Oklahoma Homeowner’s Handbook for Soil and Nutrient Management
Caring for home landscapes and gardening can, and should, be an enjoyable and rewarding experience. The information in this handbook is intended to improve the chances of that happening. Many of the concepts and principles that are the foundation to interpreting and diagnosing the needs and problems encountered in the yard and garden, come from decades of research and its application in cultivated field crops.
The big, and exciting, difference between managing soils for cultivated crop production and the urban landscape is scale. Management decisions that are feasible and appropriate for urban landscapes are neither feasible nor appropriate for the average farmer. While some of the fundamental concepts and principles learned from cultivated crop production research can be useful when transferred to managing the home landscape, the reverse is not always true. Small scale management of homeowner landscapes not only makes some practices affordable, but also permits some unnecessary practices and mistakes that would not occur in larger scale situations. These, especially in the case of nutrient management, will be identified as practices that can be eliminated or modified to save small inputs of money and effort. Finally, the real value in acquiring new knowledge from reading and studying this handbook will come from an improved ability to manage on a cause-and effect basis.