Garden Greens for Oklahoma
AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
2 years ago
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HU-422368488
2 years agolast modified: 2 years agoslowpoke_gardener
2 years agoRelated Discussions
New to Oklahoma gardening...
Comments (17)Reed, I only grew Purple Calabash once or twice and it wasn't impressive in yield or flavor. However, I grew it in wet years with the kind of heavy rainfall that can water down flavor. I've grown a lot of the older WBF varieties but none of the new ones he has released after 2010. In the years I've been trying them, we have mostly had atrocious heat and drought so it likely hasn't been a fair trial. I'd like to try them again in a year with normal weather, if we ever have one of those years again. I have grown Michael Pollan every year since I first tried it. Like most WBF's varieties, it has a beautiful appearance. This variety produces well, but tends to be more prone to Early Blight than most others. Last year it continued setting new fruit into August, even after I gave up fighting the weather in July and stopped watering the garden. It is a pretty tough variety. The flavor is only average though. Red Boar has done pretty well, Large Barred Boar did really well one year but not in another year, and Freckled Child, which I got from forum member, Carsonsmimi, at one of the Spring Flings a couple of years ago did well in a very hot year even though it went into the ground here fairly late. In general, I feel like the Wild Boar Farms varieties are likely better suited to milder weather than our typical summer weather here, although Black and Brown Boar performed about as well as any other variety I grew last year. You could tell it was very heat/drought stressed though, because the tomatoes got smaller and smaller with each successive round of fruit set. If I was going to pull the zebras, I wouldn't replace them with a WBF variety. I'd plant Chocolate Stripes which would give you beautiful red and green striped fruit with superb flavor. I grew it in a molasses feed tub that holds 20-25 gallons of soil-less mix in about 2009 and it performed just as well in that container as it did in the ground. We got very heavy yields that year and the flavor was superb. luvabasil, Most of my containers are black molasses feed tubs so I am sure the soil gets hotter than I'd like, but there's no way I'm going to attempt to paint them. I have used the Fusion spray paint before to paint containers and the paint washes away over 2-4 years, so it ended up being a total waste of time. I use several different techniques to keep the pots as cool as reasonably possible. First, I often plant trailing companion plants that will cascade down over the side and then the plants can shade the black sides of the container from the sun. I most commonly use trailing nasturtiums for this, planting them as early as possible in spring (after frost danger is past, of course.) Any trailing plant would work. I often group smaller containers of herbs and flowers on the south and west sides of the molasses feed tubs so that those smaller containers of heat-tolerant herbs and flowers can take the brunt of the direct sunlight and shade the sides of the molasses feed tubs. I also try to position my containers so that they get shade either at mid-day or in late afternoon from either buildings or taller plants to their west or southwest. I get perfectly lovely tomato production from plants that receive sun only from sunrise to noon or in another location from about 10 a.m. in summer until about 4 p.m. Even for plants that are said to need "full sun", our intense heat and sunlight can be too much for them, particularly in years like 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2012, and they can be perfectly happy and produce well in a half-day of direct sun. Dawn...See MoreNew to Oklahoma gardening and behind already
Comments (38)I didn't start out to grow so much, it just kind of happened. I was also a military wife and planted small gardens and flower beds in a lot of different climates as we moved from place to place. When we finally retired, I wanted a garden, but we lived in southern Oklahoma at the time and I had only red clay. Although I tried to improve it, I never got it the way I wanted it. When we moved to Grove, I cleared a corner of the back yard, which had once been a garden, but was then a lawn, and I planted a small garden. The soil was really good and it did well. The garden did so well, that I wanted it to be larger, then larger, then larger, until it now takes up the entire back yard. Some Springs we get a lot of rain, and in the beginning, I had such mud that I have had it pull my shoes off when I tried to walk in it. I sometimes had to rescue tomato plants that appeared to be swimming, by digging a trench to drain off the water. