I meant to add that I'd like to grow zucchini if it can be grown well in small spaces.

I'm thinking of doing a cinder-block bed and various pots.

Kris, I will return to this thread when I have more time. But I would comment that it appears to me that you did right with your watering. Last year was a very challenging year and a good deal of your disappointment ought not to be laid at your own feet.

One thought: Broccoli can be very challenging. I have only had success with Packman, which seems to set heads quickly. Also, if your transplants were not in good condition, they may never have produced a worthwhile harvest,

Another thought: Tomatoes don't require insect pollination. Shaking them was plenty adequate. But in all likelihood you had varieties which didn't handle the heat.well. I grow a couple which won't set fruit it nights aren't cool. Try something like Sioux or Roma. I'm sure Dawn will drop in soon and she will give you a big list of heat adapted tomatoes.

Don't spend a lot more on gardening supplies. Perhaps you can do a small compost bin and beef up your planters. But spending lots of money will ultimately harm your desire to garden.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Thanks so much for your response! I have heard from a few folks that last year was a terrible year for a novice to start gardening so I'm hoping we have better luck this year.

We won't be able to take the boxes with us and will have to do another type of raised bed. I am thinking a cinder block bed. They are cheap enough.

I believe the tomato seeds that I purchased are Roma. So that's good! I may give the Packman broccoli a try. Honestly we didn't care for the flavor of the broccoli from my stepdad's garden at ALL. It tasted nothing close to store bought. So I'm hoping that we find something better.

Thanks again!

I an not a veggie gardener, but some of your issues may be cool season versus warm season veggies. Lettuce and spinach are cool season, so early spring and fall are the best time to seed those.

OSU should have a great demonstration garden. Oklahoma Gardening is filmed there (PBS on sat mornings) Planting some flowers may help attract the pollinators.

I would still buy a few plants to start with, just to give a jump start since you will be starting later.

I bet Stillwater has a good farmers market.

You might read this thread too. There is some great info in it.

Here is a link that might be useful: New to OK Gardening

Welcome! As Lisa said, a part of your problem may have been cool season/warm season related. Of the items you list that you want to grow, here's how they shake out:
WARM SEASON:
Tomato
Bell Pepper
Green Beans
Herbs
Zucchini
Most of the Herbs (except rosemary which grows for me outdoors year round, but I've heard some people have a hard time getting it to overwinter)

COOL SEASON:
Broccoli
Lettuce
Carrots
Spinach
Onion
Potato

I would say you are late to get any spring cool season crops in now (speaking as a fairly new gardener myself - you might be able to get some of them to grow and harvest, but as a newbie everything is harder and once you have some experience you might have better luck pushing the boundaries of planting!), but will have a second chance at a fall garden for your cool season wish list. The last several years have been difficult for experienced gardeners in our state, let alone newbies who are just getting started!

A few thoughts:
Seeds are harder than transplants for a new gardener. I gardened for several years with two or three tomato plants and two bell peppers bought at the nursery before I jumped into seed starting. Now I'm addicted! Time constraints meant I didn't start any seeds last year and bought/traded all my plants, but am going full-force on seedlings again. Do not feel bad at all for buying things started for you! Especially for people who plant a small garden, I often think the time, money and effort spent starting seeds would be much better spent on $30 at the nursery for a starter garden. Until it becomes an enjoyable part of the gardening process, it can be really stressful to start seeds!

I doubt you under-watered. I purposely walk a fine line between "thirsty plants" and "dying plants" and do exactly what you do - stick my finger in the dirt to tell if they need water. My feeling is that slightly thirsty plants will feel the biological imperative to set fruit and fulfill their life cycle more than pampered, wet plants who have a good thing going with lots of leaves, and a "what's the rush to have babies, I'm working on my tan here" attitude. Well, plant attitude. If plants can have an attitude.

