Welcome aboard, Erod1!!!

About tomatoes....mercy me. You gotta be careful asking about these because this place seems to be the meeting place for Tomatoe Lovers Anonymous. ha! Several others here know far more than I do about heirlooms, but my favorite is Cherokee Purple, which I've seen more available this year than in years past. Another one I'm growing this year for the first time is Red Mortgage Lifter.

As far as okra...my favorite so far is Cowhorn. It's not tough if you miss picking for a few days like Clemson Spineless tends to be. Also seems to be a bit more drought tolerant if you miss a couple of days watering. I'm trying Stewart Zeebest, Homested and Star of David okra this year....just for fun and because my family loves okra prepared just about any way.

Paula

Thanks Paula,

I think i will try the Cherokee Purple this year as Ive seen so many postings about it. That is if it ever stops raining as Im late getting anything in the ground this year, although with the cool weather we have had I think I will be ok.

Im looking forward to honing my skills, ok, they are non-existand right now........but hey, we all start somewhere!!

ERod

PS!! I am wondering if I lost my Crape Myrtles in the -25 below zero we had for several days this year. I went ahead and trimmed them back as I always do in March but i have ZERO leaf out from the tops as of yet, however I have a lot of suckers from ground. Anyone else in the Tulsa area have new growth yet on their Myrtles??

ERod,

Your Crape Myrtles probably died off to the roots. Let the suckers come up and then pick the best ones to leave. Prune off the others. You may have to dig up the original plant. This has happened to me several times, as I think we are probably on the northern edge of their growing range. Welcome to OK Gardenforum. I'm a Tulsa county resident between Bixby and Broken Arrow.

You're not too late on the tomatoes, as this weather isn't the best. Anymore, I wait until May to plant.

Our temps only went to -7 and I am beginning to think that I have lost the tops of my Crepe Myrtles. They are the tall ones, one over 25 years old, the other about 8. I haven't even seen any growth from the ground. I also lost my Carolina Jessamine.

I thought my Carolina Jessamine was dead, but it's now coming up from the roots, like both our Crepe Myrtles. I was visiting a friend here in Tulsa earlier this month, and her Jessamine was already sprouting from the roots and mine was a no-show, but within a few weeks it came back, so I hope yours will re-emerge, too.
Carol

Welcome ERod,

Many beefsteak tomatoes are heirlooms, so it is likely you may have been growing some heirlooms all along. You can't go wrong with Cherokee Purple or, if you can find them, Cherokee Chocolate or Cherokee Green. For old-fashioned tomato flavor, we love Brandywine even though it doesn't produce well here in our heat, Red Beefsteak (aka Crimson Cushion or Red Ponderosa), Sioux, Box Car Willie, German Head, Mule Team, Livingston's Gold Ball, and Debbie. We also like the flavor of many of the black tomatoes (which are not a true black but usually more of a maroonish-deep pinkish-sometimes mahoghany color) like Black Krim, Carbon, Black From Tulsa, Black Sea Man and True Black Brandywine. Some of the modern-day hybrids that have a more acidic and not overly sweet flavor include Ramapo, Supersonic and Moreton.

I don't think there is one "best" okra to plant just like there's not one best tomato. All okras do well in our climate. For very heavy production you cannot go wrong with Stewart's Zeebest which produces huge numbers of pods if given wide spacing. Other great okras include Clemson Spineless 80, Green Velvet, Cowhorn, Burgundy Red, Texas Hill Country Red and, if shorter and more compact okras are needed, Baby Bubba and Little Lucy.

Dawn

thanks to everyone for he great replies. I have a few more questions

Okiedawn: where do I find these great heirloom tomatos? Will I need to wait till next year and start them by seed?

Next, how can I keep my plants pest free without having to use a product like sevin? I've heard planting marigolds in and around the garden will repel the bugs??

Last: how many rows of corn do I need, how many plants in each row, and how much space between each plant?

Thanks everyone!!!

Erodt

Erod, If you are close to Tulsa, do a search for Tomato Man's Daughter and Duck Creek Gardens for heirloom tomatoes. I don't know about OKC. An online source is Baker's Creek Seeds--rareseeds.com.

This weekend (Sun & Mon) is the Spring Planting Festival at Baker Creek in Missouri and there will be dozens of vendors there selling plants. I started to go but since I will be in Norman for the Spring Fling on Saturday that would mean we had to come home and drive over three hours in the opposite direction, so I elected to skip it this year.

Duckcreek will be out at the Fairgrounds on Saturday. I think there's a big plant sale.

