I'm not sure that there is such a thing as 'most dependable, can't-go-wrong-in-Oklahoma vegetables' because even the toughest, most reliable producers still can be assaulted by late freezes, hail, extreme rainfall, extreme drought and tornadoes. LOL. Still, I'll list the ones that produce most reliably for me, assuming grasshoppers and deer don't eat the plants before they can produce.

Listed in order of 'best chance of harvesting a good crop':

1. Tomatoes, but variety selection is of the utmost importance.
2. Summer Squash---all types, including yellow crookneck, yellow straightneck, zucchini and patty pan.
3. Peppers--both hot and sweet.
4. Onions--I always get a crop and 9 out of 10 years a heavy crop.
5. Eggplant--I don't even like eggplant that much, but it handles our weather better than anything I've ever seen. In a droughty summer when I had to stop watering the garden in late June or early July because I couldn't water enough to keep the plants alive, the eggplant produced until frost even though it had no irrigation and almost no rainfall from June through October.
6. Okra. At our house, okra won't die and you can't kill it. Provided you keep the pods picked, it will produce from about 50 days after it was planted until late autumn.
7. Bush beans--most years we get enough to eat them fresh several times a week and freeze enough to supply us with all the beans we can eat for many months. Last year was a horrible bean year here, yet we froze enough that we just ate the last package of green beans earlier this week.
8. Pinkeye purplehull peas. Nothing can take the heat like southern peas. They produce like mad, and the hotter it gets the better they produce. Pole beans are great too, but produce later than the bush beans. I do plant both types.
9. Since I don't especially like eggplant, I'm adding a ninth veggie---sweet corn. Although it takes up a lot of space, it produces a lot. I do have to fight the coons for every ear and, trust me, a cornered coon is dangerous.

Also very productive....all the herbs, and particularly basil. For the price of one tiny package of fresh basil from the grocery store, you can raise all the basil you can eat, turn into pesto, and freeze. Garlic is also dependable and doesn't take up a lot of space. OK, I'll stop with the 'top eight' now, since I've listed 9 veggies and 2 herbs.

You'll notice relatively few cool-season crops on my list and that is because late cold weather can seriously impede their productivity.

Dawn

I would choose Celebrity as the best tomato to get a good crop of good taste.

I would choose Grande Jalapeno to get the biggest and best hot pepper crop.

I would choose Big Bertha to get the best bell pepper crop.

I don't have enough experience to suggest specific varieties of potatoes, squash, corn, watermelons, or "cantelope". These would make my total 8 that I have to grow in the home garden each year.

My list would have most of the veggies Dawn has but instead of eggplant--which I love but have never been able to grow--and purplehulls--which I like ok, but wouldn't make my top 8--I would add lettuce and radishes because I absolutely have to have early spring and late fall salads. Oh and my list would have to be the top 10 because I couldn't do without sugar snap peas and broccoli either.

My list is similar to the others. In no order it would include tomatoes, peppers(hot and sweet), squash (winter and summer), onions and garlic, okra, sweet corn, beets and carrots,asparagus and beans(pole and bush). I tried combining and still have nine. 8 isn't very many too an garden addict. And impossible for a tomato addict. LOL. Jay

Have y'all noticed that only one of us listed "only" eight? LOL

Snow peas, green beans, tomatoes, corn, carrots, watermelon, honeydew, strawberries and romaine.

There are certain things which I call "feel good crops." They not only produce well, they do it with less effort and more dependability. Here are some which I consider to be "feel good crops:

1) Cowpeas: As Dawn mentioned, they love heat. They're easy to grow and once they start, one can always find something to pick, right up to frost. On top of this, they outgrow the weeds.

2) Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin: Now, I know I've only grown this one once. But it performed so well, in spite of adverse conditions, that I'll list it. It outgrew the weeds, flourished, without even wilting, through 9 weeks of above 100 F temps, and almost no rain; and 8 plants produced about 350 lb of beautiful fruit. We're still eating and enjoying this one. No pests bothered it at all.

3) Okra - see Dawn's reasons.

4) Pole beans - especially some of the Appalachian heirlooms, which are hard, productive and have the tender podded characteristic. These may not do so great under some extreme circumstances, but normally they are trouble free and truly make one LOVE gardening. My favorite varieties are also good for dry beans, so any pods which escape picking, produce dry seed for planting of eating.

5) Sweet potatoes: Last year was our worst year. Still, we harvested an okay crop. They are work to plant and work to dig. But in between they are almost no work at all. In the past I've said that a gardening year, at our home, is measured by how the sweet potatoes do. They are a staple for our family.

6) Jerusalem Artichokes: PRODUCTIVE, and dependable. It FEELS GREAT to harvest them from December until April! They're tasty too.

7) Corn for meal and grits (dent, flour or flint) - We grow Mesquakie Indian Corn and Cherokee Squaw. Both are excellent. We eat a lot of corn meal, from our own garden. If cultivated while small, corn will soon shade out the weeds (even Bermuda grass). It takes up space. But it sure is nice to harvest! Also, cowpeas and beans can be planted on the outside edges of the corn patch. Squash can be grown on the edges as well. A good sturdy corn is a good first crop to grow on newly broken soil since it shades the Burmuda grass, and the following year that spot will be much easier to work.

8) Tomatoes: They may falter under extreme conditions. Yet, a year without tomatoes is a bad year for us. Most years we get enough to keep up our stocks of canned tomato. If I could only have a tiny garden, I'd probably plant a BIG tomato plant in it, maybe Black Cherry. That would afford maximum pleasure for the space involved.

George
Tahlequah, OK

I need to recall my advice about the best hot pepper. My plant source informed me yesterday that the hybrid jalapenos I got from him last year were not Grande (those were what he sold to me in 2008) but instead were the Mammoth variety last year. So I guess I do not know enough about these two to recomend either yet, other than the ones in 2009 (Mammoth) were the most productive and highest quality jalapeno type that I could ever have imagined. I need another year of them and a couple others before I would recommend it though.

I feel pretty stupid.

Mine:

1. Tomatoes. I would shrivel up and DIE without tomatoes and I think the rest of my family would as well.

2. Peppers, hot. We eat hot peppers like they're going out of style.

3. Garlic. There are a lot of vampires around here.

4. Onions. Bulbing, walking, whatever kind -- we just have to have onions.

5. Lettuce. Loose leaf, cut & come again. I was a rabbit in a previous lifetime.

6. Summer squash. We eat it fresh, we eat it dehydrated, we eat it frozen. We have never had too mush summer squash.

7. Oregano. It's the nectar of life, in green, leafy form.

8. Cucumbers. We ran out of dill relish this week and there were actual tears spilled over it.

I'll keep it at eight as requested for the list. Thank goodness I don't have to in my garden!!

Diane

I neglected to mention it up there but those eight have always been dependable for me, although productivity does vary from year to year, of course.