As for getting started on your warm season plants, I would buy large containers (as big as you think you can move to your new home when filled with dirt and plant - big containers will allow bigger root systems and thus happier, healthier container plants) and put a tomato transplant in each one next weekend - maybe 3-4 pots total with whatever variety you like - I think you said for cooking so roma hybrids might be good for you. The heirlooms are often challenging for me to grow, and the smaller the tomato (cherry or cocktail or plum size) the easier for me. I'd fill the pots with MiracleGro potting soil with moisture crystals either in the mix or added (Agrosoke) -- do not use yard dirt or topsoil - too dense for container plants' roots -- and if it's a really huge container, I might put some empty plastic bottles in the bottom to displace some of the soil volume and make the bulk lighter to move. I'd buy lightweight containers, those polystyrene ones or even rubbermaid bins from Big Lots if you're on a budget and the priority is function over aesthetics. You could put in a plant or two of basil in the same pot if it's big enough.

The tomato plants could be dragged inside or in a shed or garage if we get too cold over the next few weeks. I'd wait until it's warmer to do the same drill with pepper plants, and could use either smaller containers or maybe plant a few plants in each container. Jalepenos do better in our heat, but I don't do spicy, so only plant sweet bells - they pretty much all start out with green bell peppers but some mature to red, purple, yellow, etc, which tend to be sweeter and I like better. I'd do another container with your herbs in it, giving the most space to the rosemary.

For your green beans and zucchini, I'd wait until I was moved to the new place to start those. They usually grow pretty well from just putting the seed in the ground, so I don't think I'd bother with the containers for them. Then, when in the new place, you can plan ahead to the fall garden and get thinking about when to start some of your cool season seeds indoors. I'll link to a planting date list for cool season stuff which I think you can extrapolate to the fall garden. There might be a better fall garden calendar out there, but I haven't clipped it yet. I'll see if I can find something.

Oh, lastly, I wouldn't concentrate too much on trying to "put up" food to last you through the season when you are just starting out. That's a lot of pressure to try to perform when you have so little control over the outcome! I was so excited to freeze a half dozen gallon bags of tomatoes last year, a quart bag of chopped bell peppers for cooking, and give away a few sacks of produce to coworkers and family when I was going on vacation and couldn't keep up, but in the three or four years I've been really "into" gardening, that was a first. I'm patient and enjoy the journey as much as the destination and consider gardening therapy for me, and the food is just a great side effect.

Oh - I plant onions in the spring because I loved the convenience of having onions at the ready all fall in the pantry and never having to go to the store for one. We mostly cook with them, so I couldn't swear the flavor was so much different than store bought. Bell peppers I could definitely taste a difference in the home-grown. I did potatoes one year and nearly got heat stroke digging them in June/July so decided store-bought is the way for me (again, we cook them so I couldn't tell much difference in flavor).

Here is a link that might be useful: Cool Season planting dates

Ah, here's a good link for fall season planting dates.

Here is a link that might be useful: fall season planting dates

Mia gave good advice. It is too late to start seeds of all the veggies you mentioned except green beans and squash. So if you want to have something else over the summer, you will need to buy plants--tomatoes, peppers, herbs are all available right now. (June will be too late to get good plants) If you still have the grow bags you can use them. Then after you move, you can move them into bigger containers--18 -25 gallons is a good size for a tomato or two peppers. Then you can take some time to get your fall containers ready for the cool season crops you like. The link Mia put up is very helpful.

There's no way for us to know what went wrong with last year's garden--other than the brutal heat and lack of rainfall. You don't say how big and deep your containers were or how crowded the plants were in them, but I can tell you that in a year like last 1&1/2 to 2 inches of water in a container a week would not have been enough. Containers also heat up much more than the ground. The roots may have roasted, especially if the container was dark.

It is very easy to bite off more than you can chew (haha) and then live to regret it :) Starting small is the best way. For two people, especially if you don't both eat a lot of veggies, one or two plants of each item is probably all you need.

You might make room for one cherry tomato plant :) It's fun to pick them off the plant and pop them in your mouth right then and there!

It is VERY tough to container grow in OK. If you can put things in the ground, I would recommend it.

mulberryknob, it's too late to start them for the fall? That's when I'm wanting to plant.

