Same here Dorris. We're pretty close to the Missouri border here, and frost dates have almost always been the same as northern MO's. My grandparents in central MO are considerably different in terms of frost. Ours last year was Oct. 15, their's in central MO not until almost Nov.! Crazy how much elevation affects it.

Then there's zones. Zone maps show 7a, not taking into account elevation. Almost always are 6a winters....It's tough sometimes lol, a lot of conflicting information.

I'll be hopefully getting potatoes soon at a local feed store, but won't be planting until after St. Patrick's Day likely, as usual. Onions have almost doubled in size since those last photos I took as well, doing well.

I started about 3 dozen cabbages (Early Flat Dutch, Greyhound, Cour Di Bue), 2 dozen broccoli (Imperial F1), 2 dozen cauliflower (Snow Crown F1), 1 dozen Kohlrabi (Purple Vienna), some foxgloves, some sweet peas, and some phlox in my greenhouse this past weekend. The brassicas and sweet peas will likely be able to go out after Easter, but I'll probably pot up the other flowers at that time and not put them out until May. Late next month it'll probably be time to get the majority of my flowers and herbs started in the greenhouse...

Wow, Jacob, looking great! I've been in and out today, have a long list of things to do but not getting much help from Hubs. I have to go in and ask him for help and then he runs in without finding out if I have anything else for him to do. After awhile I just get tired of having to stop and go in and ask. Sheesh.

We have a lot of mud here now. It's like, when I dig a hole and it fills with water, I'm thinking, "What the heck is THIS strange stuff???" But it's good transplant weather, coolish but not too, sunny but not too, and plenty of moisture in the ground. I just moved some Burning Bush out of a planter and to spots along the curve of our rock wall where it can burrow in between the rocks and go whichever direction it wants to. I found a few ground nuts (Apios Americana) in the planter that the Burning Bush had crowded out, I thought I'd lost it. But it was hanging in there, all clinging around the roots of the Alabama Crimson honeysuckle that the birds had also planted in there. The Master Gardeners are putting on their spring plant sale soon and I'll probably put that extra honeysuckle in the sale. My main clump of it does so well where it is and when the sun hits the flowers just right, it is simply gorgeous! Thank you Christie, wherever you are.... I cut it 'way back this spring as it's gotten too tall and full. After I've rested a bit I think I'll fill the planter with new soil and put those Ground Nuts back in, hopefully they'll populate themselves more now without any competition.

I have uncovered all my cuttings that are outside under jars and they are soaking up the sun. I'm watching them closely as they are just in their second day of being out from under the jars. (Abelia, Harry Lauder's Walking Stick, Aronia, and some extra brussels sprouts)

Golden Acre cabbage plants are doing well and in containers, I've carried them out to the cold frame, along with some onions and romaine and other things that were "stubs" of grocery store purchases. I will put the shower doors over the top of the cold frame and let them spend the night out there, and I'll probably plant them out in a few days..

We are in zone 6A here, in a little wavy band that runs diagonal through the northeast corner of Oklahoma. We have a whole different climate than people near Lawton and Oklahoma City, they are in zone 7. This area makes up for that by not having that red, sandy soil. We have gumbo clay where we have soil. Where we don't have soil, we have rock -- limestone -- where we are. In the little town 20 minutes north of here where I grew up, we had deep sandy loam. My parents gardened and hardly ever had to water. Oh, and did I mention the wind??? It truly does "come whippin' down the plain.." We are only 50 miles north of Tulsa but seems like when the weather is hot and there is rain in the forecast, Tulsa gets a nice amount and it either evaporates before it gets to us, or goes around us.

Glenda, I'm glad you're here. Jacob and I were hoping more people would be stopping by soon. Do you ever store your seeds in the freezer? It seems to help.

Apparently spring is here. Honestly I don't consider it spring until after Easter :-). Gone is the lingering cold of March, and by mid April things really get blooming. A wonderful month all in all- but it's still March, and kind of chilly out today.

Heres an update on my garden. Our lowest temperature so far this month was a cold 23 degrees F just last week. Lows like that normally make me wait to put out most cool weather crops (except for peas) out until the end of the month. However, this year I have AG30 fabric cover so I've put out many cool weather crops out under that in the last couple weeks. One is a bed of lettuce with some overwintered spinach. 15x3 bed altogether- Bloomsdale Long Standing spinach started in Oct. and overwintered uncovered, Rouge Grenobloise Batavian lettuce, and Merlot Romaine lettuce. 3 favorites of mine. I'm going to be trailing some more Batavian lettuce varieties this autumn, as I love it. I also have Alabama Blue collards and Red Russian kale outside.

