WOWZA!!!! Dawn - you've brought me back out of "lurking" mode! I've been so busy lately...but even after a VERY disappointing garden season, I too am thinking "next year...". This truely is an addiction. LOL!

As for beans - my fave is still Bush Blue Lake. They produce early and are plentiful plus they do well in succession planting (did I spell that right? LOL).

I haven't had luck with any of the others on your list until corn. Early Sunglow is by FAR the best choice for a good tasting crop before the worms find them. Will definately plant again...along with a red popping corn that Tigerdawn gave me. The grandkids (and me) really liked the flavor.

As for the rest of the list: PinkEye Purple Hull are WONDERMOUS! We love the flavor and they make a really good jelly from the hulls. Okra? Our fave is now Cowhorn. Tender pods even if left for a few days and very prolific. Peppers? This year I've been pepper-challenged, but I really, really like the few I got from San Martin Ancho and Mucho Nacho. Potatoes faves are Yukon Gold and Kennebec. Kennebec last so much better! Beauregards are STILL our best sweet potatoes although we got some HUGE Goliaths. Haven't tasted them yet, but my Mom is processing them to use for Holiday dishes so I'll come back and let you all know the outcome of those.

My personal "must haves" tomatoe faves are now Roma Rio (for salsa, juice and canning), Italian Goliath, Cherokee Purple and Black Cherry. And I think ANY of the Tumbling Toms are great too. If all I have are those, I'll be just fine....although it's just so much fun and a treat to the tastebuds to try the others!

As for melons - Sugar Baby Watermelons and Ambrosia cantelopes win it for us here hands down.

As for the winter squash/pumpkins - we had a really bad year here becuz of the danged bugs so all I can go on is past experience, but any butternut has done well (except for bad bug years) and our best pumpkins have been the Howden Pumpkins. They have a really good flavor plus they make good carving pumpkins too.

Anyone else? What are your faves? I'm located in NE Norman. What works for you in your area? We can all glean a bit of help from our neighbors!

Paula

Great list and thanks so much again, Dawn. I want to try Brussels sprouts next fall because I LOVE them. They are one of my favorite veggies. Want also to try Broccoli, more Bush Beans, Slicing Cucumber (got to check out your list for one that suits a container; will check the other thread, too), a small fruited Eggplant, Okra, Sugar Snap Peas, Jalapeno Pepper (for Salsa; now if I could just grow Avocados), potato, Summer Squash/Zuke, Tomatos. I'm sure I'll have to cut a few things, but I plant to cultivate an area for more veggies that is about 60 sf., plus containers, so maybe I will be able to incorporate all. Also, they will grow in different seasons, spring, summer, fall, e.g., the snap peas will give way to something else, and so on.

Paula, was this your biggest year growing veggies?

Susan

Susan - I know Dawn chuckled when she read your post. And yes, it was my biggest attempt EVER! 4 years ago we started with a small plot, 24' x 32'. I say small because I live on 2 and a half acres. That wasn't big enough so we planted potatoes outside of that area the next year, and they did well. We still wanted more room so we enlarged the potatoe area to include melons, pumpkins and squash. About that time I found this site and soaked up everything I could. That space wasn't convenient to water and was too far from the house so this year, we made a new garden area on the other side of the property that had it's own water hydrant. It ended up being 60' x 40'. Do ya see a pattern developing here? HA!!! It's addicting. I've learned A LOT here and the school of hard-knocks, so next year - I'll be streamlining to the faves I listed above. So much I want to try, but not enough hours in the day. All my peppers will be in pots on my covered front deck next year. And I'm considering raised beds instead of the larger area. I'm not giving up the smaller original area because I've worked too hard to amend the soil and it's getting better every year. I may even put zuchinni and summer squash in my flower beds!

A friend of mine that lives in another state grows Baby Bubba Okra because it does so well in containers. You might consider that.

Paula

Ooh, I'll have to jot that one down, and thanks, Paula! To me, Okra is such a pretty plant, it could be stand as an ornamental alone, but what a plus we get from the fruit it produces! Lots of veggies are very nice ornamental plants and I think more and more people are incorporating them into their landscape. Same thing with herbs. I mean, have you ever seen an ugly Lavendar bush? And, for gosh sakes, we try to sprout potato foliage in water indoors, so if they're pretty enough as a houseplant, they're pretty enough to put front and center in the landscape, aren't they? Carrots, being in the Apiacea family, have that pretty lacy foliage; peas have that gorgeous blue-green foliage and those distinctly beautiful flowers; and what about Chard? OMG - I have to quit - I'm making myself jealous of my own potential veggie garden!

