Nate, Thanks for the link. I've put it in a clickable link below.

This book is my gardening bible and has been for a very long time. I find it just as useful now as when it first was published in the 1980s. I also have Greg Grant's book on fruit and vegetable gardening in Texas and Dr. Adam's book on growing tomatoes in Texas and like both of them just about as much as Dr. Cotner's book. However, in my mind, Dr. Cotner still is the king, and I think he always will be. His book was the first regionally-oriented book on vegetable gardening that I read and it taught me how to be a better gardener in the soils and climate we have here.

Sorry about the poor disappeared onion. Now hurry up and get that ground sprayed with a gopher/mole repellent so those little rodents will go away and leave your onions alone.

I am making a new garden spot in an area with very sandy soil and expect to have to fight a pitched battle against the moles, voles and gophers. Our cats pretty much control them around the house and the main garden, but this area is a lot further away and the cats do not frequent this area, or at least not until we started breaking up the ground for a garden. Apparently the little rodents have been out here in this former cow pasture doing as they please for a long time and I am finding their tunnels everywhere as I dig so I expect the castor beans, the cats and I will have to fight them tooth and nail, probably forever.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Dr. Cotner's Vegetable Book

OkieDawn,
Many thanks for making that a hyperlink. I hope my book purchase comes in this week. I think i got my onions in the ground right on time!

I won't be planting my onions for another 5 to 7 days. When I plant before mid-February they tend to get slammed by snow, sleet, ice or cold weather. I don't know that our house will get any of the snow forecasted to fall this week, but I'll wait until that storm system has come and gone before I plant the onions. I'm having them shipped by Dixondale and the shipping date is this week. Last year I got them 2 weeks earlier but it was so wet I had a hard time getting them into the ground. This year, it definitely is not too wet!

I think you'll really enjoy Dr. Cotner's book. I love how he breaks everything down in such a clear and direct manner, and I love the troubleshooting section at the end of each chapter. The book in in its third decade and has stood the test of time, and I think that's remarkable. In a lot of ways, Dr. Cotner was so far ahead of his time compared to other garden writers I was reading at the time. There he was, in the 1980s writing about the use of floating row cover fabric, which I'd never even heard of until he mentioned it. Now it is commonly used and can be found at lots of nurseries, garden centers and sometimes at big box stores like Wal-Mart. That's pretty remarkable.

Dr. Cotner was the head of horticulture at Texas A&M (but we Okies cannot hold that against him) and passed away just a couple of years ago after a battle with Alzheimer's Disease. He was a true legend in Texas and taught so many gardeners how to do things the best way and why it was important to do them that way. I just love that his book is back in print. I hate recommending out-of-print books to folks, and this is the second or third time it's been brought back into print because of popular demand. I think that's pretty special.