Basil and chard I saw planted for fall in an AZ garden.

Hi Winter Weary Gardeners!

I’ve been perusing search terms on my blog stats for the past week, and it seems like you’re interested in three things:

1. Best vegetables to grow in Oklahoma.

2. Will anything grow in Oklahoma? I had to laugh. That’s a great question. I like to think so, but 2011 and 2012 were enough to try a gardener’s soul.

3. Do David Austin roses grow in Oklahoma and the hot and humid south? This is a compilation of several questions all revolving around David Austin roses. I’ve grown them for many years, and they like the east side of my house best so far. I do live out in the country so when it’s cold here, it’s really cold with only trees to block the wind. A couple of years ago, I tested three new cultivars in my garden, and here are the results. Hint: ‘Darcey Bussell’ is a rose I would grow anywhere. In addition to David Austin roses, there are lots of other roses you can successfully grow here too.

Rosa ‘Darcey Bussell,’ one of the best David Austin, English roses out there hands down.

Let’s start with veggies, including some of the best and easiest vegetables to grow in the red dirt state. Also, you won’t need this until later, but here’s how you pollinate squash. Lettuce is one of my favorite spring vegetables. What are your favorite seeds? What new varieties will you try this year? When I leaf through catalogs, the paper ones and online, I look for lettuces from Israel and Australia. In Oklahoma, we need spring crops that will endure some heat and quickly mature. Sometimes, though, I’m still lured into buying seed or a plant because of its history. I’ve always been a sucker for a good story so I am growing ‘Grandpa Admire’s’ butterhead lettuce this year. It’s named after George Admire, who was born in 1822 and was a Civil War veteran. His descendants saved this lettuce seed over the years and donated it to the Seed Savers Exchange in the 1970s. It is extremely slow bolting.

A salad I made last spring from my garden.

Other lettuces are:

Container-loving ‘Ruby and Emerald Duet’ and ‘Jade Gem’ both from Renee’s Garden
Heirloom ‘Kagraner Sommer’–heat tolerant
‘Drunken Woman’ from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
Two mesclun favorites: ‘Monet’s Garden Mesclun’–so pretty and ‘Q’s Special Medley’ from Botanical Interests.
‘Black-Seeded Simpson’ is a favorite of mine. I always grow it.
‘Capitan,’a Dutch greenhouse variety that has both excellent and heat and cold tolerance.
‘Susan’s Red Bibb’ because it is beautiful.

Chinese mustard is a beautiful vegetable in the garden. It contrasts with green spinach and lettuces.

I also grow a lot of other greens. A favorite last year was Chinese giant red mustard shown above. It is beautiful growing and has a peppery taste. Good in salads and to border early flower gardens of larkspur, calendula and nasturtiums and poppies. There’s also ‘Toy Choy’ bok choy, pak choi, ‘Spicy Green’ mustard, rocket–a favorite of English and French chefs, a quick Asian stir fry blend I’ll try, ‘Spring Rapini’ broccoli raab from Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply, heirloom ‘Giant Nobel’ spinach, ‘Winter Bloomsdale’ spinach and multi-colored Swiss chard.

Red nasturtium

Other cool crops are: ‘Purple Plum,’ ‘Chinese Red Meat’ and ‘Pink Beauty’ radishes, ‘Progess #9 peas–which need to go in NOW–, ‘Oregon Giant’ snow peas and ‘Cylindra’ beets.

While you’re ordering seeds though, think also about summer crops. Some should be started inside about the same time you plant your cold crops outdoors. Early spring is a busy time for gardeners.

What do you and your family like to eat? I like corn, green beans, eggplant, summer squash, peppers, etc. I’m trying sweet peppers, ‘Bullnose’ and ‘Lipstick,’ and a whole host of caliente peppers:

‘Cayenne Long Thin’
‘Grandpa’s Home’
‘Caloro’ described as a yellow jalapeno.
‘Chile de Arbol’
Poblano, just because I love them. They are fantastic chopped up and sautéed with onions for scrambled eggs. They are also wonderful stuffed or roasted.

