My one and only experience with raised beds near trees was disastrous. Within one yr. the fine feeder roots of the trees invaded the raised bed, sucking all the water and life out of whatever I had planted there. I know people think that trees have these huge, deep roots; and I guess they do. But I also have found that most of their 'feeder' roots are in the top few inches of the surrounding soil. I never knew that cauliflower needed cool weather. In SE WI, where I live, they thrive in sun. If your climate is too hot, I suggest using shade cloth or some other innovative method to keep your plants cooler. Forget planting among the trees please. Sharon in WI

Carol, I bet it did grow well there in spite of the short growing season. I'm assuming they started their transplants indoors to get them large enough to plant out once the temps were in the appropriate range. And it is the exposure to sunlight that made the celery so green. Most commercially-raised celery is that whitish-green because the celery is blanched. I think the blanching is intended to keep the stalks tender as too much sunlight/heat gives you tougher stalks. Seedmama, Here's how Jeff Cox grows celery: GROWING CELERY: Several years ago I purchased a book by Jeff Cox called "Jeff Cox's 100 Greatest Garden Ideas". It is a terific book and I love it. One of his ideas is a way to grow celery even if you can't give it the marshy conditions it prefers. If I ever tried to grow celery here, I'd try Jeff's method. To start his seeds, he sows them 10 weeks before his last frost. He soaks his seed overnight before sowing them in peat pots and setting them on top of the fridge so the heat can help them sprout, which can take 2 weeks or longer. He digs a below-grade trench about a foot wide and 14" deep although he says you can do the same process with a raised bed if you'd rather build up than dig down. If growing in a raised bed, he recommends a minimum height of 6" and cautions anything raised any higher may get too hot for the celery. You still need 14" of depth, but with the 6" tall raised bed, you only have to dig down 8" instead of the whole 14". You remove the soil to a depth of 14" for the trench or 8" beneath the eventual raised bed and remove all the soil. Add compost and other organic amendments to create an enriched growing mix that will hold lots of moisure and refill the trench or, for the raised bed, refill the dug-out area and build the 6" tall raised bed above it. By the way, he recommends six celery plants per person. If you want, you can add tin cans with the tops and bottoms both removed or pieces of PVC pipe inserted vertically into the ground about to the same depth that your celery is planted, or a couple of inches deeper than that. To water, fill each can or piece of pipe with water and let the pipe carry the water down to the root level of the celery plants. In the illustration in the book, he has one vertical can or PVC pipe in between two celery plants in a sort of checkerboard pattern. (Texas tomato plant growers use this method to water tomatoes, only they use large flower pots or huge, instituitional-sized cans, to water the tomato plants...it is called the Texas Pot method.) After you harden off your seedlings, transplant them into the enriched soil which you've pre-moistened so it it nice and damp. He waters his transplants with an organic fertilizer consisting of 1 T. fish emulsion and 2 T. seaweed extract per one gallon of water. Mulch the top of the bed with leaves. As the plans grow keep adding leaves so the stalks are blanched. Blanching celery stalks (but not their topgrowth leaves which need sunlight to grow) helps improve their flavor and keep them tender. This is especially important in a hotter climate where heat stress can cause the stalks to get woody and tough. He recommends feeding monthly and watering as often as needed to keep the bed moist and damp but not soaking wet. His recommendation is that you harvest the plants roots and all before frost arrives in the fall. Store them in a box in a cool basement or similar area. If the storage area stays cool enough, celery will store for months. You also could store them in an extra fridge in your garage or laundry room or whatever. If you ever run across Jeff's book, it is a wonderful book with projects grouped by the season. Dawn

I'm going to link a 'spring planting date' thread from last year instead of retyping it all. A couple of notes: LETTUCE: the words "heat tolerant" or "heat resistant" do not apply to Oklahoma heat. They might apply to places where 90 degrees is considered a really unbearably hot day. So, I'd plant lettuce early and often and be happy if I still was harvesting in early June because even so-called heat-resistant, heat-tolerant and slow-to-bolt types (including the one named Slobolt) can't tolerate much of our hot weather. Lettuce quality begins to decline once the daytime highs are regularly 80 degrees or higher. Most varieties will bolt and send up seed stalks once they are being exposed to temperatures above 78 degrees. (Growing in morning sun/afternoon shade can help keep your lettuce a bit cooler.) CABBAGE: Cabbage tolerates cold fairly well so I put it out pretty early. Transplants that have been hardened off properly can tolerate temperatures in the 20s although I try to cover them with floating row cover if nighttime lows are dropping below 26 or 28...just to be safe. You will get the highest-quality heads and the best yields if your cabbage matures while daytime highs are in the 60s. Once daytime highs are regularly exceeding 75 degrees, the cabbage often fails to head up or gives you puffy heads instead of tight well-formed ones. Cabbage can be harvested anytime after heads are formed and feel the proper weight in relation to their size. It holds in a refrigerator for a long time, but not as long if stored in a root cellar in the hot months. (In a root cellar in the cooler winter months, a fall crop can hold its quality for a long time.) I harvest more by the way a head feels than by how it looks (assuming it looks normal) or how much it weighs. A mature head should feel firm and solid. If you wait until the heads are cracking, you've waited too long and will have heads with diminished quality. If you have too much cabbage at once, you can make sauerkraut. It is an easy way to preserve it. I usually plant mini-cabbages because we will only eat so much at any give time. COOL-SEASON PEAS: I don't even bother with cool-season peas in southern OK because we have too many mid- or even early-spring days when the temps spike up into the 80s and 90s and burn up the peas before they produce much of a harvest. Ideally you want your peas to mature and be harvested before daytime highs begin regularly exceeding 75 degrees. Those of you in more northern area probably have more success with them than we have down here. RADISHES: Radishes can be succession-sown but once the weather is hot, their flavor gets very hot or strong and their texture is pithy, so they do fine in spring and fall and not so much in summer. Radishes grow best when grown while temps are above 50 and below 80, except for winter radishes and they can tolerate down to 45. Radishes are ready when they reach the proper size. The most important thing when planting radishes is to thin them out promptly (within 2 to 3 days of their emergence from soil). If you fail to thin properly early on, your plants will grow leafy tops but they won't 'radish' up and all you'll have will be leafy foliage with small roots. Failure to thin early is the main reason radish plants don't form radishes. I only store radishes in the fridge and they'll last a few weeks in it. Usually we eat them before they have been in there very long. They lose quality pretty fast if left on a counter at room temperature. Radishes are biennials which means that in ideal conditions they form their seed the second year. However, if you want to raise some for seed, you can trick them by planting the seed radishes early enough that they will be exposed to some temperatures below 45 degrees while they are still small. That will trick them into going dormant. Then when it warms up and they resume growth the radishes believe it is their second season and usually bolt and send up flower stalks. Hopefully those flower stalks will go to seed after the flowers are finished blooming. Here is a link that might be useful: Seed starting dates for cool-season crops

Well, today I stopped by the seed and feed store, and asked the guy there if he had any fall transplants yet. He said that the Bonnie Plants rep hadn't brought any by yet - because it wasn't time to plant them. I thought to myself, " Now that's just great"! Apparently, they already knew something that I didn't. So, I went home and soaked every little plant in the garden with Neem. I'd really like for the current seedlings to make it...I mean, I brought them to life. You know what I mean? Oh well, when I get my DELUXE HOMEMADE EG SEED STARTER built, it will be a breeze. They might be buying seedlings from me! Heh. EG