I am a big fan, but not an expert. I can tell you what I know, but much will depend on your soil sample results and how many you want.

The northern highbush varieties that I have tried taste great. Beyond description IMO, actually. I have tasted Bluecrop, Blueray, and Berkeley. Berkeley (sp?) doesn't compare taste-wise, but their bushes are lovely and mine have grown better than the others. I have not tried southern highbush (I called them lowbush earlier by mistake) or rabbiteye, but I doubt they compare either. Regardless, you will be cold enough to grow northern highbush where you are.

If you are willing to go to the expense of totally replacing your soil with peat moss, it will make things easier. Your soil test ph will tell you since they need level of 5.5 or a little lower. OSU and ArkU have good info on this in their fact sheets.

I can't currently add a lot to what the universities say, but I should be able to give a lot more info after this growing season since I will have 5 varieties in the ground and growing in 3 different soil mixtures. I did discover last year that the acid fertilizer I applied improved the plants tremendously.

If you plant more than a dozen plants, putting them in the ground in Nov is best (but March is OK), but spray round-up or otherwise kill all vegetation during the summer and then mix in the needed amount of soil acidifier before working the soil again to kill the grass/weeds prior to planting. If you are only planting a few, you can do it easily in spring and can make some type of bed to contain the ammended soil and plants (and MUCH mulch every year) and make your life easier later.

I can give you a little info about sources for the plants when the time comes. I will be finishing out my rows next spring after I digest the results of this year.

Gamebird,

In addition to Scott's excellent info on blueberries, I've linked the OSU info on home blueberry production.

You also can find a fact sheet on commercial blueberry production in Oklahoma should you want to read it.

I don't even like blueberries, but Scott almost has me talked into growing them for the members of my family who do like them. : )

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Extension Service Info on Blueberries in Oklahoma

Thanks Dawn.

I meant to link one other particular page that has a good summary, but I forgot to. here it is:

Here is a link that might be useful: Tulsa Master Gardeners

God I LOVE blueberries. My soil isn't suited for them though & I'm much too lazy to mess with it. My husband used to by loads of them through the farmer's market here in Norman but since the price of gas creeped up the lady stopped bringing them up. I wonder how other farmer's markets are doing in this regard. I'd be glad to see the "resale veggie" people go, but even the locals? Norman should open here soon...

Sagenscotties,

I am afraid that the 'resale veggie' people won't go (but probably will hike their prices since the stuff they have hauled in will undoubtedly cost more). Like you, I wouldn't miss them if they left since their stuff is usually more of a grocery store quality.

I am concerned about the locals and hope the increasing costs don't cause them to abandon selling their produce. Since most non-organic gardeners use chemical fertiziliers (that are, in some part, auxiliary products from the petro-chemical firms), those costs have increased quite a bit and are expected to go up even more. (sigh) And, sometimes when this set of circumsance develops, more people turn to organic gardening, and that increases the demand for organic supplies, and the increase in demand drives up those prices as well. I'm not an economist, but it seems like we are caught in a pretty serious situation this year.

At the rate everything is going, we all probably should be planting more of the fruits and veggies we love (at least, those that grow here) as the gasoline situation doesn't seem likely to change. (Can anyone really picture gas prices returning to $1.80 a gallon, or even $2.50? I doubt it.)

After the Norman Farmer's Market opens, please let us know what things look like this year. We have a small, stuggling farmer's market here in Marietta. It is struggling NOT because people don't want to shop there, but rather because there are not many local growers any more. (All the money these days seems to be in horse and cattle operations, or in "big-time" crops like wheat or pecans.) You used to be able to buy melons, tomatoes, green beans, black-eyed peas, etc. from little farms (or very large home garden patches here), and the last three years or so, those have just vanished.

Scott has me convinced I need to grow blackberries. Like you, I haven't wanted to grow them in the past....too much special soil prep and such. Guess I'll give up resisting them and go ahead and plant them next year. That gives me a few months to figure out where to plant them, prepare the area, etc. And, I have humongous amounts of wildlife here (anything and everything you can imagine), so as part of growing them, I'll have to come up with a way to protect them.

Dawn

Now you just need a couple of pecan trees and your life will be complete!

Scott,

I have a billion native pecan trees, and more of them sprout in my garden every year. Millions and millions and millions.

No, I don't have any nice hybrids that produce big pecans, and I'd love to have one or two. The smaller native pecans are pretty tasty though, and they aren't all that hard to shell if you take 'em and have 'em cracked and blown first.