Not for the fall, no. For the fall, the link Mia put up will tell you when to plant.

Yeah, I tried clicking on the OSU guide and it gives a 404 error. I'll do some googling for the guide later on. :-)

Strange, the link pulls right up for me. Here it is directly instead of through that older thread. http://osufacts.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-1114/HLA-6009web.pdf

Here is a link that might be useful: OSU fall planting dates

If the boxes you built had actual bottoms, you'd have to treat them as containers. If the boxes were open and rested directly on the ground, you'd treat them as raised beds. This is a huge distinction. If they are closed-bottom containers with drainage holes, they should be filled with a soil-less potting mix. Depending on your container size, color, soil-less mix quality and the number of plants in each container/plus the size of the plants, you might have to water 2 or 3 times a day when the temperatures are hotter than, say, 100 degrees. You don't use "dirt" dug up from the ground in containers unless you are an advanced gardener and know how much to amend it to make it drain well enough to use in a container. If they were open-bottom boxes used as raised beds, you might get away with watering once or twice a week if rain is falling a little here and there, but in the hottest, driest weather you might have to water more often and in wet weather less often. I just stick my finger in the soil to check the moisture levels, or...since I have been gardening for many years, I usually can tell by looking at the plant foliage if the plants are thirsty. I do keep mine on the thirsty side once they are producing. Too much water is, in some ways, worse than too little water, up to a point.

I would go to the Container Forum and read about Al's 5-1-1 mix and his gritty mix recipes. Then I'd go to the Tomato Forum and do a search for Ray's Earthtainers. They are home-made self-watering containers similar to the Earth Boxes sold commercially. Earthtainers might work well for you since you just fill and refill the water reservoir as needed, and you can make Earthtainers for less than you'd spend to buy Earth Boxes.

To grow in containers successfully in our climate, you have to pay very special attention to the soil-less mix and to watering, especially in July and August...or, in 2011, especially in March through September, more or less.

Unless you were growing very small determinate tomato plants or cascading hanging basket type tomato varieties like Terenzo or Lizzano, Red Tumbling Tom or Yellow Tumbling Tom, then the 5-gallon bags were too small for the type of heat we had. You might get decent enough results from 5-gallon containers in a normal year, but not in a super-hot, super-dry year. FIve gallon containers are great for peppers in any year. When I grow tomatoes in containers nowadays, given the ridiculous heat and drought we've had the last several years, I am planting them only in 10 to 25 gallon containers.

I will write more later. I have to go out to the garden and cover up some plants.....my husband says a storm is approaching on the radar and I have oodles of newly transplant plants that probably are going to get pounded by hail or carried off by tornadoes......it must be spring!

Dawn

Kris, I really can't add to the great advice above, but just wanted to tell you to not to give up. Gardening takes time to learn - but what you will learn is the rhythm of the planting seasons, what varieties work or you, what the weather is doing every single day, what kind of watering every plant needs. I suggest being more process-oriented than goal-oriented.

Even if you don't do any work, be sure to visit your garden every day. Just look at it, get to know it, see what it's up to. That's the best advice I have.

One of my favorite containers is molasses feed tubs that cattle feed comes in. One of my friends who is a rancher gives them to me every now and then. They come in different sizes and shapes but most of them hold 20 to 25 gallons. Filling them with soil-less mix is expensive, but since they are so large, you don't have to water them nearly as often as you have to water smaller containers.

I would try to rein in my enthusiasm a little and pick a handful of things and master growing those first. Then, I'd add a couple of new things every year. It is really hard as a newbie to master growing many new things all at once, and it can get really frustrating.

You've already missed the window of opportunity for planting cool-season stuff for a spring/early summer harvest.. Any cool season plants or seeds planted now likely would get hot and bolt or die before producing a crop.

It could be that your stepfather's broccoli had matured in hot weather which can make it have a very strong taste. Usually broccoli from the garden is far superior to broccoli from the store. Farmer's Market broccoli that was grown locally is almost as good as the stuff you grow in your own garden.

