The best gardening book for south-central Oklahoma isn't a book at all, it's a woman who goes by the name here of "Okiedawn" or just "Dawn."

I've often thought she should publish online someplace, but she prefers to dole out her wisdom here on the Garden Web. When Dawn speaks, everyone listens....

Robert

P.S. I'm sure she shall have the answer for the best squash for you and that right soon...

I have to agree with Robert. Not only is she very terribly knowledgeable about gardening, she too lives in south central Oklahoma.

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

Hi,
I can see why Dawn is held in such high regard. Thank-you so much for your information. I hope you don't get tired of all my newbie questions. I will try to check the older posts before I embarrass myself with obvious questions.

What if I do the spikey-leaved squash on the outer edges (to keep the critters out) of my three sisters plot and sweet potato on the inside.

I am so excited to be on this forum. My sweet Daddy was a great gardener. Unfortunately, I didn't get interested in gardening until after he passed into Glory. Thank-you for making yourselves available!

God Bless,
Connie of
Casey, Connie and Crew of 13

You can find Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden online at: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/buffalo/garden/garden.html. It's a great read and the link includes pictures. I think it's the whole book.

Connie,

I've never tried growing sweet potatoes interplanted with corn. I am not sure it would work because they have different fertility needs. Sweet corn needs fertile soil with lot of organic material, but sweet potatoes thrive in poorer soil. If you grow your sweet potatoes in richer soil, they tend to give you a lot of leaves and poorly formed, smaller, fibrous potatoes.

I'd also be concerned that the sweet corn would shade the sweet potatoes too much. To get around that, you'd have to plant your corn plants much further apart than usual and, therefore, you'd get a lower yield. Also, squash is going to grow and go wherever it wants. The odds are that your squash plants would overrun your sweet potatoes and shade them as well.

Finally, if there is something (like a corn stalk) for sweet potato vines to climb, they'll tend to climb it. So, if you are going to grow beans to climb the corn stalks, the last thing you need is sweet potato vines competing with the beans.

The normal companion plants for sweet potatoes (with proper spacing) are other root crops like beets (planted in cooler weather and already tall before you plant the SP slips), parsnips or salsify. I usually grow my sweet potatoes on the western edge of the garden where our clay changes to a narrow band of poor, sandy soil. They do great there, but I don't really interplant them with any kind of companion plant.....maybe because by the time I get around to planting sweet potatoes in May, I am exhausted and tired of planting and have run out of steam. LOL There are some four o'clocks (which have large tuber-type roots) in that area and they and the sweet potatoes don't seem to "dislike" one another.

Dawn