Take the stamen and gently rub the pollen onto the female squash blossom.

For green beans, I’ll be sowing ‘Harvester’ and ‘Landreth Stringless’ bush beans. I find that bush beans perform better than pole beans in hot Oklahoma. I’m not sure why.
I plant ‘Early Gold Summer Crookneck’ squash because it is more resistant to squash vine borer and squash bugs. I’m trying ‘Caserta’ and ‘Constata Romanesco’ zucchini from Sustainable Seed Company. Last year, I grew zucchini ‘Gray’ which is similar, and it was very resistant to squash bug damage. I bought seeds for ‘Dagon’s Egg’ cucumber, ‘Golden Jenny’ melons, Burmese okra–but I saved seeds of my own red okra too. Three eggplants, so far, have stolen my heart and pocketbook: ‘Fengyuan Purple,’ ‘Rosa Bianca’ and ‘Jade Sweet.’ Of these, I’ve only grown ‘Rosa Bianca’ before.

‘Lumpy Red’ tomato, an indeterminate heirloom that made beautiful lumpy tomatoes all summer.

Tomatoes have their own section.

‘Goldman’s Italian American’
‘Lizzano Cherry’
‘Aussie,’ Indeterminate and from Australia, the land of hot summers. We shall see.
‘Cherokee Purple’ a standard heirloom for Oklahoma.
‘San Marzano Tall’ I’m not sure why I chose this one.
‘Vintage Wine’ has a deep chocolate red color. Darker tomatoes often perform well here. It also has green stripe. I’m a sucker for the weird and wonderful of vegetables.
‘Thessalonkj’ is a Greek variety with dense foliage to protect the fruit from the sun.
‘Coyote.’ What can I say? I like the name.

Last year, ‘Lumpy Red’ and ‘Park’s Improved Whopper’ were wonderful. ‘Sweet Gold’ cherry tomato and the heirloom, ‘Marianna’s Peace’ were also special. They simply ignored the hot weather. However, I started my tomatoes and other seeds earlier than usual which helped. I recently read the most interesting article by Jeff Cox called, “The earliest tomatoes” in The Heirloom Gardner magazine–put out by Baker Creek. He gave me much food for thought about getting fruit even earlier. I think sowing early with plant protection is the key to successful gardening in our current climate.

‘Park’s Whopper Improved’ tomato was a determinate variety that kept me in tomatoes all summer.

I listed one melon above, but it’s also time to think about watermelons if you like them. I find them challenging to grow so I’ll just visit Rush Springs for the watermelon festival or buy them from the side of the road. I live at a country crossroads so someone is always selling watermelon, squash and tomatoes if we have a decent summer.

When my stats starting rising in January, I understood exactly how you feel. Our warm weather has given everyone the garden itch. Well, February can be a tease so I understand. Still, I wish we could ask ourselves and our gardens to wait. Our climate is so confusing now. When I first began gardening thirty years or so ago, we waited until the end of February to plant some of our cold vegetable crops. We planted potatoes before St. Patrick’s Day. Last year, however, I sowed seeds for kale, spinach, lettuce, beets, turnips, tatsoi mid-February at the latest. In fact, I’ll have a lot of my seed in this week. Row covers are ready for freezes. Cold crops are pretty hardy, but if we get an early dose of summer heat, they are toast. So, it’s important to plant them as soon as possible and watch the weather.

I know this looks like a lot of seeds, and there are many. Some I receive from companies because I’m a member of the Garden Writers Association. I also get seeds because I blog. I buy a lot too. You should see my Visa bill. It’s an addiction. I’ll just plant what I can and not worry about the rest because they’ll keep. You do the same and enjoy this good weather we’re having. Summer will be here soon enough.

I’ll try to tackle the other questions in another post. Enjoy searching, but don’t forget to order your seeds and start sowing. I’ll also be starting even more seeds indoors this year. In order to get the drifts of color I want, I’ll need to grow some of my own cottage flowers and of course, vegetables.