Tomatoes are tricky in Oklahoma. We have a very narrow window of opportunity when the flowers will set fruit. Once the nighttime temperatures are in the 70s and the daytime highs are in the 90s, blossoms often drop off the plants. Now, if your plants weren't even forming blossoms, they likely were getting too much nitrogen and water. Planting tomatoes too late can give you plants that don't produce ripe tomatoes until fall. The OSU-recommended planting dates of April 10-30 exist for a reason. Tomato plants put into the ground (or into large containers if that is how they are being grown) later than that run into that awful summer heat about the time they are going to start flowering.

Lettuce grows here as a spring and fall/winter crop but not really a summer one, although some of the heat-tolerant varieties hang on for a while in early summer. We are harvesting and eating lettuce now from seed sown in either late January or early February. We live very far south in OK, so the heat usually starts making our lettuce bolt in May---although in a year when we have a hot spring, it can start bolting in April, and in a cool spring with lots of clouds and rain, it may hold on into June. Once the real heat arrives, the plants bolt and then I don't sow lettuce seed again until August or September.

If space is limited, you might not want to devote the limited space you have to onions and potatoes. We love fresh onions and potatoes so much that we rarely buy any at the store. If we run out of onions and potatoes from the garden, we pretty much just wait for next year. Freshly dug potatoes have a flavor and texture far superior to grocery store potatoes which often have been held in storage for many months before you buy them. We have a lot of space though, so we don't have to decide if we have space for them or not.

You cannot compare your garden's soil to anyone else's because soil is highly variable. Soil can look lovely in terms of texture, but have nutritional imbalances that you'd learn about only by having a soil test done. A person with well-drained soil can have excess water standing in puddles in their garden one day, and it all may drain and be in the ground the next day, while a person with heavily compacted clay may have water standing in their garden one day....and it may be there a week later. You have to know your own soil and know how it drains to know if standing water is or isn't an issue. You only get that experience from gardening over a period of time. Even within a small area, soil can vary a lot--I have some really nice sandy-clay sitting 10-15' away from very dense and tightly compacted clay. One of them is great to grow things in, and the other is not. I cannot water them exactly the same way because one holds water better than the other. You cannot water by a formula...like water for 1 hour 3 days a week or whatever. For some soils that always would be too much, but for others it wouldn't be enough, and in some years it would be fine and other years it wouldn't be. I just stick my finger in the soil an inch or two to check for moistness. You want soil that stays evenly moist, not soil that fluctuates from being very wet to very dry.

You don't have to be born with a green thumb in order to succeed as a gardener. To me, gardeners are like scientists....we experiment with this and with that and if neither of those produces the results we want, we try something else. Over time, we learn from all our experiments and as we do we get better and better at what we do and how we do it.

Herbs are very cost effective. You can buy rosemary, basil, parsley or thyme as transplants. One plant will cost you about the same as the cost of buying a tiny package of not-so-fresh herb leaves at the grocery store, and that herb plant will give you herbs for the rest of the year (after it grows a little) and often for succeeding years.

Just hang in there and keep experimenting. Somewhere along the way, you'll realize you are having more and more experiments with successful outcomes and you'll realize your thumb has turned green after all. It is kind of a thrilling moment when that happens. There is no one on the face of the earth who walked out into their yard and planted a garden and had everything succeed perfectly the very first try. There is no one on the face of the earth who cannot become a better gardener with practice. Everyone was new to gardening once upon a time. Embrace the newness of it all and enjoy it. Gardening isn't fun if all it does is add tremendous stress to your life.

Try to avoid letting your gardening become a competition with any family member or friend. To me, that sort of competitiveness takes the fun out of gardening, and it isn't even a fair competition because soil can differ so much and because experience can and does make a difference. Just enjoy it and learn as you go and I think you'll love it.

I already was an experienced gardener when I moved here to a very rural area where I was surrounded by old farmers and old ranchers in their 80s and 90s who seemingly couldn't wait to tell me how I was doing everything wrong--beginning with the silly notion that I could garden organically, which they told me just is not possible here. I was polite but I let their criticism go in one ear and out the other because I knew what I was doing and I knew it would work just as well in OK for me as it did in TX. And. It. Did. They all learned pretty quickly that while I wasn't doing things their way, I had a great garden anyway and they stopped trying to change me. Do your research, give it your best effort and learn from both your failures and successes. Beyond that, relax and enjoy it because, otherwise, it isn't worth doing.

