Clio, I don't know if I've ever seen a climate specific book on growing houseplants, but I'm not sure it's critical either. Indoor relative humidity isn't much different here in summer than anywhere else. Winter humidity levels tend to be higher here because relatively warm air (generally well above freezing) holds more moisture but that's going to be a bonus. You may wish to invest in a light meter. Because our eyes are so efficient at dealing with different light levels, it is impossible for us to judge how bright it is without one. I can say that full light here means a south facing window, out of direct sunlight. Some plants will tolerate an east facing window, only a few desert plants can handle full sun through a window here (air doesn't circulate as much indoors as outdoors, even on a still day so plant tissues can heat up dramatically, especially with the higher levels of insolation here). Ryan

everytime i think I've found a great magazine, after a few issues nothing seems to appeal to me anymore. I've finally decided to give up the magazine subscriptions and go to the public library to read the ones i want-- it has fine gardening, horticulture, organic gardening, garden gate, herb quarterly and one or two others-- so i'm lucky. Usually i pick a rainy saturday or sunday and sit and read everything current. I finally had to do the dame thjing with cooking magazines and no just get cook's illustrated, bon appetit, and food and wine. about 2 years ago we decided to trim down subscriptions (we were at 65 total) have whittled the list to 40. and we oly are allowed to get 2 new subscriptions each year, if we want more we have to drop something off the list. I know the mailman hates coming to us on the first of the month. Anyway I was just suggesting a alternative to gatting a subscription. digger b

Marlene, you've going to love it. If you have to move to a new zone and be a 'newbie', it's going to be a helluva lot more easier to go to zone 9 from 5 than to do it like I did, which was the reverse. (Here I'm a total idiot and learning the hard way.) You're going to have a much bigger selection of flowers/plants in that zone than where you're from. You will find that some plants that you considered 'annuals' aren't really over there because the fall/winter doesn't get cold enough to kill them. You will find that certain plants that other parts of the US consider more 'exotic', arent' considered that there. Like here, if I want night blooming Jasmine, I have to buy a 40 dollar plant from a nursery and keep it indoors in the winter. There? I can get one for 7 bucks at Target or in the racks in front of Payless and it's a perennial. It will grow like a weed. If you do Bougenvilla, do it in a very bright exposure. If you plant it in the right place, it will be amazingly beautiful and will grow like a weed. If you do it and it takes off, buy yourself a chain saw. I'm not kidding. Those suckers have thorns and over time, the branches can get thick. Walnut Creek has very hot summer periods. No humidity. No bugs. And not much (if any) rain. That part of the Bay Area (East Bay on the other side of the Oakland Hills) also is far more likely to be concerned with water usage. I've been out of the area for about a year and a half, so I don't know what the deal is right now, but I do know that you're given a basic allotment and if you exceed it, you will have one helluva water bill. So take it slowly with big planting for a few months until you find out what that bill is. At the very least, call and find out the parameters for your location so that you don't get surprises. Oftentimes, water usage for a certain year is based upon the previous year. So if the person that owned your house last year wasn't a big gardener, be extra skippy careful. Using mulch is not optional. It helps to keep the plants from being stressed from the heat and holds water. Containers in the summer will have to be hand watered daily. (Mulch them too.) And even if you have sprinklers, you might be doing that in other areas too. There will be plants that require cold that you won't be able to grow. Peonies don't exist. Lilacs only bloom in certain microclimates. A good book to start with is Sunset's Western Garden Book. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0376038519/102-5973663-2617723?v=glance&n=283155 Winters are very different. You don't do things like blowing out your sprinklers. You don't say goodbye to your lawn mower. And depending upon the weather, you may have to water year around. You may see trees at the end of winter that drop most of their leaves just as the spring buds form. Spring comes much earlier. You'll be pruning roses at the end of January. Gardening is not something that you stop doing, you just slow down. Long rainy periods mean that you don't have to mow! LOL You don't have big fungal problems with lawns over there, but you might trade that for things like rust on the roses during excessively rainy years. And during that time, plan on buying ant stakes. When the weather is really wet (and it hasn't been for awhile), the ants like to come inside. But compared to Japanese beetles and God knows what else the Midwest has, it's a breeze in comparison. Btw, for entertainment purposes, if you're into produce, check out the Berkeley Bowl (a grocery store, obviously in Berkeley). Their meat is not fabulous, but damn, the produce section is to die for! Especially in spring. Andronico's is good too, but it's more expensive... Have fun! I'll shut up now, I'm getting homesick. You're going to do fine!

I don't know that there are any vegetable garden books specifically related to Oklahoma other than Louise Riotte's books. However, as written, they were intended for a national audience. I think it is just because we know she was from southern OK (Ardmore) that we treasure her books so much. I like all her books, and listed some of them in the previous thread about gardening books I'm going to link below. Many of my favorite gardening books that I rely upon are mentioned in the link below, but I have a couple of new favorites that I don't think I'd read at the time last year's book thread was written, so I'll mention them here. "The Texas Tomato Lover's Handbook" by Dr. William D. Adams, published in 2011. Dr. Adams enjoyed a long and distinctive career with the Ag Extension Service in Texas where he tested tomato plants year in and year out with the help of Master Gardeners in his county. He also maintains his own kitchen garden, and sells his excess produce at market. If there is anything you need to know about how to grow tomatoes in our climate and soils, he covers it in this book . I love, love, love this book so much that if I had to get rid of all my gardening books and could keep only one, this is the one I would keep. It would be really hard, though, for me to get rid of the next two. "Homegrown Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs" (a Creative Homeowner book), by Jim Wilson (of Victory Garden fame) and Walter Chandoha, published in 2010. This book was written/photographed by two men with over 100 years of gardening experience between them. Best of all, Jim Wilson gardened in the south, so the book is well-balanced for all regions of the country, which is not necessarily the case with all books geared toward a national audience. This book is outstanding. If I was a new gardener who was just getting into growing veggies, fruits and herbs, this book would tell me everything I needed to know in order to know where to begin, what to do and how to succeed. I've mentioned this next book many times before. Even though I've had it for almost 3 decades and practically have it memorized, I'd panic if my copy was misplaced and I couldn't find it. Dr. Sam Cotner's "The Vegetable Book: A Texans Guide to Gardening" was published in the mid-1980s, and I am on my second copy, having totally worn out the first copy about a decade ago. Dr. Cotner was the head of horticulture at A&M before his retirement, and that was the position he held when he wrote this book. I learned how to grow veggies from watching my dad do it, but he was very quiet and didn't talk about what he was doing or why he was doing it--he just did it. So, I learned the how from observing my dad, but from Dr. Cotner's book I learned all the why's and wherefore's. It was this book that taught me about the effect of soil temps and air temps on plants, which may seem elementary, but most of us don't know those things when we're just starting out. Once you understand the effect of air and soil temps on your plants and their productivity, everything else just falls into place. My favorite guide to growing herbs is "Southern Herb Growing" written by Madalene Hill & Gwen Barclay with Jean Hardy. No one was/is more qualified to write about southern herb growing than Madalene Hill and Gwen Barclay, except perhaps for Jim Long. All his books are great too. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention "Texas Gardener" magazine, which I've been reading for a couple of decades now. Although it covers all aspescts of gardening in Texas, I find its info just as appropriate for OK. It does cover all sorts of gardening, everything from lawns to trees and shrubs to water gardening, flowers, fruits and veggies. It seems to me that it has at least as much emphasis on fruits, herbs and veggies as on ornamentals, and I love it. So, that's my two cents contributed to this discussion. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Previous Thread on Gardening Books