This morning, I found it hard to wake from a long and pleasant dream concerning seeds. When I stepped outdoors, teacup in hand, the low was 25F. Yesterday, it was fifty something, maybe 52F. That’s life on the plains. One day you’re up, and the next you’re down–sometimes in the same day. After I ran Bear to school this morning, I rushed home because there was good frost everywhere. I do love frost as the sun comes up. Everything sparkles.

Go on, winter garden, sparkle while you may. Pretty soon, all this brown foliage will be cut down for new grasses to emerge–new life to begin. I am ordering seeds with trepidation because of the last two years of heat and drought, but I’m also trying to maintain calm and serene with whatever comes.

I can’t control the weather, but I can enjoy a gift, this morning of diamonds in my normally gray and brown winter world.

Here’s hoping your February is also filled with sparkles and other good things. March is coming. I can feel it on the air and in the soft ground. I can hardly wait.

[Click on the photos for larger images.]

Don’t misunderstand me. We need rain spring, summer and fall too, but winter rain is a blessing beyond measure. In a land that hasn’t seen measurable rain for months, we are overjoyed. Oklahoma is in the third year of a crippling drought. Only yesterday, I was lamenting the dark red color in the middle of the Climatological Survey Map for Oklahoma for January, 2013.

Courtesy of the Oklahoma Climatological Survey.

I live where extreme drought has reigned supreme the last couple of years, and it’s been hard to maintain my passion for all things that grow.

Can you see how low the lake/pond behind our house is? The red bank on the other side of the water is where the water should be. It’s about four feet low.

Yesterday, local meteorologists forecast rain, but they couldn’t agree on how much we would get. We’ve heard it all before. Last month, a small spitting here and there, but the atmosphere was so dry, real moisture never materialized. Weary and dusty Oklahomans just stopped talking about the weather. At Christmas, my Aunt Della asked if she should even try to plant anything this spring. The disappointment of two hot and dry summers showed in her face, and I had nothing to say.

Last night, after book club, I came home, and my husband was in bed pointing to the skylights over his head. Droplets of water pooled upon the surface. It had started raining after I walked into the house. We ran outside on the covered deck to listen to raindrops falling against the roof and upon the fallen leaves. The air remained warm and moist, and I left the door open as I read a novel long into the night.

As I read, I also tracked a line of storms on my phone. Through an app called My-Cast, I could see the storms forming over New Mexico and begin marching our way. Those same storms could be a mirage once they reached Oklahoma’s border. Hope prayed, but experience said don’t bet on an unsure thing.

Lichens on wet fences cheer a weary heart.

This morning, the air was still moisture kissed, and the atmosphere felt pregnant and heavy as a woman in her ninth month. I took Bear to school, and once I hit Guthrie, the rain began to fall in sheets that landed across my windshield wipers. Bear and I were a bit surprised at all the liquid falling from the skies. The rain so amazed our local news stations that they preempted the national news and just talked about the weather all morning. News 9 even called in seasoned meteorologist, Gary England, to discuss tornado watches.

It was funny and sweet and a little sad. My mom, who lives forty-five minutes south and west of me, called and said she heard thunder. Her voice echoed that of a small child on Christmas day. Who could blame her?

These storms were odd. In the beginning, they moved from the south to the north. Only later did they behave normally traveling from west to east.

Rose hips with raindrops.

This morning’s thunder showers gave the Red Dirt Ranch 2.02 inches according to our little weather station. Yes, we own a La Crosse Atomic Weather Forecast station. Does that make us weird? Some parts of the state got more, and other parts got less. With my camera, I’ve tried to record the joy and jubilation a little moisture can bring to a dusty land. Of course, you can’t hear the birds calling to one another, or the squirrel scolding me for being absent from the garden too long.

A trowel full of water from a rain that brought two inches to my garden.

Oklahomans are not foolish people. We know a few inches won’t break the drought’s stranglehold. We remember the Dust Bowl. Hell, my grandparents lived it. We also know to rejoice and say thanks when God sends a little something to raise our spirits. Today, it rained. We are standing in tall cotton, and it feels grand.