Sandy

Erod,

You already have an idea of where to find heirloom tomatoes. Gary (Duck Creek Farms) sells at the Cherry Street Market and at various festivals and plant sales. See his website (linked below) for his schedule. The Tomato Man's Daughter sells from her location in Jenks. You will find a handful of heirlooms wherever plants from Bonnie Plants are sold. Most years, BP has Brandywine, Red Beefsteak, Porter, Giant Belgium, Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, Mortgage Lifter, Bradley and a few others.

It would take the writing of an entire book to address your "pest free" question, and I don't have time to write a book.

The short answer is that your garden is an ecosystem and, if managed well, you can control the pest insects using a wide variety of organic methods that do not destroy the your ecosystem. Your goal is not to be pest-free because that is not realistic. There always will be pests, especially since so many insects have developed tolerance of various pesticides. What you want is to find the least harmful method of managing the pest population.

There is a specific solution for each pest, and the organic solutions tend to be targeted to specific pests and not to pests as a group.

Case in point: in my garden this week, the Colorado Potato Beetles showed up. Am I worried? No. Because a day or two before I even saw the CPBs, the Spined Soldier Bugs showed up. Guess what Spined Soldier Bugs eat? Yep. They eat Colorado Potato Beetles. I'll watch closely and if there are not enough Spined Solider Bugs (they are rather solitary and you only see one here and one there but not big groups of them) to eat all the CPBs, then I'll hand-pick the CPBs off my plants and drop them into a bowl of soapy water to drown. Another solution would be to spray the potato plants with a biological control that targets CPBs. It is called Bacillus Thuringiensis 'San Diego'. So, for CPBs, there's three organic solutions that do not required a broad-spectrum pesticide.

I never spray broad-spectrum pesticides because they can harm the beneficial insects that I depend upon to keep the pest insects under control.

In my garden, lady bugs and their larvae help control many pests, including spider mites and aphids. I always plant lots of flowers to attract the lady bugs and other beneficial insects like green lacewings.

The usefulness of marigolds for pest control is debatable. In our climate, they really attract spider mites, so I use them as a "trap crop" to trap the spider mites. I plant the marigolds around the garden and the spider mites congregate on them sometime between May and July. Once the marigolds are covered with spider mites, I pull up the marigolds, put them into a trash bag, seal it and dispose of them. Then I plant zinnias or moss rose in the space formerly occupied by marigolds. Maybe one year out of 4 we don't have very many spider mites and the marigolds get to stay in the garden for the whole year. My experience is that they don't repel much of anything, but they're a great trap crop.

I plant 10-20 different kinds of herbs/flowers scattered around my veggie garden to attract beneficial insects, including pollinators. They include these: yarrow, verbena bonariensis (tall verbena), chamomile, catnip, catmint, Texas hummingbird sage, Laura Bush petunia, nasturtium, salvia, zinnia, borage, lemon balm, Texas tarragon (aka Mexican Mint Marigold), black-eyed susan vine, cardinal climber vine, morning glory vine, moonflower vine, celosia, dill, carrots (leave some in the garden each year to come back and bloom the following year because the beneficial insects love their flowers), onions (I leave some of them in the ground to bloom the next year just like with the carrots), various basils, sweet alyssum, coneflowers and sunflowers.

It takes a multi-pronged approach to shun the broad-spectrum synthetic pesticides, but there is an organic solution for pretty much any pest, although there are a few pests for which the organic solution doesn't work any better than the chemical or sythetic solution.

Don't forget that since your garden is an ecosystem, there will be other garden helpers who inhabit it. At our house, the garden helpers include frogs and toads, turtles (they love to eat Colorado Potato Beetles too), lizards, and birds of all kinds.

Dawn

Wow, Okiedawn, let me just say that you are an amazing woman! What a wealth of knowledge. I'm going to print your post so that I can read it a few times to retain it. Thank you.

Ok, so I got a few gerber daisies put into my pots today, and a few other patio containers finished. That is good. I also got around to getting my hummer feeders filled and hung. That is good. I'm so late doing everything this year, but better late than never...

Also, I DID find some great Heirloom tomatos!!!! Yah!!

I only bought 6, I decided to go small this year as some health issues are forcing me to do. So, here's what I found:

Brandywine ( 1)
Cherokee Purple (1)
Caspian Pink (1,)
Cherokee Purple (1)
Black Krim (1)
SuperFantastic (1), this isn't heirliim but said it is a good all around producer so I thought I'd give it a try.
Box Car Willie (1)

These will be good for me to experiment with. I hope to have these in the ground tomorrow or Monday at the latest and am hoping to be eating them by the middle of July.

Thanks to everyone!

E

E,

That's a great selection of tomatoes, and what's really great about Super Fantastic is that it produces really well in the heat, and the flavor of the tomatoes is great too.

We're all here to help and always happy to do so. It sounds like your gardening season is off to a good start.

Dawn