Don't Throw It, Grow It! by Deborah Peterson and Millicent Selsam

This is a really cool book, if only because there's no other book quite like it when it comes to indoor gardening. Authors Deborah Peterson and Millicent Selsam have made it their passion to sprout and grow virtually every food product they could find, providing a unique link between the dinner table and our idea of houseplants.

Far from a typical houseplant guide, authors Deborah Peterson and Millicent Selsam offer a guide to growing the "pits, roots, shoots tubers and seeds" of dozens of common produce items. According to the introduction, the authors met thirty years ago and launched on a mission to find the strangest and most exotic foods they could locate in the markets of New York City. They scoured ethnic markets for novel fruits and tubers and even sifted through dried spices looking for seeds. Then they planted these indoors and saw what happened.

Their experiment yielded a book full of interesting houseplant ideas. Who ever considered a beet as a centerpiece for Christmas tables? And how many people have ever looked at the hundreds of seeds spilling from a fresh papaya and thought about starting a plantation?

In the beginning sections, the authors give a brief description of different germination techniques for all kinds of seeds and a few quick paragraphs on using grow lights inside. And herein lies my only real quibble with the book. The reader gets the feeling there is a tremendous amount of expertise in using grow lights lurking behind these pages. But it's nearly invisible. Some of the plants they recommend—mango for instance—are tropical plants that only thrive in high heat, high humidity and bright light. But one gets the feeling the authors cut out much of their expertise on grow lights to make the book more accessible to a wider audience.

Then again, who cares? After all, they're talking about growing things you'd normally throw away. It's all free. So if your mango seed doesn't sprout, or if you never actually get avocado or guava to fruit, it doesn't really matter. The plants themselves are beautiful, and it's likely that the vast majority of people who enter your home will have never seen a guava tree inside. And that's good enough.