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of trees and many people burn their leaves. Some of them now know that they can just dump the leaves in my north yard. One guy has a huge lot and he just drives here on his lawn mower with his 4x4x4 grass catcher, and dumps them for me. He loves it because he doesn't have to burn them. I love it because he doesn't have to burn them. I not only hate the smoke, but they are great for my garden. I also buy mushroom compost by the pickup load, and I have chickens. Although I still get rain, I just don't have the mud problem that I once had. At first, I only grew what I thought we could eat fresh because that is what I had always done since I had small gardens and we moved so much. What I discovered was that there were so many great things to grow, that I wanted to grow them all. LOL I wanted the great taste of fresh produce, I wanted food that hadn't been sprayed with dangerous chemicals, and most of all I just wanted to learn how to grow as many things as I could. I think our economy stinks, and is going down hill each year, so I wanted to learn to be self-sufficient in the event I needed that skill. Although I plant mostly in the ground, I have 3 raised beds that I use for early crops. One now has asparagus so I can control the moisture level, and I normally plant salad crops in another so I'm not growing them in the Spring mud. This year the third bed is filled with the first onions I planted. I covered it with row cover as soon as I planted because we have a neighborhood cat that thinks any box is just for him. As far as costs go, I consider gardening a hobby, and a health benefit and a lot more exciting than a gym membership. As my gardening skills improved, my soil improved, and I practiced growing more things, I found myself with all of this food. I can't stand to see it wasted, so we freeze it, can it, and eat it. If I had more space, I would grow even more, because I like doing it. I could garden for less money than I spend, but I am no longer young and I have some health issues so I need to do things in the smartest way that I can. Like George, I buy Lee Valley tools. I have others as well, but it is the Lee Valley that I normally reach far. My daughter-in-law says that my shovel is so heavy, that you just hold it up and drop it instead of pushing it into the ground. LOL When I have big purchases to make, I just buy in quantity, but buy for several years. Once you have a hoop bender, then it is cheap to make all of the hoops that you need. One year, I bought 500 feet of row cover which I am still using. I can usually get several years use out of each piece. If it gets holes in it, it is still useful. It is good enough to use over the raised bed that the cat likes, or to lay over the tops of plants that are under a poly low tunnel if we get excessively cold weather, or even to wrap around the sides of a CRW tomato cage to keep sharp winds off small plants. One year I had pepper plants until after Thanksgiving by surrounding the bed with row cover and putting a piece of greenhouse plastic just over the top part of the plants. There was plenty of air flow, but it still provided protection from the harsh cold wind. I still have plenty of unused row cover to use for a few more years. Last year I bought greenhouse plastic that was 100 feet by 10 feet. It is perfect for use on low tunnels since conduit comes in ten foot lengths. With the conduit pushed into the ground, the ten foot poly works just great. I only needed about a third of that last year, and even that piece is still good enough to use again. I need to learn to grow more herbs. I am fine with basil, dill, cutting celery, parsley and things like that, but struggle with others. They may get too much moisture, but I'm working on building a new VERY raised bed to try again. If you saw the location of my garden, you would wonder how I can grow anything because I have trees and buildings all around. Oklahoma has such brutal summers that the shade seems to help, and the buildings seem to take winds mostly over my garden instead of whipping through at ground level, so I think that extends my Fall growing. Even in the same State, we have many different growing conditions and just like a flower that 'will bloom where it's planted', we have to take what we have available to us and make it work, and just 'bloom where we are planted'. Every year I learn more about my garden. Last year I lost a tree which made a difference, so I have to adjust for that. Everyone has waste, whether it is paper, cardboard, kitchen scraps, chicken pen cleanings, hay, etc. If you don't, your neighbors do. Just get creative and you can make your soil better for gardening. Spend money if you have it, and want to spend it on gardening, but even if you don't, you can still grow a few things and learn a lot....and most of all..have fun....See More2015 Tomato Report From My Oklahoma Garden
Comments (7)The 2015 season was a different one for me this year. This is the 6th year I've grown tomatoes in my little backyard here in Tulsa. The first 4 years, I only grew in containers. For the 2014 season, I built two 4' X 10' raised beds, and also had a couple of containers. But I switched from 18 gal. plastic containers to 20 gal. Smart Pots. My strategy from my first year was to mostly grow one plant of 12-15 different varieties to try as many different ones as I could. 