Bryan,

1. The most important tip I have is that it ALL starts with the soil. Taking the time to prepare soil properly pays dividends over and over again. Many common problems can be traced back to soil that is too heavily compacted and lacks organic material.

2. Gardening is easy as long as you put the right plant in the right place. This sounds so easy as to be laughable, but it is a "rule" many people ignore. If you plant something that MUST have good drainage in slow-draining soil, for example, that plant will always struggle there. Likewise, with sun exposure. Plants that need full shade to dappled shade will NEVER survive for long in full sun, for example.

3. Rely on resources that are relevant to OUR soil and our growing conditions. Many gardening books tend to be aimed at the northeast and eastern seaboard and their climate is much different from ours. The same is often true of plant tags/labels. You can't take what they say as gospel because their info is generic and often doesn't apply to our climate. There are only a few books aimed specifically at Oklahoma gardeners, but I have found that any books aimed at Texas gardeners are equally applicable to us as well because our states have similar soil and growing conditions.

4. Expect plants here to get larger than reference material says they will, and expect it to happen in a shorter time frame. Because our growing season is VERY long, happy plants can become huge monsters very quickly. Space your plantings accordingly.

5. Chemicals create more problems than they solve. I am NOT a die-hard organic maniac although I do prefer to grow organically as much as possible. I am 49 years old and have been gardening since I was big enough to walk around and follow my dad (and grandparents) in the lawn and garden. When I was a kid in the 1960s, chemical usage (and LOTS of nasty stuff like DDT were still used) was the norm. And, it seemed like no matter how many chemicals you used, the pest problems got worse and worse. Now that I am older, I understand WHY that occurred.

In the natural world, EVERY single pest that we think is a problem in our yards and gardens has one or more predators that prey on that pest and help keep the population at manageable levels. When we use chemicals, though, we disrupt that process. "Bad bugs" always rebound more quickly than the "beneficial insects" that help control them, so once you kill off the beneficial insects, the bad ones quickly overpopulate and do devastating amounts of damage. Working WITH nature to control pests in the most natural way possible is the smarter long-term strategy.

And, I have to give my dad and grandfather credit. The longer they gardened, the more organic they became because they figured out for themselves that chemicals gave a fast fix but caused more problems than they solved. In the latter years of my dad's life, he gardened almost completely organically, and with much more success and less stress than he experienced back in the day when he used chemicals.

6. Life is not perfect and our gardens never will be perfect. Plants get eaten and there is no way to completely prevent that. They get sick and still survive. However, in most situations the plants do survive "the crisis" and regrow and move on. We gardeners have to learn to relax and not overreact to every hole in a leaf or to every splotch of bacteria or fungus on our plants. In the long run, Mother Nature corrects most problems if we let her.

7. Mulch is worth its' weight in gold. Well-mulched soil stays cooler, holds moisture longer, has lower rates of soil-borne diseases and has improved tilth and drainage.

8. Compost is a thousand times better for your garden than peat moss. Compost is alive and peat moss is dead and that is really all you need to know. You can stil use peat moss, but understand that it will not feed your soil and plants the way compost and other organic materials will.

9. Overwatering and overfertilizing harm and kill far more plants than underwatering and underfertilizing. This phenomenon has a name and it is called "loving your plants to death". This lesson is a very hard one to grasp and many gardeners garden for years (or even decades) before they finally "get it".

10. Gardening ought to be fun, enjoyable and a positive experience. You can only control so much and the rest of it is in the hands of a higher power. Do your best to plant the right plant in the right place in properly prepared soil, feed and water it correctly, and then leave it alone! Don't stress over factors like weather that are beyond your control. Don't be a control freak. Relax. Enjoy. Stress less. Gardening is a journey, and not a destination, so enjoy the trip.

That's my top ten tips. I'm sure you'll receive many other useful tips from many other Oklahoma gardeners.

Dawn

From a relative newbie...wow! Dawn has hit it (ALL) on the head! That's a great basis for anyone; I'm sure that when you have more plant- or location-specific questions, that many others will be happy to chime in to give thoughts and advice...welcome!

Yeah, after reading this forum for a few weeks and seeing all the wonderfully helpful and knowledgeable advice Dawn gives, I'm thinking she really ought to write a book, if only she had the time!

It's not only all the "how-to garden" information she has, her thoughts on attitude and "why-to garden" (like her #10 above) are just as important, maybe even more so.

Devilwoman,

It may come as a surprise to you to learn that you are not the first person to suggest a book, and I suspect a book will never happen, 'cause I can't sit still that long. LOL And, anyway, there are a billion and one gardening books out there and many of them are really wonderful.

Lately, though, I've been reading books that are more about food than specifically about gardening, although the two are very intertwined if you raise a lot of your own veggies and fruit. I just finished Barbara Kingsolver's amazing book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life". Earlier I had read Joan Dye Gussow's "This Organic Life: Confessions of an Urban Homesteader" and several of Michael Pollan's books, including "The Omnivore's Dilemma". All of these have me thinking how much we have lost touch with our food and what it is and where it comes from. I do wonder how long we can continue to import food from all over the world with rising transport costs while at the same time, so many of our farming families struggle to survive. It just seems all messed up to me. I'm never happier than when we have virtually an entire meal from our garden, which is common in the summer months.

Thanks for the lovely compliment, though. You're making me blush. I often joke back that I AM writing a book, one post at a time. : )

Dawn