Keep the Gardens Going

Don't miss out on the third season of gardening in Oklahoma or other areas in zone 7 and above.

Even though the August heat is still with us, we can plant cool season vegetables, perennials and spring flowering bulbs.

If you don't know your plant zone click on the appropriate link -
United States zones or worldwide plant zones or the AHS heat zone map.

Hazzard's Greenhouse and Seeds lists thousands of varieties of flowers, vegetables, herbs, grasses, and walk-on-plant seeds in their online catalog. You can click on the Search feature and enter a common or Latin name to find what you need.

Joyce Hazzard created a free shipping coupon for anyone reading this. Enter MSFS in the place for coupons at checkout or use the code for phone orders at 989.872.5057.

Start seeds in containers so you can control moisture and temperature. This is especially true for heat sensitive greens. Refrigerate lettuce seeds for a few days and then soak them in water the day before planting.

Flower seeds that like to be hot for a few weeks followed by cold include pansy, alyssum, calendula, corydalis, bachelor buttons, love-in-a-mist, Joe Pye, Datura and many others. Most perennials and many biennials are planted in the fall.

Nasturtiums and Zinnias grow from seed to flowers in 35 days. Also plant seeds of these flowers with 45 days to bloom: Bachelor buttons, Cosmos, Marigold and Hyacinth Bean Vine.

Flowers with 50 to 60 days to bloom include: Verbena, Impatiens, Alyssum, Morning Glory and African daisy. The old Thompson and Morgan seed germination database is available at
Tom Clothier's site where you can look for germination temperatures, weeks, etc.

Plains Coreopsis and Dahlia need 60 days. Flowering cabbage and flowering kale take 11 weeks.

If you want to speed up the process, you can pre-germinate the seeds in moist paper towel or vermiculite. Keep them warm until they sprout and form roots, then plant them in pots until they are ready to plant in the ground.

Garlic and shallots should be ordered now to plant in September. Farmer’s markets have locally grown varieties that are sure to work well.

Look up the number of days from seed to harvest for your favorite vegetables and select those with 70 days or less to maturity.

For example, bush beans mature in 50 days, so seeds started now will have table ready beans by the middle of September. Burpee’s Tenderpod bush bean was the 1941 All America Selection and is still one of the highest rated (http://bit.ly/lbiDU).

Another AAS selection, Buttercrunch lettuce is ready in 65 days and can take the cold (http://bit.ly/zS6eY). Green onion, chive and arugula seeds can still be sprinkled into the garden and harvested before winter. Arugula is good for pesto, late fall salads and on sandwiches.

And put in cool season Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cabbages. At the Tulsa Master Gardener's site (http://bit.ly/4wgJu9), Sue Gray advises, "But keep the B.t. handy. Bacillus thuringiensis dust or liquid is the smart way to keep cabbage looper and diamondback moth caterpillars off your plants." Bt is sold as Biobit, Dipel, MVP, Steward, and Thuricide.

In August and September these seeds are planted: Kale, chard, mizuna, mache, Asian greens and asparagus. Gray says to watch for flea beetles and cucumber beetles in the fall. As soon as the plants come up, cover them with a floating row cover fabric to keep the bugs off the leaves and prevent them from laying eggs in the soil. Check under the fabric daily.

OSU Fact Sheet HLA 6009 has several ideas for fall vegetable growing at http://bit.ly/oqSdx.

Between August 10 and 20, plant bush beans, lima beans, cucumbers, beets, Chinese cabbage, head cabbage, collards, and green peas. After you harvest the peas, dig under the leaves and vines before the first freeze.

Oklahoma’s best varieties are listed in OSU Fact Sheet HLA 6032 at http://bit.ly/sgCnR.

Master Gardener Conference 2009

The 2009 Oklahoma State Master Gardener Conference was held in Bartlesville last week. Conference topics included: Vegetable gardening, life in the soil, understanding chemicals, native plants, tree care, integrated pest management, and lawn care. The keynote speaker was Dr. Alan Stevens from Kansas State Horticulture Research Center.

Here are some of the things we learned in the sessions

Stevens said that the latest flowerbed and flowerpot design is a combination of colorful foliage plus flowers with foliage in the center of the design.

The Prairie Star program at Kansas State University has a website of plants that performed well over a 2-year period prairie conditions. The annual plants are listed at www.prairiestarflowers.com/. Perennials are at the Prairie Bloom link.

Brian Jervis from the Tulsa Master Gardening program pointed gardeners to Kelly Solutions (www.kellysolutions.com) for information on all things bugging your yard and garden.

