The Sunset Western Garden Book is excellent. The most important thing you can do before starting a garden is to start to create good soil, and the best way to do that is to add compost. There's a good forum right here on gardenweb on soil and compost. It's a bit late to start your summer garden. What might work better is to plan your garden, amend the soil, and plant in the fall, which is the ideal time to plant ornamentals in southern California. And there are many vegies which you can plant then, all the cooler weather crops, ie lettuce, peas, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, etc. Feel free to email me to talk more.

forgot to tell you a couple good cheap mail orders for veggie seeds are pinetree garden seeds and le jardin something something (can't recall the whole thing, but they do have a site). they are especially cheap- like a quarter a small packet- just enough for one yr. pinetree's prices aren't nearly as low as they used to be (about 1- 1.25 a packet now), but they have great seed, a wide variety and are great folks to deal with. their shipping for seeds only is very reasonable, too.

I'm a little behind in posts, are you set with your seeds? I may have Balkin Star left , which is a WONDERFUL plant for a container, nice red fruit, just about golf ball size. Mickey

Hi Aemon Sounds like you have done well...if your sleepers are not old ones...some of the old ones have been treated with creosote...another baddie Your mushroom composted soil sounds really good and I have one peice of advice which as is usual comes too late (if you did not think of it yourself) and that is to roughen up the surface of the clay by digging it over before putting the soil on top...the reason for this is because clay usually has a smooth surface and is not water absorbing...what happens is that when it rains or you water the topsoil the moisture that leeches down will reach the clay (where it is smooth) and it will run off because that is the way of least resistance...you will find seepage of highly nutritious blackish coloured liquid at some point...if you have dug over the clay so that you have a very rough surface it will prevent the leeching liquid from flowing and so it will soak into to the clay and enrich it with bacteria and soil fungus thus helping to created an even better soil...I am assuming you are on some sort of slope where you are cheers Peter Good luck