If you have no other container gardening books here's a starter.
584825
This book is an average container gardening book you can find most anywhere.  We added it to our collection of others.  We had hoped to find some new ideas.
3286022
I highly recommend Vertical Vegetable Gardening to the beginning gardener--you'll learn how to build a garden from the soil up. For the more advanced gardener--Chris McLaughlin offers suggestions, tips and new ideas, and for other Master Gardeners--there's always something new to be learned. No longer will I see a garden as a flat space to be filled---McLaughlin, a Master Gardner herself, shows that the possibilities for growing up as well as out are nearly endless. Chris McLaughlin's casual style of writing, peppered (pun intended) with bursts of delightful humor gives her well-researched newest book a prime spot on my bookshelf. It should be on yours, as well.
409634
I love the sight of beautiful flowers and foods growing in a garden, but I can't say I've been very successful. I classify myself as someone who has a brown thumb--not totally black, but close. Yet, I still keep wanting to give growing my own flowers and food a try.

A friend mentioned how she had been successful with growing flowers and food in containers so I decided to do some investigating. I purchased several books on container gardening, including this one.

I like how the author holds my hand and walks me through things to do each month of the year. Helping me know when to order seeds, how to repair broken pots, and when to plant make this book one that I will consult on a regular basis as I become more comfortable with growing my own plants.

Even if you have a garden growing in your backyard, this book will help you visualize places for containers you may not have thought of, making spaces that are bare, come to life with containers full of flowers and yummy vegetation.

I'm so glad I found this book. I've learned so much already!
226177
Saving Container Plants is a how-to guide for saving those beautiful annuals that require a moderate climate year-round, and won't survive a cold winter outdoors. It explains how to overwinter these plants and presents the information in a clear and easy to understand format. This is a basic guide, perfect for gardeners new to the overwintering process. It is filled with detailed information and how-to guides that will save the novice from making some avoidable mistakes. Like bringing bugs in the laundry room.

No two plants are the same, nor do they require exactly the same indoor preparation and growing conditions. There is a handy reference guide at the end of the book with quick tips for a large variety of common plants, something even experienced gardeners will find useful.

Replacing annuals every year by purchasing new ones at the garden center can get expensive. If you're tired of losing favorite plants to the cold weather, and then having to spend money every year to replace them, try overwintering a few of them.
388892
A good book if you want to get the basics of home containers. I personally I'm a minimalist so this idea appeals to my very much :) . Now speaking of the book is simplest but that don't mean it lacks content, by the contrary, it is well structured and easy to read but I think it leaves room for improvement.
4217217
Wonderful book to get you started and simplify gardening for a small yard.
1274092
Christina and Karen really get to the point in this little gem of a book. The best part is the authors tell you why the plant combos work so you can easily apply it to any part of your garden, or your containers. The pictures are wonderful too.
2360508
I found this book had some very good insight to container gardening!  Good Read.
1568930
I haven't read it all but that's what is great about this book.  You can just read the month coming up.  No overwhelming amount of information you have to sort out.  It's all laid out for you.  You grow right along with your garden.  I think it will be a great reference and monthly reminder of my garden's needs.<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Pacific-Northwest-Month-by-Month-Gardening-What-to-Do-Each-Month-to-Have-a-Beautiful-Garden-All-Year/dp/1591866669/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Pacific Northwest Month-by-Month Gardening: What to Do Each Month to Have a Beautiful Garden All Year</a>
4814145
Another book with no real instructions , but basic guidelines on how to start a aquaponics garden.
3318227
As its title suggests, this book is an all-purpose reference for those who want a low-maintenance garden they can care for in the free hours they have on the weekends. To illustrate what she means by "weekend gardening," Roth starts out the book by comparing her garden with her next-door neighbor Bill's. Bill used to spend all weekend, every weekend, out in the yardmowing his steeply sloped lawn, pruning his massive overgrown shrubs, weeding the flower beds, and hauling "bag after bag of leaves" in the falleven though he didn't seem to get much enjoyment from any of it. By contrast, Roth and her husband invested most of their gardening hours (which she estimates at about one-fourth of Bill's) in revamping their landscape to make it easier to maintain, as well as more attractive. Over the first four years in their home, they drastically cut back the amount of lawn, filling in the areas with mulch, ground covers, and beds of herbs and perennial flowers. They also added a salad garden to one side of the house, as well as beds of berries and cutting flowers, thus turning a scruffy and hard-to-mow area to productive use. Most of all, they always chose their plantings carefully to require little maintenance in future, so that they would need less time, less water, less fertilizer, and less resources in general to keep looking their best.

