hello world and questions...

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

Howdy, y'all;
 
Before getting too far (thus making a fool out of myself), let me start off by saying I'm fairly new on this list -- and fairly (very?!?) bad at this whole gardening thing.  My wife (Patricia) and I (Lee) are complete and utter failures at gardening in general.  So we decided to try a completely new approach, hence our journey into the realm of square-foot gardening.
 
We live in Round Rock, Texas (north of Austin), in your basic circa-late-1970's vintage subdivision.  "Warm and dry" describes the major part of our growing season, with "hot and dry" describing the rest.  (Anyone else in this area?  Is there a local club/group/whatever?)
 
Actually, someone told us something like: "...if you can't handle a real garden, try that mini-gardening stuff they call something like square-foot gardening."  We put it off for a few years, but after another miserable year with our "real" garden, we decided to take the plunge.
 
So, We bought Mel's book and started reading.  I'm about 1/3 through it and am really "catching the vision" on just how "real" gardening can be!  In fact, it was because I was excited about what I was reading that I went in search of things like this list.  I am hoping to turn my back yard around from the-place-where-plants-go-to-die into a success -- then I can thumb my nose at the "real" gardeners out there who just shook their heads at our past failures.  :-}
 
Having said all of that, you will notice I might be asking some really stupid, and general, questions about gardening.  We tried those "encyclopedia of gardening" books, but when you are as neophyte as we are, it's difficult to find something helpful. (Is there a "Gardening for Morons" book out there?  You know, with a chapter called "This is dirt" followed by "This is water" . . .)
 
We are starting to build our first boxes (I'm starting with just two).  The soil in the location where we WANT to garden has the worst ground on the property; the place with the best soil is NOT where we want the garden.  So I'm going to build some Mel-ish sized boxes about 2 feet tall and fill them with something appropriate.  We are thinking about several inches of gravel on the bottom, then layers of dirt, composted leaves, manure, dirt, leaves, manure, dirt.  How's that sound to y'all?  Are we on the right track?
 
So, I actually have a few questions I'd like to toss at y'all...
 
1)  Is there a FAQ?  Where might I find it?
 
2)  If/when folks on this list say "RTM" (I don't put the "f" in there), what is the "M" they most often speak about?
 
3)  When manure is used, you normally hear things like horse or cow, perhaps even rabbit.  We have access to rabbit pooplets, so that's not a problem.  However, I have two dogs who have the ability to produce a prodigious quantity of, well, dog poop.  Is this okay to use on a garden?
 
4)  Mel talks about compressing lots of stuff into a single square, including planting X in-between Y because you know X will harvest before Y gets to big, etc.  Does anyone out there really get this intense with their gardening?  If so, how do you keep track of this?  Do you start the year with a calendar and decide which plants to plant up front on a week-by-week basis?  Or do you just let it happen as it goes along?
 
Thanks for your indulgence.  We will try not to be too much of a bother on the group.
 
Lee and Patricia Crites
c*@jump.net
 
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