I have had cabbages, kale, collards and radiccio all winter, uncovered, and mixed lettuce, chard, and spinach under a frost blanket. The spinach is starting to go to seed. I planted them about October, but you can plant the kale and collards now. They will grow slowly until it warms up, then take off. Kale is biennial so you can keep it through summer. Check with your nursery what date to plant snow and English peas...its pretty quick. This is my first year doing a winter garden and I love it! No going out to water, and virtually no bugs. Also have sorrel, parsley, mustard and rosemary. Thyme,sage and oregano are alive, but look ratty. If you are doing just ornamentals a good nursery should have early flowers like poppy,snaps, dianthus,wallflower,bellis,diacia, arctotis, etc.

Bon, Our temperatures have been all over the place. I am liking this week's cooler daytime highs though I am not as crazy about the cooler nighttime lows. At our house we've hit 43 and 44 degree low temps this week, which is one reason the peppers aren't already in the ground. Hopefully the worst of the cool nights have passed because I intend to start planting peppers this afternoon. Ezzirah, It's been so warm at times that I'm surprised more plants haven't bolted. And, yes, the yellow flowers are a sign the plant has bolted. If the lettuce was pulled up while still small, it likely was birds but that's just a guess. I keep bird netting over my lettuce until it is time to start harvesting it, which we are doing now. I love growing lettuce but it gets so hot so fast here that we usually only get to harvest for a couple of months in spring. If your beans aren't germinating, the soil may be too cold. Check your soil temps and plant bean seeds only after the soil has reached 65 degrees at planting depth and is staying there. You can plant seed even at 60 degree soil temps, but often the germination rate is quite a bit lower. The other possibility is that the soil has crusted over following recent rainfall. That is extremely common and even seeds as large as beans can have a hard time pushing their way up through crusty soil. I have seven bean varieties in the ground and they went into the ground about 2 weeks apart. The ones planted earlier probably had a germination rate of about 65% and the ones that went in later averaged a germination rate of about 75%. The Federal Germination Standard for beans is 70% so even with fresh seed you won't always get real high germination, and if the seed is older, it often will germinate at lower rates. I've been so wrapped up in transplanting, caging and mulching all those tomatoes that I haven't even thought of seeding the warm-season stuff yet. I need to drag out the seeds and get with it, right after I thin the fruit on the fruit trees which will take me hours and hours. I need a couple of days with 48 hours in each one of them to get me caught up. Larry, I hope you have luck with growing stuff in the nematode-infested areas. Dawn

Well the Brandywines were gorgeous, but the Burpee Buck's County Hybrid is a tomato that I will definitely do again. They slowed down during the heat, but never really quit. I still am getting a few, at least enough that I haven't cut them down. They even bounced back from a major hornworm attack. I just watched those green monsters munch away, influenced no doubt by Susan and her caterpillar garden :) (Gotta admit they were interesting.) The Buck's Countys even outlasted the cherry tomatoes. Maybe someone ought to start a thread on good tomato varieties for Oklahoma? Maybe tomorrow. I am still getting tomatillos and more tomatillos. I had never done them before and didn't know what to expect so I planted six plants maybe 18 inches apart. The vines sprawled to a mat about 5 feet wide, hard as heck to harvest. I've given away lots of salsa verde. I even mailed a box of fresh tomatillos to a cook I know.

Just got around to this thread again and saw Chandra's comment on the blood type book. Since I was the one who first mentioned it when someone asked if it was possible to eat too many tomatoes, thought I would throw in my two cents. I am from a cattle raising family. My 84 year old father still raises cattle and so my family eats grass-fed beef and has for over 40 years. I married a man from a hunting family and tried for a brief time to at least limit his consumption of red meat. "Three days a week is enough," I said. "No, we need it every day." he answered and meant "sometimes twice a day." So when friends loaned us the book 15 years ago, I knew I'd been beat. "See," he said, "We're supposed to eat a lot of red meat." I still insist on one chicken day a week--homegrown chickens--and one or two fish meals a week--being Norwegian, he loves Kippers and Sardines and I love Salmon having been raised near Seattle. I also make sure to fix a lot of salads and of course we do raise a BIG garden and he eats a lot more veggies now than he was raised on. I went through a period where I blood tested "allergic" to wheat so dropped it from my diet completely for 2 years--along with eggs and milk. (Hardest thing I ever did.) At the end of the two years my Dr gave me the go ahead to replace those foods carefully and I now eat all three but in much less quantity than before. Being an okie, I don't think I could give up cornbread, and especially now that George has introduced me to homegrown meal corn. (DH prefers wheat bread, both yeast raised and biscuits.) And like Chandra DH and I are blood type O so all four children are too. I have read after two or three DRs who follow the blood type system and for a while thought I would too, but just couldn't keep it up. One thing I did notice for what it is worth though. He says lentils are very bad for Os. Whether that is why I can't eat them I'm not sure. But every time I have tried, they make me feel really bad, very sluggish and sleepy and headachy. Green/raw onions do the same thing but I can't remember if they're supposed to be bad. For my family, I find it hard enough to just put a healthy diet on the table, limiting sugar, processed foods, additives etc without worrying too much about the blood type diet.