Most of the native pecans are scattered in the wooded areas on the creek bottomlands and we leave those nuts for the wild critters. Most years we get a pretty good crop from the large native pecan tree that sits in the yard and shades our chicken coop and guinea coop. It is my true weather indicator, and hardly ever leafs out until all danger of frost is past. The other native pecans don't seem to be as "smart" about the weather as it is. They've all leafed out, and it hasn't. Hmmmm? Should I be worried about a late freeze?

My goal for next year is to plant more trees and more fruit. I'd like to add more blackberries, but in an area with better soil. The blueberries are on the "to do" list. I'd love to grow strawberries using the plasticulture advocated by the Noble Foundation inside a hoop house. And, I need to plant figs and jujubes. I just have so much I want to do, and there's never enough time.

Dawn

Well, you will soon have the trifecta of blueberries, pecans, and living in Okahoma. The whole would will be jealous of you!

If you have lots of native pecan trees, I am not a fan of planting a budded cultivar. It's best to just graft a native that you find in a good spot in order to get "improved" pecans. An "improved" pecan can be one of the USDA releases or one of the many exceptional natives or seedlings found around the South and widely propogated. It can also just be a really good one found on you property.

The negative is that it will be about 10 years before you get any decent numbers of pecan, and 20 years before you have a nice, mature, productive tree. You live in a perfect location as long as the trees get plenty of water. Almost all improved variaties will do well there.

Find a few seedlings in good, open locations and let them grow to where they are about thunb sized at 4 ft high. Then have someone come graft them at the end of April or early May, or try it yourself. Then wait about 10 years. (Ha)

Hey, don't forget the annual tomatopalooza here at our place too! That should make a few people envious. So, I'll have the trifecta of tomatoes, pecans, and blueberries, right here in beautiful Oklahoma, land of the red earth and ever-changing weather. You know, we do have a whole lot of friends who "just stop by" to say hi during tomato season. : ) You don't suppose it is because they know I will send them home with armloads of tomatoes, do you?

Please tell me why a budded cultivar is not recommended around lots of natives. Is is a cross-pollination thing?
I really want a tree or two that make large pecans because the native ones are tiny (but tasty).

And, if I don't do a tree now, then I'll be here in 10 or 20 years (Lord willing) without good pecans. I have an elderly native who planted a lot of fruit trees last year, and he is about 87 or so. That is an optimistic thinker!

Dawn,

If you get budded trees, you usually won't know the rootstock. The rootstock often grows from seeds of a southern, fast-growing variety (nurseries make more money if a tree is big enough in two years rather than three). This rootstock can be killed by colder temperatures this far north, although you are much less likely to have this problem as far south as you are. This is critical in northern Oklahoma, though.

The second problem is that bare-root trees that you would get through mail-order from the reliable nurseries (with northern rootstock), or even the potted ones from Atwoods and such, will take about 2 years to get established enough to grow at the normal rate.

If you have even a small seedling that you see in a desired area of your land, it will have a tap root that is already much longer then the top is tall. It is already done with the hard part of getting established, and you know that the rootstock is good because the nut it grew from is native to your area. Plus, it is free. Just kill all vegetation within 3 feet of it, lay down some mulch (wood chips best), and give it a little nitrogen a few times between May and July. It will start growing rapidly, and will likely be bigger than what you would buy in a couple of years.

The hard part is getting it grafted over to the cultivar ("papershell") you want. I'm sure there are some people in your area that can do this. I'd do it for you if I lived closer. You may have to pay someone about the same as what you would spend to buy budded trees though. The good part is you can pick any of a hundred varieties this way, and this graftwood can be found in Oklahoma very cheaply.

There is nothing really special about specific "budded" or "improved" or "papershell" or "cultivar" varieties. They are just ones that people have observed to have good qualities over time, or that were bred by the USDA to have good properties. Graftwood or buds are then taken from them and distributed around the pecan world so that there are many clones of one specific tree. The USDA's breeding program (simplified) just takes a couple types of trees that should make good offspring and places pollen from one onto the flowers of the other and then grows out hundreds of the nuts of each combination hoping to get a few that show enough promise to test around the pecan-growing regions. Every few years they release a new one, and sometimes they turn out to be really good (Pawnee for example) and result in more, better, and cheaper pecans for consumers after a decade or two.

