What kind of gardening are you interested in? Ornamental? Edible? Both? Also, are you a beginner so you need to know how to start out from Day One with planning, designing a landscape and soil improvement or do you already have the landscaping thing figured out and you just want to know how to grow edibles?

Let me know and I'll suggest a book or two or three, as will many others here.

Dawn

I don't have anything figured out!

I really should have said that I'm looking for a step-by-baby-step guide to turning my little plot into an urban FARM! I'm definitely growing more and more into the mindset of more food, less grass!

I'd like to convert my whole lot to sustainable garden/farm one project at a time.

I made two raised beds last year but I don't even know if raised beds is what I really want considering my goal.

Right now I have the two raised beds, a tater patch I just planted yesterday, two peach trees recently planted, adding a couple of cherry trees soon I think, we have chickens and we're considering bees for next year. So . . .

I think I'd like to focus more on vegetable gardening. I'd like plant foods that I like that will produce in this hot weather. In my dreams, my entire backyard would be vegetable gardens and chickens with the front and sides fruit trees and berries.

Any ideas?

AND . . . not to be too greedy but I'd like something that will help me/teach me to grow around the calendar. In my dreams, again ; ), I'd like a book that will tell me each and every week what I should be planting outdoors, what I should be starting indoors, what I should be transferring from in to out, what to prune today, what to add to the soil this week . . . and on and on.

Is that too ambitious?

Kind of, sort of. Finding a book with all of that would be remarkable, and finding such a book oriented to NE OK would be twice as remarkable.

There's several good books to help get you started.

Since you're more interested in edibles, I'd say Ed Smith's "Vegetable Gardening Bible" is essential. If you are growing in raised beds and want to maximize your production, I'd suggest the newest edition of Mel Bartholomew's "Square Food Gardening".

The best book on getting the largest harvest in the smallest space is John Jeavons' book on biointensive gardening. It is called "How To Grow More Vegetables* (and fruits, nuts, berries, grains and other crops) *Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine". Some people find his book hard to use because it is very detailed, very scientifically-oriented, and full of charts you spend time deciphering. I like it though, although I certainly do not take such a precise, measured, orderly approach to planting. I do raise vegetables using biointensive methods and my spacing is a hybrid of John Jeavons' recommmendations and Mel Bartholomew's recommendations further modified based on what I've found works for me in my soil and growing conditions. For a beginner gardener, Mel's book on square foot gardening is much easier to start out with....and John Jeavons' book is one you might graduate up to after you have some gardening experience.

Rosalind Creasy's new book on Edible Landscaping is remarkable and fits my style of mixing together edibles and ornamentals in the same beds. It is, perhaps, my favorite gardening book of all the ones I've read...and I've read quite a few. It was her earlier books on Edible Landscaping that got me started on edible landscaping, but this recent work is the ultimate guide to edible landscaping and I truly love it, love it, love it.

I'll let someone else mention the good books by Oklahoma writers because I haven't read them in over a decade and am not sure I remember the names of them any more, but there are a couple out there.

Any gardening book written by Texas gardening guru Neil Sperry is top-notch and since Oklahoma is so close to Texas and we have similar soils and climate, his writing applies as much to us here in OK and to folks down in TX.

One of my favorite books from recent years was new last year and its author is Barbara Pleasant, a long-time gardener and an author who writes books and for various gardening-oriented publications. I've linked it below.

For a monthly calender (I don't think the weekly calendar you're hoping for really exists, but over time I've written my own weekly calendar in my head based on my soil, my climate, etc.), Google and find the website of the Tulsa Master Gardeners. They have a monthly "to do" calendar that is pretty handy.

I'm assuming you already read "Urban Farm" magazine which is very, very good. I've ready "Mother Earth News" for decades and like it vey much, although I like it much more way back in the old days before it became so yuppiefied and sophisticated. "Organic Gardening" magazine is a mere shadow of itself and I've about given up on it. It is probably about 1/50th as helpful as it was in the old days and has gone downhill steadily and rapidly since Mike McGrath left.

My favorite gardening magazine is "Texas Gardener" which I've read for many years (OK, decades) and find just as helpful to me in Oklahoma as it was in Texas. It has very detailed monthly "to do" calendars (It publishes six times yearly, so each issue has calendars for 2 months) that cover these categories in separate sections: "Vegetables and Herbs", "Perennials and Annuals", "Trees, Shrubs and Vines", "Fruits and Nuts" and "Lawns and Groundcovers". If I could read only one garden magazine a month, it would be "Texas Gardener" because it covers all the basics and has wonderfully well-written articles. I have the Nov./Dec. issue here at the table close to where I'm siting and it included articles on fall-grown berries, daffodils, growing great edible greens, preserving tomatoes, growing Lacy Oak, holiday herbs, sky island gardening, standard expectations for Texas patios (growing and maintaining standards in space-challenged areas like a patio), and the trials and treasures of growing vegetables. There's more, but I think that gives you a good idea of what it includes.

Oh, and one more book. This is and always will be my favorite vegetable gardening book. It was first published in the 1980s and taught me so much about raising vegetables that I cannot even begin to imagine gardening without it. It is called "The Vegetable Book" and was written by the late, great Dr. Sam Cotner, back when he was the head of horticulture at Texas A&M University. The book has a separate chapter for each of the commonly grown vegetables: 31 of them and a 32nd chapter for veggies that were less commonly grown in the 1980s when it was published. There are various appendices that detail gardening-related topices like how to make a tomato cage, rototill a garden, lower or raise your soil pH, build a cold frame, pre-germinate seeds, etc. It is a bit over 400 pages long and my older edition is printed on high-quality paper with quite a few photos. It is available from Texas Gardener press which you can find by googling. They are the publishers of Texas Gardener magazine and publish and/or sell several regionally-oriented books as well.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Starter Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans

Rebecca,

Did you mention how much sun you get? When I think of right in the middle of Tulsa on a small lot, I have a vision of huge trees in old neighborhoods, and lots of shade. If that's the case, you'll have a tough time growing most vegetables. Otherwise, if you have full sun, you have lots of options.

Wishing you lots of growing success,
Seedmama

Thank you Dawn for the recommendations! I ordered John Jeavons' book "How To Grow More Vegetables and the updated square foot gardening! I have been gardening for years but lately too many "crop failures" so back to reading to get more yummy veggies out of the effort I put into it all!

Kelly

As a new gardener myself I found the books Dawn mentioned to be quite useful. There is another one I wanted to mention that I found lovely, "Starter Vegetable Gardens:24 no fail plans for small organic gardens". Right now I am reading, "Four Season Harvest" by Elliot Coleman and I find it is really educating me about both biointensive gardening and year around gardening.