I was watching a gardening TV show the other day based on the idea that a crew can come in to someone's yard and build an instant garden while the owners step out for a day. They leave their tired old lot in the hands of the miracle workers and return to a dazzling new showplace.

While this makes for great TV, it's not the way most of us garden. Besides the prohibitive cost of buying an overnight landscape, I love to tinker too much to have someone else plop an instant, perfect garden in my backyard. I think 90 percent of the fun of gardening is in the development. That's why mine is never finished!

For me gardening is a trial-and-error process. No matter how you plan it, there is always some fine-tuning to be done. When I'm unfamiliar with a new variety, all I have to go on is the description from a catalogue, article, or book. However, I often find these newcomers don't grow like they're touted to on print. It's obvious that plants can't read! These dog days of summer, our "second dormant season," are a great time to read, plan, and daydream about plants for the fall planting season, which is just around the corner.

However, there is one outdoor activity we shouldn't neglect during the summer heat: soil building. I add compost to my soil every chance I get to build it for the next planting. Here in the south, we "burn" organic matter very fast due to our year-round warm temperatures and moist growing conditions. That is, microbial activity breaks it down very fast and if we want to keep up the levels of our soil's organic matter, we have to keep adding more.

I usually mix in some compost or aged manure with each transition of a vegetable or flower bed. New garden areas need to have several inches mixed into the soil several weeks prior to planting to allow time to settle.

Well I better go for now. I think I'll go out and sit on the porch to wait for that instant-garden crew to show up. I've got some areas that could really use a good makeover.

Author's Bio ========================================= Skip Richter has been an avid gardener in the South and Southwest for 30 years. He appears on local radio and television gardening shows and writes a weekly newspaper gardening column. He has trained Master Gardeners in several Texas county programs as well as at state and national conferences.