Robert, So OKCE replaced Spencer in 2007? Now I am confused. Why did you use Norman's data instead of Spencer's old data that goes back to 1994? Is your weather more like Norman's than OKCE/Spencer? Just curious. I believe OU and OSU have the best Mesonet system in the country, but being an Oklahoman, I am prejudiced, of course. During bad fire years, I use their OKFire feature a lot and our county Emergency Management Director even showed me how to use one feature of it to input our data and see what the weather will be like as our FFs fight a large wildfire. It is wonderful because it can tell you when/how major wind shifts will occur, for example. Usually our Emergency Management Director will run the model and relay the info over the radio to the firefighters, but knowing how to do it ourselves makes us more independent (and the EM director does occasionally go on vacation, for example) and also lets us use smartphones with Internet access to acquire the data we need right at the fire scene. I know Scott uses the AgWeather feature some too. The OK Mesonet is very versatile. As far as datasets and developing some sort of predictive model, I can think of a couple of reasons that might explain why no one has created one. First, there's the issue of liability. No matter how many disclaimers they put on such a website warning people that the predictive model cannot guarantee stable weather after planting occurs and also doesn't guarantee success, there still would be people who'd want to sue because the model "told them" to plant, they did, and then lost their plants to late cold weather. You know it would happen. Secondly, I don't know how a model could take into account how wet or dry the ground is. Even if the soil temperatures are in the correct range and the air temperatures are appropriate as well, how could this sort of program account for different moisture levels at different soil levels. We can look at our soil moisture numbers on the OK Mesonet (or, LOL, stick a trowel in the soil and see how wet it is first-hand), or we can use Keetch-Byram Drought Index numbers (0=totally saturated soil, 800=totally dry soil) to judge how wet or dry our soil is, but I don't know if those numbers are widely available nationwide (they should be) or if they could be built into a predictive program. Because I have thick clay soil that holds excessive moisture for a long period of time, I cannot plant any seed if the moisture levels in the soil are terribly high or they'll rot before they sprout, especially in cold conditions. I know that, so I'd take my own soil moisture levels into consideration even in if I plugged in my data and got a "plant now" message. Less experienced gardeners might not understand how much cold, wet soil can harm their seeds. How do you put that into a predictive model? Finally, every seed varies in its response to soil temperatures, soil moisture and air temperatures. Some seeds can sit in the ground forever and eventually sprout. Others can begin to rot very quickly under certain conditions if they do not germinate within a fairly brief timeframe. I don't know how you could include data for every possible seed type. The best info I've ever seen in terms of seed germination temperatures was a table prepared by Tom Clothier that showed how many days it takes various seeds to sprout at different soil temperatures. I have found it very helpful, so I guess I'd better find it and link it here. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Tom Clothier's Seed Germination Data

