Wow...so much good info still coming in. Thanks :) I am going to add some buzzing friends to the mix. I have purchased, and will be making more, Mason Bee houses. Plan to put them around the deck and see if they can help with pollination a little (hopefully a lot). I won't be discouraged if things don't work out. I have been planting tomatoes in two gallon clay pots, sitting in the driveway, for three years now and they do fine. If my deck project fails, I'll go back to that. The deck is treated, and hopefully I'll do it again before I set up the deck garden this spring. I have a hot tub sunken into the deck in one corner, but I don't use it anymore. I plan to build a box over the cover and set planters on top of that. I'll do some before and after pictures and post them when I get a chance. Brody

The reason you can't trust the volume of nursery pots, Jim, is that those black nursery containers are all "nominal" sizes. That means the volume of the pots is vaguely related to the stated gallon size. A "5 galllon" nursery can is 10.5 in. diameter and 12 in. tall. My online calculator says that is only 3.75 gallons if you pot 2 inches from the top of the pot. That isn't large enough for any rose past the first year or so if it puts on vigorous growth. The foot stomping is an old landscaper practice. It's just a cheap way of determining settlement without taking the time to water a plant in. I wouldn't do it. Water your plant in to settle the soil. I've seen people planting roses into dry potting soil. I wouldn't do it. Many potting soils have peat moss which sheds water once dry. Those of you in climates with steady rain year round may not have this problem, but in the desert West, once peat dries out, it takes a concerted effort to dampen it. I open the bag of soil, stick the hose in, fill it up and mix. Then I pot with dripping wet potting soil and also water it in. It's mud pies for grownups. It assures that the soil comes to the optimal height in the pot (about 2 inches down) and fills major air pockets. I unpot roses all the time and have never found an air pocket. I don't drop pots on purpose. Our summers are too hot to grow a lot of roses in pots well. We can't keep the roots cool enough through June and July. I overpot extensively. A 3 x 3 rose goes in an ornamental pot that is 22-24 inches high. I use various decorative pots from the big box store and always buy the biggest size. Why? They bring to rose up to height and look more in scale with a landscape. It's funny how a pot looks big in a store and miniature in the garden. Also, with those big pots I'm approaching the 15 gallon actual size I find any healthy rose needs. I do a seat of the pants volume-of-cone calculation to guesstimate the volume of the pot, taking into consideration the potting soil is probably 3 inches from the top of the container. Here's a nice online volumetric calculator. http://www.online-calculators.co.uk/volumetric/conevolume.php

When I lived in that area I would recommend the Ortho book on growing roses. Sunset has one too but I liked the Ortho book better. Don't remember why. The Sunset book would be very area-appropriate at least, with no confusing info on unnecessary stuff like winterizing and blackspot and japanese beetle. Some people do get insulted by the "for Dummies" titles. Guess they don't realize it's a very popular series. My aunt went off on my uncle (her brother) when she asked for a basic computer book and he gave her the 'for Dummies' one. Total temper tantrum. I glanced at the new Better Homes book when it came out. I saw that it's recommending diazinon for things like midges, even though diazinon was removed from the market by the EPA, some years ago. Anyone know what's up with that?? has diazinon been rehabilitated, or what? I've been not recommending it because of that.

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