The Weekend Garden Guide has sections on ground covers, shrubs, flowers (with a special emphasis on perennials), vegetables, fruits, and trees, as well as a full-color insert with 32 pages of photos of gorgeous yards designed along weekend-garden principles. There are also handy boxed features on such topics as pruning techniques, how to divide various types of groundcovers, the best plants for various areas (shade, sun, foundations, etc.), and lists of high-maintenance plants not to include in your yard, from disease-prone trees to "finicky" perennials. Perhaps the most useful section, however, is the "Encyclopedia of Easy-Care Plants for Weekend Gardens," a huge table of plants sorted by type and botanical name with notes on their appearance, cultivation, and uses in the landscape. Arranged into sections based on their function in the landscape (groundcovers, deciduous trees, perennials, etc.), this at-a-glance reference is the easiest possible way to find easy-care plantings that will work for your particular site.

Although I have a whole shelf devoted to gardening books, this is the one I refer to most oftenperhaps even the only one I refer to often. If all the books on my gardening shelf were destroyed in some kind of freak accident, this is the first one, if not the only one, I'd replace. This is the book that first taught me the easy way to care for raspberries (cut them all back each winter, then harvest one big crop the next fall) and informed me about the existence of bush cherries, which aren't even covered in most gardening books. I'd heartily recommend it to anyone who wants a beautiful garden but doesn't want it to be a full-time job. Whether you hate gardening (but love the results) or love gardening (but have limited time for it), this book will save you hours of effort and leave you more time for the best part of gardening: enjoying the fruits of your labors.
4062780
This short book of "ideas" about growing your own vegetables contains basic infomation which will help beginning gardeners make better choices as they move toward self sufficency.  There's not much here for the more experienced gardener.  3 1/2 stars for this one.
4362993
I'm an absolute novice at vegetable gardening and this book was among the 6 books I found at the library. I got 20 pages into this and knew I wanted a copy of my own. I remember Mel's show on PBS and how easy it was to grasp his methods. The book puts all of it in a ready reference. Winter's coming so the book will guide us in the months ahead so we're ready for Spring.

We have a problem area on our property that is ideally suited to a raised-bed garden. The problem will go away with SFG and we will have the fun of learning to garden without all of the time-honored annoyance of in-the-ground row gardening.
3417006
You know those gardening hints books that all offer pretty much the same hints? My favorite, starting seeds in eggshells, appears in almost all of them. I can't imagine a more fiddly way to start seeds, and I'll bet that not one in five hundred gardeners has ever tried it, and I'll further bet that not more than one in five hundred of *those* has ever done it more than once.

Well, this book doesn't have a single eggshell in it. Right off the bat, you'll learn about an inexpensive way to build an analog of the Poisson Solar Cone, an idea I have been thinking about for literally 20 years. (Yes, I can be a bit slow on the uptake.) Build even one whizbang version, and you've saved yourself more than twice the cost of this book.

The rest of the book is filled with the kinds of simple, inexpensive ideas that even a klutz can manage, as well as a few ideas that will engage those who are capable of working metal. Ever wanted to build a cheap, sturdy trellis? Ever sworn at a hoe? Ever fiddled with hoops and floating row covers? Ever wondered whether there is a smarter way to figure out how much fertilizer you *really* need? The ideas you need are here. Really, you can't go wrong.
482486
Though I have not yet purchased the grow bible I would probably go with that. This does give some nice examples with pictures.
1952472
I have been downloading a few books on gardening and indoor gardening in containers and this one caught my eye.  I am still a ways a way from actually taking action and starting my own garden but it is good to know that books like this one give such great advice on getting started.
1131260
This is, hands down, the best container gardening book I've ever read.  It has a variety of information on container gardening as a whole and the individual plants you'll be using in your garden.  There is a great section on succession gardening with suggested plantings.