Joey Green's Gardening Magic: More Than 1,120 Ingenious [Paperback]

Joey Green (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 13, 2003

Feed your plants Aunt Jemima® Original Syrup?!

From the man who taught Jay Leno to shave with Jif® Peanut Butter and helped Rosie O'Donnell condition her hair with Reddi-wip® comes the first gardening book that tells you how to use the brand-name products sitting in your pantry right now to help you solve all your gardening problems.

The ever-inventive Joey Green returns with countless new ways to utilize products you'll find around your house-- saving yourself a trip (or trips!) to the garden center.

You'll love this treasure trove of inexpensive, quirky tips, like how to:
* Boost a compost pile with Coca-Cola®
* Control Japanese beetles with Wesson® Corn Oil
* Fertilize a lawn with Maxwell House® Coffee
* Protect tomato seedlings with Dixie® Cups
* Lubricate a lawn mower with Jif® Peanut Butter
* Deter deer with Bounce®
* Feed your flowers with Lipton® Tea Bags

And much, much more!

* Control aphids with Tabasco® Sauce
* Waste weeds with Heinz® White Vinegar
* Germinate seeds with Bounty® Paper Towels
* Make a scarecrow with Glad® Trash Bags

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Whether gardeners are going toe-to-toe with Mother Nature or head-to-head with roving raccoons, it seems they're forever facing frustration. Though garden centers abound with gadgets and potions promising to eradicate even the most obstinate pest or problem, resourceful gardeners who enjoy relying on their own craftiness will welcome Green's shrewd solutions to common garden complaints using garden-variety products. From baking soda and bubble wrap to peanut butter and panty hose, many ordinary kitchen and bath items can be pressed into double duty. Entertainingly written, Green's fun yet factual, peculiar yet practical guide, covers the gamut of garden and garden-related vexations, from ants to zucchini, barbecues to boots. Carefully researching thousands of popular products, often going straight to the manufacturers to learn how and why items may have uses their inventors never intended, Green appeals to the cunning side of every intrepid gardener who has ever had to shoo a squirrel or stymie a slug. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Back Cover

Joey Green's Gardening Magic

Feed your plants Aunt Jemima® Original Syrup?!

From the man who taught Jay Leno to shave with Jif® Peanut Butter and helped Rosie O'Donnell condition her hair with Reddi-wip® comes the first gardening book that tells you how to use the brand-name products sitting in your pantry right now to help you solve all your gardening problems.

The ever-inventive Joey Green returns with countless new ways to utilize products you'll find around your house-- saving yourself a trip (or trips!) to the garden center.

You'll love this treasure trove of inexpensive, quirky tips, like how to:
* Boost a compost pile with Coca-Cola®
* Control Japanese beetles with Wesson® Corn Oil
* Fertilize a lawn with Maxwell House® Coffee
* Protect tomato seedlings with Dixie® Cups
* Lubricate a lawn mower with Jif® Peanut Butter
* Deter deer with Bounce®
* Feed your flowers with Lipton® Tea Bags

And much, much more!

Joey Green, guru of weird uses for brand-name products, is also the author of Joey Green's Amazing Kitchen Cures, Joey Green's Magic Brands, Polish Your Furniture with Panty Hose, as well as more than 20 other titles. Joey has appeared on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, Today, The View, and The Rosie O'Donnell Show.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books (September 13, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579548555
• ISBN-13: 978-1579548551
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #128,597 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joey Green--author of "Polish Your Furniture with Panty Hose," "Paint Your House with Powdered Milk," "Wash Your Hair with Whipped Cream," and "Clean Your Clothes with Cheez Whiz"--got Jay Leno to shave with peanut butter on "The Tonight Show," Rosie O'Donnell to mousse her hair with Jell-O on "The Rosie O'Donnell Show," and Katie Couric to drop her diamond engagement ring in a glass of Efferdent on "Today." He has been seen polishing furniture with SPAM on "NBC Dateline," cleaning a toilet with Coca-Cola in "The New York Times," and washing his hair with Reddi-wip in "People."

A former contributing editor to "National Lampoon" and a former advertising copywriter at J. Walter Thompson, Green is the author of more than forty books, including "Sarah Palin's Secret Diary," "Marx & Lennon: The Parallel Sayings," and "The Zen of Oz: Ten Spiritual Lessons from Over the Rainbow." A native of Miami, Florida, and a graduate of Cornell University, he wrote television commercials for Burger King and Walt Disney World and won a Clio Award for a print ad he created for Eastman Kodak. He backpacked around the world for two years on his honeymoon and lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Debbie, and their two daughters, Ashley and Julia.

You can visit him at www.joeygreen.com and www.wackyuses.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome! The Cure for a Green Thumb!, January 30, 2004

By 

Lenny Newmark (San Antonio, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Joey Green's Gardening Magic: More Than 1,120 Ingenious (Paperback)

I got this book as a Christmas present, and wow, it's a gardener's dream. Instead of running out to the gardening shop to get expensive pesticides or plant foods and what have you, this book tells you what common household products you've already got around the house can be used to solve your gardening problems...saving time, money, and definitely saving you lots of aggravation. Plus, the tips are all environmental so you're not using hazardous pesticides, just friendly products like Maxwell House coffee and Pam cooking spray and Coca-Cola and whatever else you have around the house. This book is truly a must for any home gardener. I don't know how I ever got along without it.

32 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not a gardening book, rather a trivia book!, December 6, 2003

By 

John Savage (Pocatello, ID United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Joey Green's Gardening Magic: More Than 1,120 Ingenious (Paperback)

The contents are not reflective of the title. A large part of the text covers non gardening trivia. This book would be about half it's size, with the unrelated items taken out.

If you are looking for a book covering such topics as Cracker Jack, Gilligan's Island, Love Boat, the history of the Slinky toy (almost two pages), Go-Jo hand cleaner, Animal Crackers and KoolAid (each a full page), cap guns and similar, then this is the book for you.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars a collection of one-liners..., March 1, 2008

By 

Sleepers Delight (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Joey Green's Gardening Magic: More Than 1,120 Ingenious (Paperback)

Not a bad book, but it's a collection of one liners. "Use coca-cola to improve x." "Moth balls around the base of plants help y" and so on. Literally hundreds of one liners that it's a bit much for me, but still interesting to see how to use all of your household items in your garden.