One other thing: Since every pecan tree (except grafted or budded clones) has a unique nut, they all taste a little different. Many of today's popular "papershells" are as good as any native in terms of taste and shelling, but many (like the old Stuart) are also inferior to some natives in various ways. Unless you have great soil and will provide it plenty of water when needed, it is often better to stick to smaller (nut) varieties that are not as demanding care-wise as the bigger ones. But a lot of these smaller ones have the best tasting nuts and the prettiest trees.

I've managed to hijack this thread. Sorry about that.

Scott,

Thanks for all the info about the science of pecans. And, please don't apologize for hijacking the thread. One of the things I love most about the Oklahoma forum is that we can meander from topic to topic and share so much info in such a friendly way.....and no one gets hysterical and yells at us for hijacking a thread. Well, maybe they're thinking it, but they aren't saying it. People here are so nice, thoughtful and tolerant. : )

My tree provider of choice would probably be Womack nursery in Texas. They have a great reputation for providing quality products, and I wouldn't mind paying the shipping. They also are really good about matching up the customer with the right tree AND the right rootstock.

Dawn

That is the specific nursery I was thinking about as a reliable one. They have a little catalog each year and I am looking at theirs right now. It is the only source out-of-state that I trust for northern rootstock. I don't think it would matter as much for you at your site, so you can probably go with their budded ones.

I see the Womacks most years at our annual growers meeting. I buy my annual grafting supplies from them also.

I don't add a lot of information to this forum, but at least with pecans I can help some people. I pick up much more information than I provide here.

Scott

As a native Texan, I can tell you that Womack's nursery is a true legend in a state that prides itself on legends. : )

They used to always send me their catalogs when I lived in Texas, and for the first few years we lived here. I guess they finally gave up on me because I didn't buy anything.

I disagree that you "don't add a lot of information to this forum". I think you add a lot. I know that I learn a lot from you.

Dawn

Speaking of thread hijacking...

Can we grow figs around here in NE OK? I would just *love* to have a fig tree.

Thanks for the blueberry info! We're buying that house on the acre. They're bricking the place up today or tomorrow. I've been out of touch for the last week while the husband and kids were in town visiting. When the house gets done, they'll move down for good!

Hey Scott I have blooms on my blueberry plants ! I really don't want to pull them off . I know it helps establish the roots . I think I might leave a few on and cheat . what do you think ?

Wendy

You have to leave at least a half dozen on each, because there is always a chance we could have a late freeze next year that kills them all, and two consecutive years having plants but no blueberries is too much for anyone to take.

Gamebird,

Growing figs in Oklahoma can be and has been done successfully, although it is easier down here in southern OK where the winters stay a little warmer. Still, it can be done in your part of the state.

Figs are only marginally cold hardy in Oklahoma and need to be given a pretty protected location....alongside the south wall of a building....and must have really well-draining soil. Some people who grow figs will try to give their figs a little extra insulation from the cold by mulching them really well, or by surrounding them with a mini greenhouse type structure or by a wire cage filled with leaves or straw.

Two varieties that grow well in Oklahoma are Brown Turkey and Celeste.

Sometimes figs freeze back to the ground, but they normally rebound very quickly, regrow and usually produce fruit in spite of the freeze. Often it is very young trees that freeze to the ground, but sometimes older ones do as well.

There are some other cold-hardy figs available in the U.S., but they are hard to find in local nurseries. You might google and find some for sale on the internet that have better cold resistance.

Dawn

OK I bought a 4 pack of those blueberries in Sam's and they're fairly scroungy looking. They are Rabbit Eye Tifblue and Climax plus Highbush Jubilee and Misty. Is that good enough for cross pollination? I have clay soil but bought 3 cu. yds of peat moss soaking overnight. I take it full sun for all of them? They're pretty much sticks in some sawdust but they are green. How lucky will I need to be?

Another thread from the dead!

I don't really know what to tell you. You might need some luck. All I can say is give them full sun, or sun at least through 2:00pm. Plus, give each at least 1 cubic foot of peat moss and 3 inches of pine mulch. There are some other threads with more details.

Poky,

If you have clay soil, I doubt one bale of peat moss is enough. You really, really need to do a lot of soil amending to give your blueberries a fighting chance.

Soil pH is another issue, so be sure you plant the blueberries in acidic soil (alkaline soil can be ameneded to make it acidic enough, but it is not easy) so they'll have a chance.

I've linked a previous thread below where Scott when into detail about soil prep and planting. Somewhere in that thread he has a link to the applicable OSU fact sheet.

Good luck,

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Previous Blueberry Thread