2015 was different for me in a couple of ways. First, I started growing from seed. And second, I decided to grow tomatoes that I already knew I liked, and to grow 2 plants each. I started seeds for Brandy Boy, Big Beef, Black Cherry, Yellow 1884 Pinkheart, Jaune Flamme, Break O'Day, and what I thought was Sun Sugar, and Super Sweet 100. Those last 2 ended up not being true to seed. I was bummed about this, as Sun Sugar is my favorite. Whatever seed I got that was supposed to be Sun Sugar was a small red cherry instead. It was decent, but not Sun Sugar. Whatever was supposed to be Super Sweet 100 seed, was instead a golf ball size red that was mealy and bland all season. I started my seeds on Feb. 14, and they did fantastic. I moved them out to my "temporary" greenhouse (8' x 8') around March 10. By the time I planted on April 8, most of my plants were 18-24" tall and thriving. I planted a little early for Tulsa. It helps being a Meteorologist and knowing what the likely weather will be for the next couple of weeks. ;-) My plants were thriving until the rains came......and came.....and came some more. We didn't have it as bad as Dawn did down south, but we still had way too much. I started getting the first ripening fruit on a few of them the week before Memorial Day. Jaune Flamme, Break O'Day and Yellow 1884 were the first to ripen. The other varieties started ripening the next week. All of the fruit that ripened before June 6th or so were very watery. We had that dry spell during the first couple of weeks of June, and that helped a lot. I also tried a little experiment with my cherries this year. I said I had 2 plants of all of my varieties, so I decided to do one of each cherry in the raised bed and one in a Smart Pot to see if there was a difference in taste. I can report that there was not a significant difference in taste for Black Cherry, not-Sun Sugar, and not-Super Sweet 100. They all tasted the same whether from the Smart pot or the bed. The only difference in the cherries was the Black Cherry in the Smart Pot succumbed to Gray Mold about 3 weeks quicker than the one in the raised bed. Like I'm sure most of you experienced, the disease pressure was much higher this year than normal, due to the heavy rain. I normally get Gray Mold on any of the Blacks I've tried. And I usually eventually get Early Blight to some degree on all the others. It was quite a bit faster this year. And to top it all off, around July 4th, my neighbor behind me decided to use Round Up all over his backyard to kill his bermuda and do some landscaping. My tomato plants did not like this one bit. They all died within a week. I was pretty mad at first, but luckily, they were mostly played out by then. So the loses weren't too bad. I didn't have too many fruit left. It would have been a different story if it was June 4, instead. I guess that's the risk you take when you garden in the middle of town. BRANDY BOY - This one was my only new variety. These did well overall, but I probably will not grow again. I know this sounds crazy, but I'm just not a huge fan of the Brandywine taste. Call me crazy, I know. I grew a Brandywine back in 2012 in a container and they all tasted watery and bland to me. And it got Early Blight quicker than others that year. On a whim, I decided to try Brandy Boy this year in the bed. Both plants produced about 20 good-sized beefsteaks. I still just wasn't crazy about the taste. If you like Brandywine, these may be worth a try. Definitely had better disease resistance than Brandywine, at least in my case. BIG BEEF - These did great for me, and I plan to always grow this one. The taste isn't "knock your socks off", but it's very good for a hybrid. And they produce like crazy. This was my second year growing it. Every year, each plant has pumped out at least 35 fruit. Most were in the 8-16 oz. range. And for what it's worth, these 2 plants were the last to die from the Round Up accident. BREAK O'DAY - This variety is probably my favorite pink. There's something about the "zing" in the flavor that my wife and I both really like. I've grown this one all 6 years and will continue. It's a little bit smaller plant (4'), but it pumps out the tomatoes. I've always had at least 30 from every plant. In 2012, I got over 60 from one plant before it finally gave out. BLACK CHERRY - Another staple that I've grown every year. I love this cherry tomato. Not much to say about this one. It's a very popular tomato, and it always lives up to its reputation for me. The only negative about these is they are susceptible to Gray Mold, typical for Black Tomatoes. I had hundreds of fruit from each plant before they died. Both plants were huge, as usual. YELLOW 1884 PINKHEART - This is a creation from The Tomatoman here in Tulsa, and I think it is only available through The Tomatoman's Daughter. It's another tomato that I grow every year. It typically produces 8-16 oz. yellow beefsteaks with pink in the middle when fully ripe. This is my favorite beefsteak. It's flavor is hard to describe, maybe creamy-sweet, almost buttery. I know it sounds weird, but it is oh so good. Every person I've given one to has commented on how good it tastes. The first few this year were watery, but after that, they were fantastic. I got about 25 from each plant. I had 2 huge fruit this year, too, which was new. One was 21.9 oz. and another was 20.7. Lisa (the Tomatoman's Daughter) said she'd never heard of ones that big. JAUNE FLAMME - This one is an orange, golf ball size tomato that is very juicy, sweet and tangy. I've grown this one every year. When I grew them in containers, they had quite a bit of blossom end rot. I haven't had that problem in the raised beds. These are early and very productive. I lost count on these this year, but I think each plant produced at least 75. I'm not going to go into the not-Sun Sugar and not-Super Sweet 100. I took a chance and ordered the not-Sun Sugar seed from Amazon. That was a mistake that I will not make again. The not-Super Sweet 100 seed actually came from Burpee. They emailed me about a month ago saying there was a mistake in their production of Super Sweet 100 seeds this year, and offered to send me new seeds early next year. I'll give those another try, but will likely not order from them again. I've got a Black