I have sweet peas, 1 dozen Early Flat Dutch cabbage, 1 dozen Cour Di Bue cabbage, 1 dozen Greyhound cabbage, 2 dozen Imperial F1 broccoli, 2 dozen Snow Crown F1 cauliflower, 1 dozen Early Purple Vienna Kohlrabi, 1 dozen swiss chard, about 24 tomatoes recently sprouted (more to come), around 6 Thai Sweet basil, 1 dozen Emily basil, a tray of Australian Brown onions, and a half tray of American Flag leeks growing in my greenhouse. On top of that, I sowed about 85' of Tall Telephone (Alderman) peas outside in late February.

We went to my grandparents' over the weekend, and my aunt was giving away seed potatoes she didn't need from last year's crop. Yukon Gold, some red variety, and Purple Majesty. They'd been eating them up until now, stored in their house in layers of newspaper in an old dresser. They're still perfectly fine to eat as well. Good idea for storage!! I managed to get about 30' of Yukon Gold potatoes in yesterday. I'll try and successively sow them over the next month. I'm hoping to grow enough to last us a good chunk of the winter. I eat at least anywhere from 1 to 3 a day so that will take a lot- but everyone else in the family isn't quite as heavy on them as I am.

I also picked up an old cattle mineral tub for a container garden. I'm not sure what I will put in it. Ideas? Maybe a crop of early potatoes, and then a crop of late tomatoes after? Not sure. I could even do a bunch of greens and herbs/flowers. I like these tubs so I hope to get more this spring.

I can't get any pictures at the moment, but will be sure to get some early tomorrow morning when I go out to do my chores and the such.

Congrats on the snag of seed potatoes and the mineral tub! You are certainly a resourceful young man and you are going to be managing a huge garden! You mentioned earlier in this thread that there seems to be a shortage of good support for gardeners in your state. Have you checked with your state extension service? I think every state has one, ours is supported by one of our colleges and they have a very active bunch of master gardeners.

There are also quite a few experienced gardeners that have uploaded quite a wealth of YouTube videos. I don't follow any of them but I have watched a lot of their videos and learned quite a bit from them.

I am growing potatoes in tubs this year. The tubs are not anything fancy, just some big round plastic things I found at garage sales. I decided to grow potatoes in them because it's very hard for me to dig potatoes now, and also because there are grubworms in the garden soil that can definitely ruin a good potato. We put them on rollers and they sit on the front driveway. When the temperature is expected to dip to below freezing, we roll them into the garage. So far it's working well, they have emerged and are looking pretty healthy.

I have a friend in Norman that has grown lettuces in rain guttering. I found some interesting resources on the topic:

http://www.oneacrevintagehome.com/build-a-gutter-garden/

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/grow-lettuce-rain-gutter-71301.html

I see there are some YouTubes that also turn up when I do a search on "growing lettuce in rain guttering". I might try that soon. We have rabbits that we aren't always able to keep out of the fenced area. Been thinking about resorting to buying lots of cheap packages of lettuce seed and just sowing a garden for the rabbits outside of the fence. But then that would attract the deer. OMG

I keep forgetting to get pictures. Tomorrow!!

Yes the extension service is useful, but seems kind of vague to me, at least for this part of the state. I've had better luck following MO extension service planting guides and the such, as the AR one is very off on issues such as frost dates and planting dates. E.G., they say to plant cucumbers in mid April. Heck no! They always rot in the ground for me because of cold soil or late frosts. I have best luck in mid May cucumbers, a recommendation from the MO planting guide for the Ozarks. They state that the Ozarks have the same last and first frost dates as northern MO due to elevation: April 20 for last frost, Oct. 10 for first frost, which is about right to be honest, from what I've noticed. The AR extension service is very useful for planting details, like what nutrients a cabbage needs for example. It's just that their planting guides are so off.

I had wanted to try starting peas in rain guttering, but never got around to it. I wound up starting outside on Feb. 26th I think. They're hardy little guys!

Have you tried putting up soap for deer? We buy Irish Springs soap and hang it on posts bordering the gardens. The deer hate the smell and never step foot in our garden anymore. I haven't had issues with rabbits, probably because I squirt bought fox urine around the perimeter of my garden for squirrels. My pests are mainly bugs and a fat cat that likes to dig up seedlings hahaha.

Let me know how your potatoes fare. You should post a thread about them! I'll be interested to see how mine do.

