More gardening books, I know, I know. I'm stuck in a rut.

Gardening with Nature in Texas
by Karen M. Breneman

Chock full of useful stuff and a really good section on water gardens.  Some of the tidbits I absorbed seemed new to me, or if I already knew them, I'd forgotten.  Such as:

Alkaline tap water results in salt build-up in potted plants. Try to water with collected rainwater to avoid problems.

Now, I know how come the soil got so salty after we had a water line break that went undetected for several weeks.  I'd assumed the hard pan clay held the water in the low spots and that dissolved the salt in the soil and let it float to the surface.  Maybe so, but another factor could have been the salts in the tap water.

I'm going to collect all the buckets I can find and set up a rain water collection site.  Sadly I can't tap into my nearly non-existent gutters without a lot of work.  But someday, I will.

Among many other things, I learned that "Mosquito Dunks" are a useful biological control, targeting mosquito larvae and pretty much nothing else.  That we know of.

Other than an introduction to companion planting, there's not a lot on vegetable gardening. But you can tell she knows her stuff--it's little help for people to say that good companion plants for tomatoes are chives, onion, parsley, and carrots, when anyone knows that tomatoes are warm season crops and those are cool-season crops.  She gives useful alternatives, such as using non-commercial relatives of these plants.

Overall it's a great reading book or reference book, whichever you prefer.  If you love Texas or happen to be stuck there, get a copy.