It is a common question and there seem to be two distinct but extreme schools of thought on it. 1) ditch the whole garden or 2) just call it fertilizer. Often the schools of thought split along "where you live lines" of raised in suburbia or raised in the country. I'm country raised and recognize that all sorts of things go on in my gardens. Bottom line is that you have to do what you are comfortable with. But there actually is a middle ground. :) 1) remove as much of the dog poop as possible, 2) mulch the plants that have direct ground contact (they are the only real concern) with fresh soil, compost, straw, or whatever you have to mulch with, 3) understand that the majority of your plants have their own built in filtering system or you wouldn't be able to eat anything because of all the bacteria in the soil, 4) wash your garden produce well, and 5) rig up a little 1-2' fence to keep the dog out. Those little plastic stick-in-the-ground panels they sell are cheap and work well around raised beds. Enjoy your garden and the few years remaining with your good old dog. Dave

I have never had a problem growing anything in my garden soil when i have added leaves and tilled them in the super early spring (like mid February). We use a cover crop in the fall and winter, then add leaves and till under. You cannot find a trace of cover crop or leaves by mid-April when we plant the garden. However, I believe it largely depends on the climate. That's just my opinion though, have no scientific research to back it up. We warm up pretty quick in the spring, so the soil organisms have plenty of time to take care of the garden spot. I would think with a short resting period before planting, if you tilled it in, you should be okay if you are in a warmer environment. The first time we did this method, we tested an area about a quarter of the garden space. We figured that way, all was not lost if it didn't work. Good luck!

Hi! Welcome to the forum. Since you don't have much prep time this year, you'll need to get busy pretty quickly. Probably don't have much time for a soil test and may need to wing it. You don't say. Is the garden in full sun? If so, I'd start small with warm season crops, maybe do some fall crops as well, but mainly work on summer crops this year and prepare your soil for a bigger garden and more crops next year. You can conceivably get three crops out of a garden in Oklahoma, but you want to prepare your soil first. DO NOT use fresh manure in your soil if you are getting ready to plant as it will be too "hot" and will burn your plants. It will also bring weed seeds in that you don't want. One of the best books I've ever owned is the Encyclopedia Of Organic Gardening. It was the first book I ever bought and was my bible for many years, so I highly recommend it. The following crops are cool season and will bolt (grow to quickly and quit producing) quickly when the weather gets warm, which it seems to be doing very quickly this year. I'd save these for fall planting or for next spring: radishes, spinach, carrots and broccoli. The rest can be planted between now and the second week of May. You could actually plant some beans every week, just to ensure that you don't have a big flood of beans and then none for the rest of the summer. Interplanting, or companion planting in wide, slightly raised rows that are wide enough that you can reach the center from either side is a good plan. You can and perhaps should first dig up the plot with a shovel and remove the weeds before tilling in plenty of good quality, weed free compost. Till north to south and then east to west, to be sure you get the compost tilled in very well. Once you have the entire garden tilled, rake the soil into beds and leave paths between the rows the same width as your rows. Lay down clean straw, black and white pages of newspaper, old carpet remnants, or purchased cedar mulch about 4-6 inches deep in the paths. Rake the beds nicely so you don't have any big clods. Then you can either plant seeds or put in transplants. When you buy your green beans, be sure you also buy innoculant and follow the directions on its use. Horns or TLC or any good nursery or coop will tell you why you need to use this. Also buy bush beans and bush type squash and pumpkin. You will have plenty of vines all over your garden with just the watermelon! Within the beds, hill up the soil and plant a couple or three squash or pumpkin seeds, about five bean seeds and a corn seed or two all in the same hill at the correct depth on the seed packets. Plan on planting at least a dozen or so hills, about two-three feet apart, and realize that you will probably have to flood irrigate the hills, so make little motes around each hill. Planting all these together is good for a couple of reasons. Corn is a heavy feeder and so are squash and pumpkin. They use up a lot of nitrogen. Planting the beans with them helps fixate nitrogen into the soil so both squash and corn grow better. And, often one plant will offer insect repellant for another. Planting Guardian marigolds in among your plants, for example, will help ward off some bugs. Interplanting with garlic and onions and chives is good as well, although onions and chives need to be planted early and garlic has to be planted in the fall. Interplanting like this, with these particular crops, is a tried and true Native American method that really works. Using fish emulsion mixed with water to fertilze the corn and squash will also help. Native Americans also used to put a dead fish deep in each hill. This provided nitrogen for the plants as they grew. Unless you have very sandy soil or want to add sand to a bed, the watermelon may have a tough time in clay. I would put it into one end of your garden. Watermelon also grows best in hills with motes, with three or four seeds to each hill. You may want to thin these if they all sprout and grow, down to one or two plants. If a heavy rain is predicted after you plant and before anythig sprouts, you might want to put a little light mulch on top of the hills just to keep the seed from washing away. Once the plants are up and growing well, you'll want to mulch with clean straw so that the moisture stays in the soil and the veggies stay up off the ground. Squash, watermelon and pumpkin take a lot of water and so does corn. And, so do cucumbers, or cukes. Cukes also need rich, deep soil. If you have a wire fence, dig about two feet down and add plenty of compost to form a good, deep bed along that fence and let the cukes grow up it. They, too, will need lots of water. You could also grow bush type cukes if you don't want to mess with growing them up the fence or providing a trellis. Hope all this helps! I'm sure you'll receive plenty of other suggestions. Google for the veggies you want to grow for other tips as well and fork out a little cash for some good, basic veggie gardening books to help you identify things like squash bugs, cucumber beetles and corn worms and learn what to do about them. At the end of the summer, you can plant some cool season crops and see how they do. Next year, plant in this season's beds and walk in this season's paths. Rotating beds and crops will keep you from wearing out the soil and will cut down on pests. Planting a fall crop of winter rye and tilling it in early as green mulch is also a great way to improve your soil. Again, DO NOT use green manure on your garden at this time of year. It probably has all sorts of weed seeds in it and will burn your plants. Start a compost pile now that will "cook" the weed seeds and make compost for your use next season. Have a soil test done next fall or spring as well, just so you know what you may need to add next eyar to improve your soil. Good luck! jp

