putting down a thick layer of mulch early in the year helps you keep weeds down, reduce watering, add organic matter to the soil, and keep the plants cool in the summer heat. Grow heirloom vegetables for a reliable, colorful crop - and you can keep using the seeds from these plants years after year. Most of all, this audiobook also leads you on a month-by-month tour of the vegetable garden, so you can keep up with what needs to be done this month - and look ahead so you can be ready for next month. It’s always good to grow your own vegetables, especially with concerns about how far grocery store produce is shipped, concerns about the environment, and concerns about the future. But there’s also a new understanding of how good it is to get outside and work with plants, and how delicious those first sun-warmed tomatoes are, and how good a newly picked strawberry tastes, and how astonished your toddler is when she pulls up her first carrot. There’s nothing on earth that can beat that.
©2016 Melinda R. Cordell (P)2017 Melinda R. Cordell
Leave Me a Lawn: Lawn Care for Tired Gardeners
Summary
How do I make my lawn look like a golf course without all those chemicals? How do I keep up with all the lawn care when I have a million things to do? Leave Me A Lawn is packed with clear, concise information on yard care that is written with a sense of humor and a lot of helpful information on lawn maintenance from a former horticulturist with a trick back. Discover time-saving secrets for better fertilizing, watering and mowing, and helpful hints for those of you who already have too much on your plate. This book also contains advice for those lawn maniacs out there who want that green, lush grass but want to cut back on chemicals and water. You can grow lean and mean grass that fights off insect pests and diseases, and take drought with aplomb.
©2017 Melinda R. Cordell (P)2017 Melinda R. Cordell
Gardening Month by Month: Tips for Flowers, Vegetables, Lawns, & Houseplants
Summary
Gardening Month by Month lays out general gardening tips and tricks through the whole year. Are you planting vegetables, growing orchids, finding organic ways to care for your lawn, trying to raise fragrant roses? This book lays out what you need to know. Written for the beginning gardener, but also with plenty of information for the more advanced gardener.
©2017 Melinda R. Cordell (P)2019 Melinda R. Cordell
Stay Grounded: Soil Building for Sustainable Gardens
Summary
One of the most important things gardeners can do is to build up the soil in their garden. But keep in mind that soil building is not a one-time operation, it’s a process. As humus is devoured by microorganisms, worms, and plants, more organic material must be added constantly in order to keep the soil biomass, and thereby the plants, well fed and happy. Also, humus makes the soil porous and fluffy, builds a strong soil structure, and releases nutrients in a form that’s easily absorbed by plant roots. Chemical fertilizers will not add humus to the soil. These are merely nutritional supplements; plants and their soil need real food - organic material. This audio guide teaches you all sorts of ways to get organic material into the soil to improve soil health and soil fertility, which in turn improves plant health - for better gardens, higher yields, and more gorgeous flowers. Examine topics such as soil building; saving the world; one dirt clod at a time; earthworms as earth movers; green manures; compost; why your soil is evil; getting to know your soil; taking soil samples; the soil food web; earthworms as super soil savers; how to protect earthworms; a field guide to earthworms; epigeic earthworms; endogeic earthworms; anecic earthworms; organic matter and humus; how Mother Nature shows us how to make great soil; how not to let leaves go to waste; mulching the world; how to fix out-of-control weeds with newspaper mulch; compost as "black gold"; learning the basics of composting; extreme composting as the ultimate in recycling; 60 weird things you can compost; organic soil amendments; green manures and cover crops; cover crops and their benefits; green manures and their benefits; places to plant them; plants to use for green manures and cover crops; alfalfa as a gardener's secret ingredient; the case against chemical fertilizers; no-till gardening; fixing lousy soil; fixing subdivision soil; aerating and adding; and much more!
©2017 Melinda R. Cordell (P)2018 Melinda R. Cordell
Petal to the Metal: Growing Gorgeous Houseplants
Summary
This book gives you ways to beat insect infestations on your houseplants and tips on preparing plants for winter. Learn how to raise orchids and African violets, how to grow a Christmas cactus the way your grandma did, and how to make poinsettias rebloom. You can learn how to make a dish garden and terrarium. You'll learn the right way to water your houseplants. Plus, hear about ways to fight back against aphids, mealybugs, spider mites on your English ivy, and fungus gnats (when I worked in a greenhouse, they always flew straight at my eyes and I mastered how to kill them in mid-flight). When insects afflict your houseplants, consult this book. I've worked over 20 years in horticulture, and before then, I was reading all of my grandma's houseplant books and getting plant starts from her, and had two tables of houseplants when I was in junior high and high school. These days I'm raising Phalaenopsis orchids (butterfly orchids) and other fussbudget plants. I've learned things through long experience. I share them all in this book to make your time with your houseplants fun and easy.
©2017 Melinda R. Cordell (P)2017 Melinda R. Cordell
Rose to the Occasion: An Easy-Growing Guide to Rose Gardening
Summary
The rose is the Queen of Flowers. Roses are beautiful, fragrant, and elegant - and they require all the pampering of a real queen, don't they? Actually, they don't! Rose gardening can be easy and pleasant. I've worked 25 years in horticulture and cared for over 300 roses in a public rose garden when I was municipal horticulturist. I found ways to keep rose gardening fuss-budgetry to a minimum while growing vigorous roses that bloomed their heads off. Rose to the Occasion: An Easy-Growing Guide to Rose Gardening shares tricks and shortcuts that rosarians use, plus simple ways you can keep up with your to-do list in the rose garden. Gardeners of all skill levels will find this book helpful, whether they be beginning gardeners or old rosarians, whether they have a green thumb or a brown thumb. Rose to the Occasion includes Down-to-earth wisdom on how to plant, grow, and prune roses The ins and outs of fertilizing roses to get the lushest foliage and best blooms Advice on choosing the right rose for your garden, as well as many easy-growing varieties The latest on organic pest control and fungicide use in the rose garden Hardy, tough old roses that can take whatever Mother Nature throws at them And general garden maintenance help that you can use anywhere in the garden If you love The Rose Bible by Rayford Clayton Reddell, or books by David Austin, or books like Right Rose, Right Place; or Everyday Roses: How to Grow Knock Out® and Other Easy-Care Garden Roses; or The Organic Rose Garden, and if you like garden books leavened with humor - then this book is for you. Rose to the Occasion is the ultimate resource for any rose gardener, or anybody in need of good gardening advice. Roses are filled with romance, history, color, and fragrance. Grow some. It is worth it.