Well, from everything I've read of your posts, you've done a darned good job, Paula! Kudos to your efforts, and you've certainly contributed to inspiring me personally. I have such big footsteps to follow in, but hey, that makes it easier to follow, right? Maybe I'll encourage some butterfly gardening along the way.......

I've been perusing catalogs and websites to the point my eyes are crossed tonight, so I best get on with checking the rest of the posts before I become totally blinded here.

Ooh, before I submit this, Dawn, of the onion varieties you listed, are any of them bunching onions?

Susan

Hi Paula,

I have grown Baby Bubba and like it fine, but generally plant Little Lucy instead because of its red coloring.

Hi Susan,

None of the onions I listed from Dixondale are bunching onions. The ones I listed are all large, globe-shaped onions.

Bunching onions usually have the word 'bunching' in their name like Beltsville Bunching or Evergreen Bunching if they are old heirloom types. Johnny's Selected Seeds has a line of newer bunching onion varieties that don't include the word bunching in their name, like Deep Purple and Guardsman.

Dawn

And Susan - don't think you haven't inspired me!! I remember your early postings of plantings for the flutterby's!!! I've planted several things that you recommended in my house-surrounding beds in the hopes of attracting them so that my grandkids could see! My best peppers this year were the ornamental peppers I got from Dawn at the Spring Swap this year. They are still surviving...and they are under the front covered deck hence my resolve to grow my peppers there next year.

As Dawn said...the fun is all in the planning where everything is "perfect". I think this next growing season, I'm really going to find my "happy medium". And I'm going to have to check out this Little Lucy okra....do you see how this enabling works? LOL!

Paula

*writes furiously in her notebook* ack! so many choices, so little room!! :)

dody

Dawn

Whata list I will be saving so I might review it occasionally! Thank You

Charlie

Thank you again Dawn, this seems to pretty ambitious list for 2011. Obviously I need to expand vegetable garden by removing another 200sqft of Bermuda turf.

Any suggestion or website for one stop shopping for all those "Favorite Veggie Varieties for Oklahoma"? is that good time to order all seeds/propagules for next year planting?

Paula, FYI, a lot of those ornamental peppers reseed for me. That's one thing about them that I really like.

Dody, That should be my slogan "So many choices, so little room", and I should cross stitch it onto a sampler to hang in my potting shed.

Charlie, You're welcome. Ask and ye shall receive. Going through the list and researching all those varieties might take you a little while, but it is something to do in the "off season".

Chandra, Oh, no, that's not the list of what I'm growing in 2011. It is just the list of my personal favorites. They've become favorites because they tolerate our weather and produce well. After I posted the list of OSU-recommended varieties, Charlie wanted to know what it is that people "really" plant though, so I posted the list so he'd know what I, for one, like to plant.

I mean no disrespect towards the OSU-recommended varieties, or the varieties recomended by any other university, like Texas A&M, for example. Even when I lived in Texas, I looked at their list and then made my own choices.

While the varieties recommended by the various universities for their areas have been researched, often the research is done more on hybrids than OPs, and often productivity or shelf life gets as much attention as flavor, for example. Remember that university research sometimes is geared more towards commercial farmers than home gardeners. So, I try to choose varieties for our specific home garden that tolerate our weather, produce a worthwhile yield and also, those whose flavor we prefer.

Where to find them?

Almost everything I listed should be available from one or two or more of the following online sources, or at least they have been in the past. In a couple of cases, there's only one or two sources, and I've listed it below. The websites are my best guess and if I'm off by a letter or two, you can find them by googling.

Victory Seeds (victoryseed.com)
Willhite Seed (willhiteseed.com)
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (southernexposure.com)
Seed Savers Exchange (seedsavers.net)
Baker Creek Rare Seeds (rareseeds.com)
Totally Tomatoes (totallytomatoes.com)
Tomato Growers Supply Company (tomatogrowers.com)

Ramapo tomato is available directly from Rutgers/NJAES. Moreton is also available there.

I believe Little Lucy okra is available from a couple of places, and one of them is Park Seed. Baby Bubba is available from Burpee.

Moreton and Supersonic tomato seed are available from Harris Seed.

I get seed potatoes locally, from organic grocery stores in the DFW metroplex and from Ronningers, which has a new website you can find by googling. I'm not sure the new website is completely functional yet.

I get my onion plants from Dixondale Farms and recommend them highly. If you are in the OKC-Norman metro area or in the Tulsa metro area, you may find all those same varieties locally, but I can't find all of them here in southern OK.

Almost all the tomato and pepper varieties I listed are available from either Tomato Growers Supply or Totally Tomatoes if you don't find them on the websites of the other seed companies. Biker Billy Jalapeno, though, is from Burpee so only available from Burpee and its sister companies.

Dawn