Well, if the tree has been recently stressed too much it isn't likely to have energy reserves to set and carry fruit--though the stress is what will cause it to flower. Most flowers, even formed in the best of circumstances, will not set fruit, or at least not carry them to maturity--and that's perfectly normal. I wouldn't worry too much about it if the tree is leafing out though. What happened so that you had to cut it back?

Jo, While there is something about the tree's leaves that seems familiar, I don't know what it is and don't think I've seen them here. That's not unusual though as your soil (including soil pH) and rainfall in NE OK is quite different from mine here in SC OK and y'all have a lot of trees that will grow there and which do not seem to grow here. The tree I'm familiar with that has similar leaves and fruit is the Carolina Linden and that's one possibility but I'm only guessing because I've never seen a Linden tree growing here in my part of Oklahoma. Have you noticed what sort of blooms form? Small ones? Showy ones? White? Pink? Purple? Fragrant? And, if you have noticed the blooms that eventually give rise to the fruit, do you know which month the flowers bloom? Also, do the little fruits stay green or do they mature to another color in late fall or winter? Finally, if you cut into a fruit does it have seeds. How many? What color are they? I bet someone here will know what your tree is. If you want to try something fun, click on the link below and answer the questions and see what this website decides your tree is. (It may not be correct, but then again, it might be.) Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: What Tree Is This?

No need to replant peppers. They should keep going until they freeze, in fact, fall is my best harvest. Yes you can start seeds in pots outside this time of year. I do mine on the east side of the house so they don't get the afternoon sun until they are bigger. If they don't sprout because it's too hot, then take them in until they do and then bring them back out after a day or two and put them in a cooler location. Personally I can take or leave raised beds. If I was further north, I would definitely go that route but since it seldom freezes for more than a day or two, I don't see much advantage. I plant inground at home and in raised beds at the community garden. It's about the same for me and I have clay soil at home vs great soil at the CG. Just experiment. Results are not the same each year so don't get discourged if things go bad every once in a while. Just try again.

I probably should of separated it into different posts but once I started typing, all these questions came to mind! :) Thank you for taking the time to answer. I've been trying to add organic matter whenever I'm out in the yard. I just throw grass and weeds on whichever bed I'm looking at :). I don't even mow anymore. I just rip all the grass that's grown too large and throw it on the nearest bed. I have a worm bed that has composty stuff in it but I don't know if I should add quite that much per bed as it may be more potent than compost. I was thinking I'd just leave some worm compost in each of the holes prior to transplanting and mound all my melons and squashes with it. I did buy about 10 yards of organic compost last year and have used it on many of the beds I've made. I do have almost 40 beds though so it didn't go as far as I wanted. I was hoping not to have buy so much this year so maybe I can go with just a couple yards and add that to the beds that didn't get as much last year. It sounds like I'll have to amend the fertilizer recipe a bit to counteract the loss of N while there's still plenty of P to go around. Maybe adding just soybean/alfalfa later in the season and spraying with fish/seaweed emulsion every other week might help. I definitely have getting a soil test on my to-do list but I might need several as my yard varies quite a bit. Some places are just rock, some is clay so hard it seems like rock and some of it is like a fluffier clay with few rocks. I'm a little terrified the test will come back saying I shouldn't even try to garden in this soil! That'd be so discouraging I'd almost rather not know! I know it's silly but that's mainly what's held me back, that and I'm really bad about penny pinching. I could spend 10$ on a soil test or $10 on a half yard of compost and every time I go with the compost :) I have a neighbor who does a lot of hydro/aeroponics and I think he's got some nice at-home tester that I could use to get a rudimentary idea of what's in the soil but not as accurate as sending it off. In the mean time, it sounds like this years garden will be a good experiment that, with any luck, will pay off :)