Bon, The world of beans and southern peas is incredibly diverse and many of them are multipurpose and can be eaten as snap beans/peas, shelly beans/peas or dried beans/peas. An old southern method of drying them in the pods gives you "leather britches" to store and cook later. Some varieties make better leather britches than others. You'll have a ball exploring the world of legumes. We almost always only eat our home-grown beans and southern peas in the green stage, whether frozen or fresh. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of us sitting on the porch, snapping beans or shelling peas, with glasses of lemonade or kool-aid sitting beside us, while big luna moths flailed around, beating their wings against the screen door beneath the porch light. Now...that is a great childhood memory! Forget Disneyland or Carlsbad Caverns, which were fun in their own way. I treasure simpler memories a lot more. I normally do not dry the beans I raise. Dried beans are as cheap as can be at the store, especially black-eyed peas (although the commercial varieties sold usually are inferior to the pinkeye purple hulls) and pinto beans. I'd rather use the ones we raise as snaps or shellies, which are a lot more expensive at the store than dry beans. A couple of weeks ago we were at Central Market in Southlake and they had shelled fresh pink eye purplehull peas in a container that might have had 10-12 oz. in it and cost either $5 or $6. I tried to imagine what it would cost to buy all the peas I raise annually, and couldn't even imagine it. I grow tons of beans and tons of southern peas. I like diversity so plant many varieties of each. Just in the southern pea category, you have pinkeye purple hulls, crowders, black-eyed peas, zipper peas, lady peas and cream peas, with many named varieties of each. One thing to remember is that heat has the same effect on bean (but not southern pea) blooms that it has on tomato blossoms, so you have to plant them at the right time in spring (April) for a summer harvest, and keep your fingers crossed that the weather won't heat up too early. If you plant late, most varieties won't produce well because they'll be blooming when temperatures are over 90 degrees and a lot of the blossoms will drop without forming beans. You can, however, plant beans again in the mid-summer for a fall harvest. We call those October beans here, with October not being a variety, but rather being the main time you're generally harvesting them. With southern peas, there's tons of varieties and I'm not happy unless I plant at least six kinds every year, but it is okay with me if most of those six varieties are some form of pink eye purplehull. So far I have planted the following southern peas: CT Pinkeye Purple Hull, Pinkeye Purple Hull BVR, Big Boy Pinkeye Purple Hull, Quick Pick Pinkeye Purple Hull, Red Ripper and Mackey (said to be a family selection of PEPH from Louisiana). Still waiting for a spot in the garden? Whippoorwill and Tohono O'odham, The latter is a southern pea from the native people of the southwestern part of the USA. This bean has the black and white markings like a holstein cow and is very drought-tolerant and heat-tolerant. To see a great selection of plants from the Native peoples of this county, check out Native Seed/SEARCH at the link below. With green beans, we eat most of them as snap beans but every now and then I'll grow a variety or two to use as shelly beans. Of course, Lima Beans always are shelled for cooking. I grow 6 to 10 varieties of snap beans every year, but mostly in the fall if the cold weather hangs on deeply into late spring like it did this year. The late cold is too often followed by a quick warm-up that makes bean blossoms fall. We were in the upper 90s today, so with that sort of weather already arriving, I do not have high hopes for my FM1K pole beans that I have growing on the garden fence. They might be able to hang on all summer and produce in the fall though. Regardless, I can plant more in July for a fall harvest if these look too tired from fighting the heat, pests and diseases by then. Your general fall planting dates for legumes here are: Southern peas and Pole Snap Peas July 15-30, Bush Snap Beans and Lima Beans August 10-20. If you plant later than that, you run the risk of losing the peas and beans to frost before they mature. If you plant earlier (and sometimes I risk it in a rainy and cooler-than-average summer), your plants will be subjected to the stress of a lot of extra heat and pests but won't produce earlier unless the weather cools down early (sure, like that is ever gonna happen). You just have to experiment with both beans and southern peas and figure out what types of each your family likes to eat. Experimenting with the different tastes and textures is as much fun as growing them. My family likes to eat the broad/wide Romano-type snap beans, which are a good, meaty bean with a strong beany flavor. A more colorful diet is a more healthy diet, so I grow beans in a huge variety of colors. For this fall I have Tanya's Pink Pod (pink, obviously), and Puriat (purple), Capitano (yellow), as well as Garrafal d'oro (green), and also Purple Dove (purple). Then, in the haricot verts category, I'm growing Slenderette (green), Purple Queen (purple) and Golden Roc d'Or (yellow). I've got Contender and Provider for plain old green snap beans, and Purple Velour for tasty and tender purple snaps for fresh eating only. (They don't freeze well). I've also got Tenderstar for fall, and some Insuk's Wang Kong. Some years I grow some cutshorts and some greasy beans, and I may plant some odds and ends I have left over from previous years for fall, if it manages to rain between now and planting time in July. Pole beans are beautiful and very productive and you don't have to bend or stoop over to pick them, and there's tons of good ones. I usually grow some of the following most years: Rattlesnake, Louisiana Purple Pole, Blue Coco, Jeminez, Cherokee Greasy, Cherokee Cornfield, Garrafal d'Or, Musica, Red-Striped Greasy and sometimes McCaslan or Potomac or other cutshort or greasy bean varieties. Scarlet Runner Beans do not produce well in heat, so are better for fall harvest than summer harvest, and Insuk's Wang Kong is the one I've grown for several years now. I never get a great many beans from them, but usually plant them to climb my 12-foot-tall ornamental windmill and the hummingbirds love their blossoms. Don't forget Lima Beans. There is so much more to Lima Beans than just plain old green ones. I like to grow all kinds of butterbeans, include Violet's Multicolored Beans, Worcester Indian Red, Henderson Bush Bean and Christmas. While most snap beans are either bush form or vining form, there's some that are somewhere in between and they usually are called half-runners. Some half-runners I've grown get taller than bush beans but not quite as tall as pole beans if they have nothing to climb. Give them something to climb, though, and some of the half-runners climb almost as tall as traditional pole beans. In this category I usually grow State Half-Runner or Mountaineer Half-Runner. We haven't even discussed yardlong (asparagus) beans (which are more like southern peas than traditional beans), or dried beans. I usually grow the red asparagus beans. With dried beans, I like to grow Borlotto Tongue of Fire or Signora della Campagna. And we haven't touched on moth beans, tepary beans, fava beans or Edamame (soybeans). All the talk of pinkeye purplehull jelly makes me smile and brings back fond memories. As with tomatoes, there's thousands of bean varieties and at least a few dozen varieties of southern peas, so you can explore them forever and never run out of new varieties to try. John Withee collected and save just under 1,200 bean varieties. I cannot even imagine all the work it took to raise them and save the seeds and keep all those varieties pure. Oh, and there's rice beans too. The bean world is endlessly fascinating, and my favorite bean varieties change constantly depending on which ones had the best flavor and productivity in any given year. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: NativeSeeds/SEARCH

There is no way to delete, but if you just leave it there it will work it's way down the list. If it hadn't been answered then it would stay at the top until it got a hit. Each time it gets a hit it moves back near the top. In addition to this forum, we meet once a year for an outing, share food, plants, seeds, and stories, so we have become even closer by doing that. We all come form very different backgrounds, and garden under very different circumstances, but this is Oklahoma, and the circumstances change from year to year. I live in the northeast corner and normally must worry about too much rainfall in the Spring, and fairly normal rainfall after that. Last year I was very dry and had to water all summer, and this year my rainfall has been very low all year. The southern part of the State and some western parts have had more rainfall than usual. Every year of Oklahoma gardening presents a new challenge, but someone is always there to help because they experienced that weather or problem in a previous year. Oklahoma gardeners have to be tough. LOL

I spoke with someone from dept of agriculture a few weeks ago, he said statewide eggplant & cantaloupe are the 2 best crops this yr. Everyone's peppers are struggling & the only ones with tomatoes are those whose plants have some shade in the afternoon. The burlap bags should help! I have heard others using bloomset I believe with good results. I personally have never used the product, don't even know where to buy it! Could be worth checking into. Glad you found your way back to Oklahoma, gardening isn't always this hard--- this is a extra tough year. The drought isn't enough to battle, so mother nature thought we could spend 3 straight months in the 100's.