Dawn

Do you know of any ways to fill with soil or soil-less mix that's cheaper than buying bags of it? That could cost a fortune.

I'm going to catch up on reading all of the great info you guys have provided. I've been stuck working night shift so I slept most of today.

Go to the Container Forum and read about Al's 5-1-1 mix. You buy the bags of raw materials and mix it up yourself. I fine that is cheaper than buying bags of ready-made soil-less mix---not that it is cheap, just that it is a little less expensive. i don't know if any of the places that sell topsoil, sand, or soil mixes for raised beds by the yard offer anything specifically formulated for containers but you could call them and ask.

Here's the thing: you can cut corners in many ways in gardening to save money, but the soil ( if growing in the ground, included in raised beds) or the soil-less mix (if growing in containers) is one place you cannot try to use the cheapest mix available. When gardening, it all starts with the growing medium and its quality. If you have poor soil or a poor soil-less mix, you'll have poor results. It would be better to have fewer containers and fill them with a good-quality mix than to have more containers filled with a poor quality mix.

You also don't have to fill all your containers at once. You can fill one large container each week or every other week and plant into it. That is not necessarily less expensive but it does spread out the cost over a longer period of time. Some years I grow a lot in containers and some years I do not. In the years when I am planning to plant a lot of containers, I start filling them up in January, filling a couple of large containers every couple of weeks. By planting time, the containers are ready to go, the soil-less mix already is paid for, and I can use my garden money for plants or seeds.

Trying to fill too many containers with a quality mix all at one time is cost-prohibitive.

This year I am not planning to fill a lot of containers because we have built 2 new additional gardening areas and I am directing my efforts and dollars to soil improvement in those areas. I have, in fact, removed all the soil-less mix from all my molasses feed tubs excerpt for 3 of them and have dumped the old soil-less mix into beds in the new garden areas. The last 2 summers it has been really hard to keep a lot of container plantings happy in July and August and this year I am not even going to try. It takes a lot of watering to keep the soil-less mix in the containers moist in July and August, especially when the high temperatures are exceeding 100 degrees and even exceeding 110 degrees almost every day. Remember to budget for high wayer bills if rain isn't falling regularly all summer long. I have fruit trees and some herbs in big containers and lettuce, mesclun greens and herbs in three other containers that are more like rectangular tubs than pots. I may plant flowers in a few containers but not in huge containers that will cost a small fortune to fill. Some years I have 60 or more containers filled with plants. This year it is likely to top out at 15 or so.

Container gardening is one of the most expensive forms of gardening. You have to put a lot of money into containers and soil-less mix before you plant anything, and having all that cost up front means you will be growing some really expensive veggies and herbs this year. It is a lot less costly to amend the soil in the ground than to fill containers, so when it is possible to do so, growing in the ground costs less. Part of growing in containers means understanding that the start-up costs are higher, and also that irrigation costs in dry years can add up really quickly. I am not trying to make it sound like container gardening is not a good idea. I just want you to understand it is not really budget-friendly in our usually very hot and very dry summers.

In rainy years I plant oodles of containers---often as many as 80 or more, but in dry years I have significantly less. The cost of irrigating a lot of containers can really add up. Plants grown in the ground can send their roots out farther looking for water and you can get by with watering less in the heat of the summer. You cannot do that with plants in containers because their roots are trapped inside that container, so to speak. Both in 2011 and 2012, during the prolonged dry spells accompanied by incredible heat, I had to water some containers as many as three times a day.

Dawn

Hi Kris,
I'm going to start by saying that everyone else here knows more than I do, and they are wonderful. I started a couple of years ago and like you, watered everything all summer to no avail. I finally gave up on my tomatoes, but have a friend who kept watering hers only because they had an automatic watering system and a well. She got a TON of tomatoes in the fall after it cooled off. Who knew?