If you are in Harris County, then I would suggest you to visit this website, Harris County Extension, which explains alots about suitable plants in this area. http://harris-tx.tamu.edu/hort/pubs/vegherb.htm I live in Katy, west of Houston, and about 100 yards South of Harris County. I did buy Brussels Sprout plant about a month ago but returned because they would take about 100 days to get matured. It will be too hot by the time BS to be big, so it did not work for me for now. I had BS planted last autumn and they were ok, not enough harvest but very they were tasty. I understood why they were expensive. Generally speaking, I would plant veggies like this: Feb: Snap Pea seed - I try to get bush type due to the space issue. Mustard green seed - I forgot the name of variety, but this one is very easy to germinate & grow. Spinach seed - I tried Melody and it was good. Carrot seed - I try to get short type due to the space issue. Beg to Mid March: Onion plants - My hubby likes Sweet Onion and Purple onion, so that's we get, and they came from either W-Mart, Lowes, or HD. Green (or yellow or purple) bean seed - So far, any bush type bean equally did well. I like yellow bean. Lima bean seed Swiss chard seed Carrot seed *Seeds are inexpensive, so if they die due to the late frost, I will put more seeds. Mid March after frost: Tomato plants - Celebrity worked good, have not tried other variety yet. Green pepper plants - I can not remember the variety, but they came from either W-Mart, Lowes, or HD Cantaloupe plant - I can not remember the variety, but it came from W-Mart. Cucumber plant - I can not remember the variety, but it came from W-Mart. Raddish seed Cucumber seed Sep or Oct (when the store start carrying the plants): Broccoli plant - I can not remember the variety, but they came from either W-Mart, Lowes, or HD. Brussels Sprout plant - I can not remember the variety, but it came from HD. Garlic Green (or yellow or purple) bean seed Oct: Snap Pea seed Mustard green seed Spinach seed Carrot seed Cabbage seed I strongly recommend to try to grow carrot. All of the homegrown veggies taste stronger and better than the store bought. But the carrot are incredibly better - they are almost a completely different food. Good luck!