At Kelly Solutions, gardeners can search for pesticide information on all 20 insecticides and 7 fungicides available

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strives to minimize harm to the environment by targeting a specific problem and using the least harmful solution.

Professor Tom Royer said that gardeners should learn the life cycle of insects, weeds and diseases. When we see a symptom such as a wilted leaf, we should scout to find out what caused the problem rather than reaching for a full-spectrum poison.

Royer also said that beneficial larvae eat more pests than adults. For example, lacewing, ladybug and hover fly larvae are better than adults at clearing the garden of harmful bugs.

Green manures, such as mustard crops, act as fumigants in the garden by enriching the soil, controlling weeds, bacteria, fungi and pests. (See http://www.csrees.usda.gov/nea/pest/pest.cfm).

Sue Gray from Tulsa Extension said they have had triple the usual number of requests for soil tests and home canning classes.

She said that an average home vegetable garden costs $70 to put in and yields an average of $350 in food.

OSU Fact Sheets to check out include: HL 6009 fall gardening, HLA6004 spring gardens, HLA6007 soil fertility, HLA6436 healthy garden soil, HLA6005 commercial vegetable varieties and HLA6000 fertilizing vegetables.

All the OSU Fact Sheets and information about the Master Gardener program are listed at http://www.hortla.okstate.edu/hortla/resources.htm.

Tidbits of advice from Gray’s talk:
Cucumbers grown on a trellis produce more fruit than those grown on the ground.
Garlic grows better in wide rows than in single rows.
Grow yardlong beans as a hot weather substitute for fresh green beans.
Interplant chives and onions with other vegetables.
Remove suckers from tomato plants up to the first flower.

Entomologist Dr. Carmen Greenwood, spoke about microscopic animals in the soil that live in microhabitats such as around plant roots.

One teaspoon of soil has 6 to 9 feet of fungal strand, up to a billion bacteria, as many as 200 bacterial feeders, 100 arthropods, 5 or more annelids, and thousands of protozoa.

They all work at breaking down organic matter and soil toxicity, are a source of carbon storage, control insects and improve the physical structure of the soil.

Box mites have 8 legs but can close into their shells like a turtle. Pill bugs or rollie pollies, are actually land-living crustaceans. Other crustaceans are lobsters and crabs.

Termites and earthworms are called soil ecosystem engineers because they can reshape a landscape.

Parasitic wasps help keep harmful insects out of the garden, even going into the soil looking for bugs.

Maureen Turner is the chief horticulturist for the Tulsa Zoo and Woodward Park. She provided information about native plants.

Turner's recommendations include Halesia Carolina, or Carolina silverbell that grows slowly to 30 feet tall and 25 feet wide. Also look for Eupatorium maculatum, Joe Pye Weed hybrids, for moist soils in half sun.

Time for Fall Gardening

Next week's garden column will focus on fall gardening so I called Sue Gray, Extension Educator, Horticulture, Oklahoma State University in Tulsa.

Gray wrote a fact sheet for Tulsa Master Gardener's website and contributed to the OSU Fact Sheet number HLA 6009 on fall gardening.

Gray said to clean up the bed and mulch it ten days to two weeks before planting so the soil can be cooled by the mulch. In the meantime, if you are dying to start seeds, start them in pots.

It is still too hot to start lettuce outside so Gray is starting hers inside where the lettuce's preferred 70-degree temperature for soil and air can be met.

P. Allen Smith's newsletter says he is planting spinach this week in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he lives. Smith prefers Bloomsdale Longstanding.

Garden Guides says it is also time to put out flower seeds that need a cold stratification to come up and bloom next spring. Pansy, alyssum, calendula, bachelor buttons, love-in-a-mist and many other seeds should be purchased now and planted in prepared soil in September.

Muskogee gardeners plant Larkspur and poppy seeds around Thanksgiving. West Texas Cooperative Extension has a helpful sheet on flower seed planting and they recommend September for many flower seeds.

Gray said to look at the seed packets - they often say spring or fall seeding. The other item to read on the seed packet is "days to maturity". Gray said anything planted now should mature in 70-days or less.

When I was at Stringer Nursery in Tulsa yesterday, the owner reminded me that all perennial flowers appreciate being planted from seed at this time of year. By the way Stringer has their 2008 seeds in already and they plan to re-order as needed over the winter.

If you have not seen it yet, Winter Sown is a website specifically geared toward information on sowing seeds in cold weather. The Winter Sown link is to an essay on the basics, including a list of plants to consider.