Secondly, I'm going to suggest going to the Spring Fling. You will have a chance to meet some really nice folks, pick up a lot of wisdom, and some plants to go along with it.

Thirdly, here's a link to a video I saw last week. Since space is an issue, it might be useful. I'm considering trying this with herbs. Here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBh1fjMqjmI

Happy Planting!
Kristen

I found the Spring Fling thread and it's maxed out on replies. Do you know where it will be? We would really consider going!!

We would love to have you! I started a continuation thread - sometimes they go to three threads if people are especially talkative. :-) Location is near Jenks this year, sign up in the new thread and email Jo (hostess and poster of the first thread).

We would love to have you! I started a continuation thread - sometimes they go to three threads if people are especially talkative. :-) Location is near Jenks this year, sign up in the new thread and email Jo (hostess and poster of the first thread).

Mia, You keep repeating yourself. LOL LOL LOL

I think I'm going to pass on the Spring Fling because it's a 3 hour drive from me. I've been making so many 3 hour drives lately to our new house that I'm just done driving for a while. But in the meantime I have been looking at self-watering containers on Pinterest and I'm SO, SO excited to give them a shot for tomatoes and other things. I also saw water spikes to use with a 2-Liter bottle. Those look pretty handy as well.

Lots to learn!!!

Can you not grow tomatoes in the fall here? Are they only a warm season plant?

Tomatoes are only a warm-season plant. They freeze and die once temperatures hit freezing. You can grow them for a fall harvest here, which means planting them in June or July and harvesting somewhere in the Sept-Nov timeframe depending on what the weather does. The big issue with growing tomatoes here is that our hot daytime and nighttime low temperatures can impede pollination and fruit set. This is a huge problem some years but not others. In 2011 the very strong heat arrived very early and shut down fruit set as early as May in some parts of OK. In 2012 the weather was kinder.

Kris, you can "grow tomatoes in the fall." But what that really means is "harvest them in the fall." If you plant an strongly indeterminate (means that it never stops growing and flowering) variety, then it's possible to simply nurse it through the heat and drought of July, and it will pick up flowering and fruiting when temps become more reasonable. But beware, if the plant gets too beat up, the fall harvest may not be all that good.

The other option is to put out transplants in June. I say "June" because my climate turns cold sooner than Dawns. For me, since I start from seed, that means I start my seed early in May or late in April. Last year I direct seeded some Roma VF tomatoes on June 9. But all I got was some green tomatoes by frost.

I have two varieties which I really like for fall tomatoes. One is Tuxhorn's Yellow & Red, which is like Hawaiian Pineaple (yellow beefsteak with red streaking). This one simply fruits more reliably in the fall. But the green tomatoes are WAY better than any other we've tried.

The other variety is called Polish Pastel, which is a yellow and red streaked/pastel plum shaped but somewhat hollow fruited tomato. I bet it could be used for stuffing. Anyway Polish Pastel is an extremely resilient variety which can survive the heat and drought and BURST into flower as soon as temps become reasonable. This one is a heavy producer in the fall.

Neither of these tomatoes is available commercially :(

George

I'm reading this guide:

http://osufacts.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-1092/HLA-6004web.pdf

And I'm so confused about the planting dates. Cool season AND warm season vegetables need to be planted nearly the same time?!

*sigh*

That's Oklahoma for ya! Ha! Actually, I think that the date ranges tend to be interpreted that the warm-season early date is for the southern part of the state (they get warmer first) and the later date is for the northern part of the state (they warm up last), and for cool-season crops, I might be wrong but I think it's reversed - the early date is for northerners (who will get cold first and thus have a shorter fall "season") and the later date is for southerners.

It's great as a newbie to find someone near you in terms of geography and ask when they are planting because you may not have developed your own "gut feelings" yet! I have a lot of OKC peeps to compare with, but I think we have some near-Stilly people who could advise you. Maybe they will visit this thread or you could start a new one asking for Stillwater area-gardeners to pick their brains.