The best suggestion I can make is that you grow what they like to eat. You know, you could grow all the most amazing veggies in the world, but if they don't like to cook and eat those specific veggies, they won't care that you're growing them.

In your part of the state, you can grow strawberries, likely blueberries as long as you have well-draining soil and are willing to amend it to suit the blueberries....and there's always tomatoes? Do they like salads? You could grow lettuce, mesclun greens, etc.

If you are interested in growing tree fruit, there's always plums, peaches, apricots, pears, etc. Figs will grow well with a little winter protection and are a real treat since you rarely see fresh figs on store shelves. Grapes will work in most parts of OK as long as you are willing to do the pruning needed to keep them from taking over the entire garden and yard.

I don't know how old your daughter is, but I have found that kids often love carrots, and most kids are intrigued with vegetables in unusual colors you rarely see in grocery stores....purple broccoli (turns green when cooked), red, pink, purple or bicolor (usually green with red streaks) snap beans, yellow, orange, pink, purple, black or bicolor/tricolor tomatoes, red, white and blue Irish potatoes) they make a lovely red, white and blue potato salad that will be a huge hit at a Fourth of July party or picnic, purple asparagus, pink or blue pumpkins (more for show that for eating), etc. Carrots are available in many colors, and nowadays you can buy 1 seed packet that has carrots in shades of red, orange, yellow, purple and white.

If they enjoy having bouquets of fresh flowers in the house, you likely could make them happy with a small cutting flower garden of easy, heat-tolerant flowers like zinnias, cosmos, salvia, gomphrena, celosia and sunflowers.

If space is not an issue, a sunflower house is always a hit with kids. Plant the seeds in 4 rows in the shape of a square, so the rows of sunflowers are the walls of the house. Be sure to leave an open area to serve as the door. Then, when the sunflowers are a couple of feet tall, sow an annual vine (morning glories, black-eyed Susan vine, cypress vine, etc.) near the sunflowers so the vines can fill in the space between sunflower plants and make a more or less solid wall. Also popular with kids is a bean teepee with an opening in the center for kids to sit and play. Most kids love mini-pumpkins (Jack-B-Little and Baby Boo) and gourds for fall decorations.

The all-time favorite of every child who visits my garden is mini watermelons. They love to wait for them to ripen, tapping them to wait and hear the sound of 'plunk' instead of 'plink'. They enjoy harvesting them, carrying them to the house (or to their own home if they don't live here with us), slicing into them and eating them. Sugar Baby is a great small melon, as are Yellow Doll, Yellow Baby, Bush Sugar Baby and Blacktail Mountain.

The kids I know love to pick sugar snap peas fresh off the vine and eat them right there in the garden.

If your wife enjoys cooking with fresh herbs, you could grow easy herbs for cooking like basil, rosemary, sage, thyme, etc.

My husband always has enjoyed the food from our garden, but it is lettuce that makes him the happiest....next to tomatoes and hot peppers. Lettuce is more of a treat, though, since it is more of a cool-season plant and has a limited season in our climate, whereas we can harvest peppers and tomatoes for a much longer period of time.

Hope these ideas help.

Dawn

Yes, it really depends on what 'entertains' your wife...and I don't think we know her that well to advise.

thanks dawn.

i really mean, what are some good fruit / vegetables that are easy to grow that aren't pepper, blackberries, and tomatoes. I don't expect you to know my wife lol.

Well, corn and okra grow well. Popcorn (and colored kernel indian corn) will be a bit different to grow (and rather attractive when harvested).
As Dawn suggested lettuce and radishes are easy (and nearly time to plant them too).

Peanuts are interesting...not sure how easy they are to grow (my grandfather always seemed to have no problem)..but you have to understand how to handle the blooms.

Still, if they don't like to eat it...it's not very interesting.

You're welcome.

Green beans are popular, easy-to-grow and the flavor of fresh snap beans is so superior to that of canned or frozen beans that it isn't even funny. Bush beans would give you a pretty rapid harvest---some of the earlier varieties begin producing a harvest about 50 to 55 days after the seeds were sown. Sugar snap peas are the same way. Pole beans are trickier in terms of getting a harvest early. Some years, our heat here cranks up so high that you find the heat causing blossom drop almost as soon as the plants start flowering. In that sort of situation, there's nothing you can do but keep the plants watered and happy and wait for temperatures to drop in the fall. I usually plant bush beans for a spring and summer harvest and pole beans for a fall harvest.

I cannot remember if any of us mentioned summer squash, but those also are relatively easy, at least until the squash bugs and squash vine borers find the plants. I love summer squash, but some people don't care for it. We like to grill zucchini outdoors when we're grilling meat for a meal.

A lot of people hesitate to even plant squash because of all the pest issues, but I grew winter squash of all kinds and summer squash as well for a good 5 or 6 years before the squash vine borers and squash bugs even discovered our garden. It is a lot harder to get a good harvest now, but to me it is still worth it.

I think my husband would be perpetually happy with the garden if all it ever produced was peppers, tomatoes, onions, melons and lettuce, but he'll eat just about anything I can grow. Once you get used to the superior flavor of vine-ripe food brought in from the garden to the house to eat the same day, you'll find it harder and harder to purchase produce at the grocery store. Once we got used to home-grown melons, we completely stopped buying melons at the store. Now we just eat our own fresh melons in season and rarely eat them the rest of the year. You mind find that y'all develop a taste for veggies that you think you don't like if you give them a chance. So many vegetables are so much better fresh from the garden that some people who don't like veggies suddenly discover they like them after all.

