Although probably not what keeval is really looking for that is a good basic book on what is going on in the soil. Here is a link that might be useful: Soil Biology Primer

I will have to agree with you there. I read it last winter for ideas on our then 1 year old market and it really helped me out. I still refer to it and will be using it again this winter in the "off" season. Great resource. :)

I don't think there is a single "best" winter squash or pumpkin for a three sisters garden and I've grown all kinds. You should grow whichever one you and your family will enjoy growing and eating. Or, alternatively, you can raise corn and beans you'll enjoy eating and grow a decorative type pumpkin or winter squash for fall decorations. You could use sweet potato if you want, but I wouldn't really consider it a three sisters type of plant. One of the ways in which squash is an important part of the three sisters garden is that its large prickly leaves keep the racoons and other critters out of the corn, and the large leaves also shade the ground and keep it cool. You won't get exactly the same results from smaller sweet potato foliage. If I were growing a Three Sisters garden with kids, I'd probably grow either 'Seminole' or 'Small Sugar Pie Pumkin' because both of them are very disease-resistant and pest-tolerant. Of the two of them, 'Seminole' is the most drought-tolerant. If it is very important to you to grow your Three Sisters Garden using authentic vegetables once grown by Native Americans, you can find wonderful heirloom varieties online at NATIVE Seed/Search, Seeds of Change, Seed Savers Exchange, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds or Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. If you want to read an interesting and informative book about exactly how the native Americans raised their crops, harvested and preserved them, and how they prepared them and ate them, I recommend the book "Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden", which I think is still available from Seed Savers Exchange or Seeds of Change. As far as gardening books, there are very few written specifically for Oklahoma. Steve Dobbs' "Oklahoma Gardener's Guide" focuses on standard landscape plantings.....lawn, trees, ground covers, perennials, vines, woody shrubs, roses, etc. It is a great book especially with regards to choosing landscape plants that will thrive in Oklahoma. I've never seen a vegetable gardening book written specifically for Oklahoma, but I have found most books written for Texas to work equally well for us here. My favorite vegetable gardening book is an "oldie but a goodie" published by Texas Gardening Press in 1985. It is called "The Vegetable Book" and was written by Texas A&M professor Dr. Sam Cotner, the former head of Horticulture at Texas A&M University. (I've linked the book below.) This book has been my vegetable bible for at least 20 years. There are a couple of other good vegetable gardening books written for a national audience that are useful in conjunction with Dr. Cotner's book. One is "All New Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew, which will teach you how to build raised beds, enrich the soil and plant using his square foot methods to maximize your productivity. Another is Ed Smith's book "The Vegetable Bible: Discover Ed's High-Yield W-O-R-D System For all North American Gardening Regions". For general gardening info, any and all of Neil Sperry's books are wonderful. A professional horticulturalist, one-time Texas agriculture extension agent (when I was a kid), author, radio show host, businessman and all-around good guy, Neil Sperry is simply a treasure and his books should be on every Oklahoma gardener's shelf. His annual calendar and his magazine are amazing too. A great magazine that has lots and lots of info on raising veggies in our climate is Texas Gardener magazine. You can find it and subscribe to it by googling. It is my favorite gardening magazine. Don't forget that a great resource for veggie gardeners in Oklahoma is the University of Oklahoma fact sheets written to cover many gardening topics. If you don't know how to access the OSU fact sheets on-line, let me know and I'll link their index for you. Robert and Debra both made comments that are very kind and much appreciated, but I want to emphasize that we have many knowledgable and experienced gardeners here....and I am just one of them. You shouldn't hesitate to ask your questions here....you'll get much useful advice and even a few laughs from our many members. None of us is an expert at everything (or, maybe none of us is expert at anything, LOL) but together we're all experts at dealing with Oklahoma's highly variable (aka wild and crazy) climate/weather and soil. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Dr. Cotner's Book

Plant Production in Containers II is an excellent text which is strong on the 'growing' aspect, but provides little in the way of understanding how plants actually work. That comes from sources focused on physiology and morphology. The text's I learned the most about the 'how' part of growing are Plant Production in Containers II ~ Carl Whitcomb PhD, Growing Media for Ornamental Plants and Turf ~ Handreck & Black, and A Grower's Guide .... Water, Media, and Nutrition for Greenhouse Crops (ISBN1-883052-12-2), not in that order. The later of the three is published by Ball, edited by David Reed, and is the text I used to refer to most frequently. I own a number of texts that focus on physiology/ morphology, all of them excellent. Plant physiology ~ Taiz/ Zeiger and Plant Physiology ~ Mohr/ Schopfer, are both great books and can answer nearly all your questions re how plants work, but they are tough sledding. The physiology of woody plants is very well covered in Growth Control in Woody Plants and Physiology of Woody Plants, both works of Pallardy/Kozlowski. Information re propagation and pathology will really round out your understanding of how plants work, and Marschner's Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants is definitely the 'bible' when it comes to plant nutrition. Al