All of my vegetable gardening books are many years old, most from Rodale Press purchased during the seventies. Rodale Books: ENcyclopedia of Organic Gardening Organic Plant Protection Plants-a-Plenty (lots on vegetative propagation) The Solar Greenhouse ORganic Gardening Under Glass (Someday I'll have one) The Self-Sufficient Suburban Gardener Getting the Most FRom Your Garden--This is the book that inspired us to switch to wide-row, deep-bed gardening. With these books and several years worth of ORganic Gardening magazines, we learned to garden. Another good book is Gardening, The Complete Guide to Growing America's FAvorite Fruits & Vegetables by the National Gardening ASsociation. My favorite flower gardening books are : Best Plants, 1000 easy-to-grow garden plants, published in Great Britain by Hamlyn but appicable here as it gives hardiness zones. Lovely pics. Flower Gardening 1-2-3, a Home Depot book, a great book for beginners Good Planting by Rosemary Very, another English book. But I love, love, love the chapter on Woodland Gardens and have used it as inspiration for my own The Long-Flowering Garden by Craigmyle, yet another English book with great photos. (I'm a sucker for 'purty pichurs'. The Perennial Garden, Color Harmonies Through the Seasons, by Jeff and Marilyn Cox is another Rodale Book I don't know if you can even still find these books, but that's my list for what it's worth. Dorothy

Hi Blessedfrog We've had pretty good luck (not knowing what we're doing either) with onions (Tex. Granex onion sets), red potatoes, hybrid corn, okra, squash, and bush beans. I think the right kind of pepper would do ok, but I'm not sure about bell types. Herbs seem to do well. We are going to try asparagus this year, but that takes a couple of years to develop. Soil here is black land clay. And Celebrity tomatoes. Find someone with goats that will let you have a load of manure and mix it in the garden soil. Amazing what a tomato can do with that stuff. Get a Henry Fields catalog, or other good supplier. You can learn a lot reading the descriptions of different varieties of vegetables. Lonny

Granted I got a late start, but not a good harvest. The carrots are still pencil sized, tomato production was lame and flavorless (probably too much water). So do you pull the determinant tomatoes and start over in Aug? The two season thing is new to me. The infestations seem to be non-stop too. Army cutworms, then tomato hornworms, then spider mites, then leaf miners, then gulf fruitilary cats. Did I mention the coons that ate what few tomatoes I had? The one thing that seems to be fairly immune is the asparagus and peppers (even the peppers were attacked). Luckily the coons gave up on vegetables after a stalk or two.

You might find this interesting about llama beans - https://paradisefoundfiber.com/resources/the-wonders-of-llama-poop/ I have nine llamas right now so now shortage of llama beans! They are totally pasture fed and their manure has done wonders when we pour buckets full directly into holes before planting trees or shrubs. I put about 1/3 llama beans in my soil when we made our garden beds originally. It breaks down very quickly. I have llama tea made all the time also and pour it on my veggies from time to time. I planted tomatoes from seed last July and had tomatoes through Christmas (I covered them the first couple of freezes). I had some that the slices were the size of corn tortillas. We put in soil, llama beans, seaweed and the amendments listed in Howard Garrett's book in the amounts he says too for about 14" deep in our raised beds. They aren't overfull yet I was just thinking they would become that way. Didn't realize that wouldn't happen. My compost (which is mainly vegetable/fruit scraps from the kitchen) wasn't ready between the fall and spring garden but it will be before I plant again so I just didn't realize how to do it or how it worked. I was concerned about disturbing the dirt or removing any since I read not to till and that you don't want to disturb the earthworms and the beneficial life too much.