I would have suggested sweet corn, but I wasn't sure how much space you have. Sweet corn from the garden is so yummy! I try to grow enough plants to harvest at least 200 ears per year. We eat all the fresh corn we can stand to eat, and freeze the rest the same day it is picked. I grow 3 or 4 varieties every year, choosing varieties with different DTMs so that the harvest is spread over a longer period. If I plan it well, and if Mother Nature cooperates, we have fresh corn for at least 2 months.

Potatoes are one vegetable that a lot of people don't grow. Either they don't want to do all the digging involved in harvesting, or they feel like potatoes from the grocery store are so cheap that they'd rather buy them. However, the flavor of fresh potatoes is so incredibly earthy and good that they'll ruin you forever---you'll never want to eat another store-bought tomatoes. You know how much better home-grown tomatoes are than store-bought tomatoes? Well, home-grown potatoes are the same way. The first year I grew potatoes, their fresh flavor knocked our socks off.

I think the trick is to try things your wife and daughters might like, and just continue to try something new every year until y'all figure out what it is you like to eat fresh from the garden. Everything I've tried has not been a success. Eggplant is an example. I love growing eggplant, and the fruit are available in so many interesting colors and shapes....but no one in our family (including me) cares for eggplant,so I don't plant it any more. Kohlrabi is another thing I cannot get anyone to eat, although it is easy to grow and looks interesting in the garden.

Part of the fun of garden is experimenting and finding what you like.

If you've never grown Sungold (or the similar Sun Sugar) cherry tomatoes for your family, I think y'all would like them. Everyone to whom I've ever given a Sungold tomato has just raved about how flavorful they are. Sungold and Sun Sugar have a sort of tropical fruitiness you don't find in any other tomato.

Fruit is my favorite thing to grow, but the results can be a lot more erratic than those in the veggie garden. Partly it is that recurring late freezes experienced in our climate often kills the flowers or tiny fruit on fruit trees early in the season. The other issue is pests. Because fruit is so sweet, you really have to fight the pests, birds and varmints some years in order to get a harvest. I generally grow blackberries, plums, peaches and figs. I have citrus trees in pots I carry inside in the worst weather. Right now they're out in the greenhouse just loving these sunny days. Strawberries have been erratic for me. They do great in a cooler year with lots of moisture, but then along comes a hot dry summer like 2011 and kills the strawberry plants. I'm in a part of OK that gets less moisture and more drought than central and northeastern and eastern OK, so strawberries are hit and miss here. When you have the right soil and the right weather, though, they are delightful.

i really wish i could do avocado, pomegranate, or lime tree but i don't think it will happen without a greenhouse.

I'm going to look into those mini melons, zucchini(like to grill them), lettuce, and onions. My dad grew cucumbers one year and i was surprised how many bugs were crawling all over those so i'm going to keep them away from everything else.

If I plant summer squash then the bugs all come for the 'bug convention', but I plant cucumbers every year without a bug problem. I normally only plant Zucchetta Rampicante Trombocino anymore, because the stems are firm and although I may get a few squash bugs, they don't usually kill the plant. It's a big plant though, so you need a strong trellis and a lot of room.

I recommend the zuchetta too. It is a mild, sort of nutty taste. We have used it in a number of different dishes. I grew the zuchetta as a joke the first year, but I really like it. I sent seeds to a friend in Texas and she loved it too! Soonergrandmom is right...it is a huge space hog....but worth it!

Grow her some flowers :) Zinnias would be a good start. Grow them in with your veggies. You may never get her to love the veggies, but she should appreciate flowers!

My favorite mini-melons are the ones I get in multi-variety packages from Renee's Garden Seeds. She has two different mini-melon packages, and each contains three varieties, so you can buy only two packs of seeds and raise six different kinds of mini melons.They use very little space and you can grow them vertically on a trellis. I have grown them on a real actual trellis, but also on tomato cages made from woven wire fencing, and have grown them on chicken wire fencing and woven wire fencing.

Renee's Garden Seeds has lots of multiple-variety packs so a gardener can grow a larger number of varieties without having to buy so many packets of seed. She has the different varieties dyed different colors (most seed companies don't do this) with non-toxic food dye so you can be sure your are planting some of each variety if you aren't using the entire seed pack. Finally, the varieties she chooses are the best of the best in appearance, flavor and production. I've never been unhappy with a single variety of flower, herb or veggie I've bought from her. I ordered some seeds from Renee's a couple of weeks ago on a Friday, and they were in my mailbox on Tuesday. There are not many other seed companies that ship that quickly (Willhite Seeds also is normally about that quick).

Now, I'll link Renee's watermelon page, has the two mini watermelon mixes--Doll Babies and Sherbet Mix, and also a mix of other melons on the same page. She also has mixes of other veggies, and I love all the flower varieties she carries.

Cucumbers are very attractive to pests. My favorite variety is County Fair because it is resistant to the diseases transmitted by both the striped and spotted cucumber beetles. I live in the country where we have cucumber beetles all over the place every year....at least 14 years out of every 15, based on my observations here....but last year was the year we hardly had any at all. I was so excited. Cucumber beetles will feed on virtually any flowering plant alive, so it is impossible to get rid of them.

I do have a lime tree in a pot. I have overwintered it both indoors in the house and in the greenhouse. Some years I get limes and some years I don't. There is nothing better than the aroma of citrus blossoms. When my citrus trees are in bloom, every bee for miles around flocks to our place, and I don't blame them.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Watermelon Seeds at Renee's Garden Seeds