Cherry, 4th of July OP, Jaune Flamme, Green Zebra, Break O'Day, Yellow 1884 PH, and Johnny Joe's going in the garden for Fall. I planted out on July 10. I've already had a couple ripen, and have several fruit growing on all of them. I had worms really bad on these in late July. I sprayed a couple of rounds of Bt, and haven't seen any since. Hopefully I'll get some good production before our first freeze. So overall, it was a decent year. It wasn't my best year for sure, but I guess it could have been worse. The rain was too much and lead to more disease than normal. And the Round Up incident lead to a premature end to my season. But I grew from seed for the first time this year, and successfully, I might add. So I'm going to say this season was a success. I look forward to seeing other reports, too. Lee...See MoreYear Round Gardening in Oklahoma
Comments (47)Kim, It is funny how different people perceive gardening. My mom and dad both grew up poor in the country during the Great Depression (and my dad who was 10 years older than mom, remembered the struggle of the Dust Bowl years but she was too young to remember that time period). Both lived on farms and the families pretty much lived off the food they could raise. Times were very hard. My dad loved gardening and, to him, it was a privilege to be able to raise his own fruits and veggies. He'd take a big brown paper sack of home-grown tomatoes to church every week and give tomatoes to anyone who'd take them. He loved canning. He had a garden every year until his Alzheimer's Disease progressed to the point that he forgot what a garden was. My mom hated gardening and viewed raising your own food as something you'd do only because you were too poor to go to the grocery store and buy food. She wanted nothing to do with the garden or with canning. She had a beautiful flower garden for many years, but only because Dad and I planted it and took care of it. All she had to do was look at it and enjoy it. To this day, I don't really think she understands that I prefer fresh, home-grown food for many reasons. I'm fairly sure she still thinks that I have a huge garden because we are too poor to buy all our food at the grocery store. She's 87 years old and if I haven't changed her mind by now, I guess I never will. When I was a kid, her parents still lived in the country and had a huge garden. She kept telling me they had the garden because they were too poor to buy food. I never believed her. I thought that having a garden made them rich in all the things that mattered. I look at my son and see our family tradition of gardening and our love of rural living in him and it makes me proud, so I understand your happiness that your son and grandson share your love for the land. Johnny, See there, you are changing lives in more ways than you know! It always amazes me to see how much fresh, home-grown produce affects people. It is like a whole new world unfolds before them as they realize how much better everything tastes fresh from the garden (or the farmer's market or a farm stand). You know, even fresh veggies from the grocery store taste better than fast food, restaurant food or canned/frozen food, and it isn't hard to convince people of that once they taste fresh, just-picked food. I'm glad that 2 year old didn't explode from eating all those PEPH peas. The "first" of everything everything gets eaten right in the garden as I work....the first strawbery, the first peach or plum, the first lonely spear of asparagus, the first leaf of lettuce, the first sugar snap pea, etc. and the first cherry tomato. (I save the first big tomato to eat with my family though.) When I work in the garden in spring and summer, I often skip lunch because I've been grazing in the garden all day. I do take a large bottle of water or green tea out with me when I go out, but otherwise the garden sustains me. Gatorade? I don't need no stinkin' Gatorade on a hot day---I just eat handfuls of cherry tomatoes. It is a nearly perfect day on a day like that. We hit 76 degrees yesterday and it was about as perfect of a gardening day as a person ever gets here in February. I love this weather. It is hard to remain calm and to not get overly excited and plant everything too early. I was tempted to get my soil thermometer and check the soil temperatures to see if the ground is warm enough for some early tomato plants, but I talked sense to myself and refrained. I know the soil is still too cold, and the nights are too cold as well, but you can forget things like that on a perfect winter day. The problem is that every day is not as perfect as yesterday was. I am proceeding with planting cool-season crops, though, and my onions shipped yesterday so they'll likely arrive here today or tomorrow. I can't wait. I'll likely plant my potatoes sometime in the next 3 or 4 days. Much depends on how many fires we have and how much, if any, that disrupts my garden plants. With the wind letting up over the next few days, I'm hoping we won't have any fires at all. I'd rather be in the garden. Dawn...See MoreAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
2 years ago
OklaMoni
2 years ago
Nancy Waggoner
2 years agoHU-422368488
2 years agoHU-422368488
2 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
2 years ago
Nancy RW (zone 7)
2 years agoHU-422368488
2 years agolast modified: 2 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
2 years agolast modified: 2 years agoslowpoke_gardener
2 years ago
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