©2016 Melinda R. Cordell (P)2017 Melinda R. Cordell
Perennial Classics: Planting & Growing Great Perennial Gardens
Summary
Perennials are the backbone of the garden - a low-maintenance, long-growing mainstay that the garden revolves around. I've worked with perennials for 20 years, as a manager in the perennials section at the local nursery, and then as a municipal horticulturist in charge of more than 20 gardens around the city. I've grown perennials from seed, potted them bare-rooted, divided them, deadheaded them, treated them for diseases and pests. Everything I've learned over the years I share here in this book - Perennial Classics.
©2017 Melinda R. Cordell (P)2018 Melinda R. Cordell
Design of the Times: How to Plan Glorious Landscapes and Gardens
Summary
Style: Everybody has it, but nobody really knows what it is. And when it comes to garden design, everybody has style. Sometimes, though, they just haven’t figured out what their gardening style is. Some people lean more toward traditional gardens with flowers to cram them into. Others lean more toward the formal gardens and parterres. Or, maybe, you might prefer a tropical style with all its orange and yellow shades and cannas and lush leaves. And some like to mix styles in a fun pastiche of plants and colors. What do you like? Maybe, at this time, you don’t know. But you eventually figure out ideas from poking around the world of plants, styles, colors, shapes, and forms. This audiobook is designed for the DIY folks who like to be puttering around in a garden and have dirt under their fingernails that won’t entirely go away even when they scrub and scrub. These folks have rough, chapped skin along the outsides of their index fingers from pulling weeds - though this probably doesn’t go so much for those of you with sense enough to keep your gloves on while you’re gardening. This is also for the gardeners who have smaller budgets. Times are tough, and the hell of it is, times are going to get even tougher. So if you can’t afford a huge garden, I’m going to talk about ways to design a garden that doesn’t take a lot of money and time (especially if you’re working a full-time job with a side gig to make ends meet). This audiobook is also for those with means, since there will be plenty of good suggestions for you guys to play with as well. This audiobook is especially for those gardeners who take an earth-friendly approach, those who are a little more laid-back in the garden, and gardeners who are a little more informal in their approach to plants and design. My style tends to be natural, organic, and forgiving. If things get messy once in a while, it’s okay, because we’re all human.
©2018 Melinda R. Cordell (P)2019 Melinda R. Cordell
If You're a Tomato I'll Ketchup With You: Tomato Gardening Tips and Tricks
Summary
The National Gardening Association has found that, among vegetable gardeners, tomatoes are their favorite plant to grow. One in three Americans have a vegetable garden, and nine out of 10 of those gardens have tomatoes in them. Tomatoes range in size from gigantic beefsteak tomatoes that can weigh up to a half-pound to the smallest cherry tomato about the size of a marble. You can grow heavy-yielding hybrids or open-pollinated heirloom varieties in different colors, shades, and sizes. You can choose early varieties that set fruit when it’s cool outside, mid-season varieties, and late-maturing varieties that will give you the biggest fruits but take 80 to 90 days to do it. Sometimes you’ll need about 120 days to get a decent harvest, but hey, at least you get tomatoes! Tomatoes are so versatile and so good. You can cook them a million different ways or you can eat them, sun-warmed and delicious, straight off the vine. Some people grab a cherry tomato, a leaf of basil, and a slice of mozzarella cheese, and eat them like that. Welcome to the world of tomato gardening. There’s nothing as sweet and good as a sun-warmed tomato fresh from the garden on a hot summer afternoon. It’s no wonder that tomatoes are the most popular vegetable in America (though botanically, tomatoes are a fruit). Cordell’s audiobook walks you through the steps in raising tomatoes – through starting tomato seeds, planting (and tricks for planting tomatoes early), and staking and caging tomatoes. Listeners learn how to fight off diseases and insect pests, decipher the mysterious letters on a tomato tag, how to harvest tomatoes, and how to dry, can, or freeze tomatoes for next year. With plenty of information for advanced gardeners, ready help for beginning gardeners, lots of expert knowledge, and a smidgen of wit, If You’re a Tomato will guide you in the ways of the vegetable garden with a minimum of fuss and feathers. And also with a minimum of weeding. Nobody likes weeding.
©2017 Melinda R. Cordell (P)2017 Melinda R. Cordell
Assassin's Blade
Summary
My father's been kidnapped. The kidnappers demand an impossible ransom. If they don't get it in two weeks, they will kill my father. Mama won't survive his murder. She's already fallen unconscious. So, I've pulled my assassin grandmother out of retirement. Together, and with my dragon, we're going to find the kidnappers and rescue my father. And we're going to make those bastards pay. Set in an alternate medieval Italy with dragons and magic, Assassin's Blade is for fans of the Venatrix Chronicles by Sylvia Mercedes or the dragon books of Ursula K. Le Guin and Anne McCaffery. You'll love taking flight in Assassin's Blade. Buy Assassin's Blade to start the adventure today!
©2020 Melinda R. Cordell (P)2021 Melinda R. Cordell