Loved the cat picture. Yes, maybe I will do a post about those potatoes, I think I mentioned them in one but don't remember which one. They are doing well so far. I think our frost dates are similar to yours, I don't plant sweet potatoes until after April 15 and sometimes not till May 1. One year, we had a terrible 3 days of freezing weather right around April 10. I had tomato plants in the garden, covered, but the cold lasted too long and got them all. Some of them came back up from the roots but they were slow to grow and didn't start producing anything till fall. We had 3 or 4 "forecasted first frosts" that October that didn't actually happen, so I picked off green tomatoes each time, most of them too small to go ahead and ripen. At the time I was not too experienced at using a glut of green tomatoes. I made pickle relish with them, that was good, but there's only so much of that we could use. I used green tomatoes instead of zucchini in zucchini bread, that was ok, but again.... I tried a green tomato pie recipe I found, that was awful. Made some green tomato mincemeat, that was ok. Then I found out later I could've just frozen them and added them half and half with red tomato to my favorite chili recipe. That's the best use for small green tomatoes that I know of, chopped, of course.

I noticed yesterday something is nibbling on my peas that are up. I had some tansy stalks to cut down so I laid a lot of them down over the little seedlings. There is still a distinct tansy smell in the stalks so maybe the smell will repel. Might try that urine idea, around the garden fence. The bigger rabbits can squeeze thru the chain link so we put chicken wire along the bottom. It keeps the adults out but the babies still manage to get in, and then they just live in our yard and garden and are well fed till we can chase them out. It might be the fieldrats nibbling on the peas, too. There is just no getting rid of them. When the ranchers do "controlled burns" (which is a stupid term because there actually IS no such thing as controlling a fire in an open field with the wind blowing!!!), the rats come up closer to our houses. They got into our garage once, oh, what a mess! They do a lot of damage before we can get them under control.

I have often said that if we had to live a winter on what I could grow in my garden, we'd starve to death before spring.

I have learned my lesson about early planting in the Ozarks the hard way! My rule now is warm season plants go in about May 10, no babying required. more tender like peppers and egg plants even later than that. I don't start my seed until about 6 weeks prior to that.

I do have the seeds sorted and ready to go, potting soil and containers on hand. I hope to get the back half of the milk parlor cleaned before. I do all my dirty work of planting and transplanting there.

I succumbed to the roses on sale at Lowes yesterday and bought 6. I have started a very small dedicated rose bed near the smoke house thinking if I had them all in one location I would do a better job of caring for them. If all else fails they can be fodder for the Japanese Beetles come summer.

Where are you at, Gldno? Those are some pretty chickens! We have probably 25 or so. They're out digging around my compost pile in the forest at the moment. Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orpingtons, Black Australorps, and a few New Hampshire reds. 2 roosters. I quit like that the chickens keep the bugs down as well as the snakes. We'll find many copperheads out in the woods, but they won't step foot in our yard. I've seen one before a couple of years ago in our yard and the chickens attacked it. It started striking at them, so we had to pull it out from under the coop with our pic axe, then kill it quick. Funny thing is that they have no problem with black snakes. I've found black snakes in the egg boxes before, eating our eggs. We hate to kill them since they kill the copperheads, but decided we had to if we wanted eggs. Well, we didn't have to. It ate one of the ceramic eggs we always keep in there. Never saw it again!

I'm aiming to put out my warm weather crops about mid May this year. Peppers will probably wait for early June, as I'd appreciate an early brassica crop out of their space first. They normally don't really take off until the heat arrives anyways.

I've kept my lettuce plants covered to keep my cat out, but uncovered them since it's been a bit warmer lately. Dang squirrels and rabbits dug up 5 plants. Now, we eat a lot of greens, and now we're down to 45-50 plants. Thats not enough so I may direct seed some more lettuce in our raised bed. I seem to have some trouble starting lettuce in pots versus direct seeding. Plants are very slow to take off versus being in the ground. I don't know why! I'm down to fairly little seed so I'll conserve on it and try and order a bulk order from SSE. I hadn't put out my fox urine yet this year and just did today after seeing that. That should keep the majority away

I am about five miles nw of willard mo or 20 miles north of Springfield.

Onions sown in late Jan., in my greenhouse the whole time. Before and after a trimming tonight. I'll probably put them out in a couple weeks. I'm about 2-3 weeks late on putting them out, but not a big deal. I'm not looking for enormous bulbs, as I find them a bit harder to slice without cutting myself. I think I have 150-200 plants here. They grow about 4-5" in a couple days after trimming. Crazy!

Anyone else seeing a chilly forecast for the first few days of April? This next week looks to max out at 60 F, but 40's for highs around Easter. I'll have to keep an eye on those lows. We tend to go below the forecast.

Looking good, Jacob!

Seeing how well things are going for your garden sure makes me want a greenhouse even more! I hope I can manage that before I get too old to garden.

My peas are doing ok. I planted some blue ones this time, and Little Marvel. I've never measured how long the rows are, but I put in more than I usually do. Peas are such a good source of protein. We just used the last of what I had in the freezer.

I'm hardening off tomato plants and pepper plants, they've been in and out of the patio door and the back door, depending on how windy it is, and depending on how close we get to freezing. I had some big empty tubs and a big tote I didn't use for anything else so I set the cups of plants down into those. The high sides have been some extra protection from the wind and that has worked really well for me. I've looked at our extended forecast on Accuweather and looks like we have a few below-freezing mornings that weren't there when I checked last, April 1 being the last one. I don't have anything in the garden yet that isn't able to tolerate a little frost. I intended to be getting my tomatoes transplanted by now but that didn't happen and has been a good thing. I guess I'll wait awhile longer. I lost about half the cuttings I started rooting but if I don't lose any of the original plants I'll have plenty for us. I had good luck with the first few that I experimented with. I think what I did wrong with the second wave was that I didn't leave the cuttings in water very long before putting them into soil. I think they need at least a 24-hour soak in water in order to hydrate fully. Getting my tomatoes into the ground is going to be a challenge as I'm having more trouble with my knee replacement and I might be looking at some more surgery. This year we have laid cardboard down in the garden with wood chips to keep the wind from blowing it around, and we'll cut holes in the cardboard and set the plants down into the hole. Hopefully the cardboard will keep down the weeds and will help hold on to what little water we seem to be able to get. Oh, and my tomato cages are going to be anchored down with concrete block this year. I have a lot of trouble with the wind blowing them over when the tomato plant gets large and full of tomatoes. Later on, I'll show you some of the tomato cages we have made out of 3 sections of concrete reinforcement wire. I was unable to source it in flat panels so I had to buy a roll, which was badly bent-up the further we got into the roll, and that was a problem. But I like the way they fold flat for storage. Here's how to make them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsA80jfIyc

By the way, I would recommend buying a pair of bolt-cutters for this project, much easier cutting the wire that way. Plus your sheets of reinforcement wire are easier to get home from the hardware store because you can cut them to size right out in their parking lot with your bolt-cutter and bring them home in a stack in the back of your truck instead of those floppy, hard to transport sheets. And DEFINITELY tie them down securely before driving off with them in the back of the truck, either way. A horrible accident waiting to happen otherwise. We made ours with hooks bent into the wire to hold the pieces together but have found they catch on each other when you've stored them flat for the winter. Next ones we make will have no hooks on the open side and I'll just tie them together with strips of old t-shirt. Also,where the panels are connected to each other permanently, I think I'd rather use zipties. There are lots of different versions of making these but the above youtube is a good start.

Your onions are really looking good. I don't have very good luck with giving them a "haircut", have had several die after that. I think my scissors are not sharp enough and might be tugging on the plants a little during the cutting process. I do my onions a little different than you do. One year I started some in a wintersowing milkjug and they did really well. I cut off the top of the jug when the onions were pretty thick, and tipped the block of soil and onions out of the bottom of the jug. The onion roots held it together enough that I could set it into a depression I dug in the garden and then I let them just grow that way for a month or so before digging them out and separating them to plant individually. That worked really well for me. I had open-polinated onions that year so I allowed some of them to remain in the garden and make seed. This year I used hybrid Candy onion seed. If I buy hybrid seed, I order the bigger quantities if they are available so I can get a better value, and then I keep the extra seed in the freezer for future years. I have lost track of what kind of onion seed I planted this time, but I think it was the Candy and not the OP seed. Some people will tell you Candy onions won't keep all winter but I'm still eating some small ones I kept in the refrigerator in the garage. I chopped the biggest ones and put them in the freezer, and I use them in cooked dishes. I also save the bottoms of the onion that I cut off when I'm ready to use the onion, and put them back into the ground. Some of them will make a new onion or two.

Oh, forgot to say, if you cut off the last horizontal wire on the bottom of those cages, it leaves a nice row of 6" prongs that will go down into the soil and if you do not have a lot of wind where you are, once you push these prongs down into the ground, your cage will stay in place. Unfortunately, we do have wind and once the tomato plant gets heavy, the prongs are not enough to keep the cage stable. So this year, I thought I'd set a concrete block against opposite sides and tie the cage to the blocks. That should do it. I hope.

That's a fantastic idea for onions, Rockwhisperer. Many people complain that they get started too late in terms of daylength when wintersowing or direct sowing, or even starting in a low tunnel/greenhouse once it warms up enough and daylight length is above 10h (about late Jan.), but I don't really care about that. Sure, I won't get a football sized onions, but they're so dang hard to cut when they're that big!! I like them small-medium sized. I'll have to try winter sowing them next year. I think I've got enough to last us the year in the tray, probably will plant about 150-200.

Love, love, love peas. So much you can do with them, and they're delicious.

Thanks for the tips on the tomato cage. I think I'm going to give those a go this year. I'm going to try cages (barely pruned) and stakes (probably single stemmed) and see what I like better; I suspect I'll like cages better lol