Jeff,

On the crops that will be new to you this year:

LETTUCE is a cool-season crop that bolts (goes to seed) quickly here when the weather heats up. Here in Love County, it is hard to keep it going past May of most years. You may be able to keep it going a little longer in northeastern OK, especially if you shade it during the hottest part of the afternoon. It is very easy to grow from seed. Just follow the packet directions. Lettuce is one of the earliest crops you can plant since its' seed will sprout in any soil that is above 32 degrees.

Leaf lettuce types do better than head lettuce. You can harvest using the cut-and-come again method where you clip off leaves above the surface of the ground, leaving the roots in the ground, and new leaves then grow. This allows a perpetual harvest until the heat shuts down production. Almost any variety will do well here in spring, but Bloomsdale Longstanding, Black-Seeded Simpson and Slobolt handle the heat especially well.

You can sow your seeds thickly so that your lettuce is a thick carpet with no soil showing. I am sure others who grow a lot of lettuce will chime in. I'm not real big on growing lettuce at our place because the wild things will get to it before I harvest it most of the time. I generally sow it as a "ground cover" around other plants, and then if the rabbits get it before I do, there is something else still growing in that space.

There are 4 types of lettuce--leaf, butterhead, Romaine (aka Cos) and crisphead (Iceberg type or head type lettuce). Personally, I like growing leaf and butterhead and Cos best, but crisphead usually will form a head with careful timing of the planting.

You can plant your lettuce 4 to 6 weeks before the last frost date for your area, but may need to cover it if really cold weather threatens. I've gotten good lettuce crops in beds that have sun from sunrise until about noon to 2 p.m. and shade thereafter. I've also grown it in full sun, but it will benefit from some shade as the weather heats up.

GARLIC does best when planted in the fall in southern OK. I don't know if that is true of NE OK, but I suspect your winters might be a little too intense for fall-planted garlic in the colder years. You plant it exactly the way you plant onions, utilizing the same soil prep and fertilization, etc. You can set your garlic bulbs (not seed) deeper in the soil than you would plant onions, especially if the soil is well-draining.

Like onions, garlic bulbs up in response to the daylength and also as a response to temperatures. As the daylight hours lengthen and the heat intensifies, the garlic bulbs up and achieves maturity. That is why fall planting works so well--the plants have a lot longer to grow and get strong before bulbing is induced in late spring, and you get larger cloves. In a very cold winter, though, too much exposure to cold temperatures can adversely affect the plants. So, you may have to experiment for a few years to see if you get a better crop of garlic from a fall planting or a spring planting.

Like onion, the garlic tops begin to yellow, dry and fall over when the bulbs are maturing. You can harvest it at that time and be sure to leave the bulbs out in a dry, shady spot for a few days to cure before you put them into long-term storage.

CUCUMBERS are easy and practically grow themselves. If you grow the regular ones, they do best if they have a trellis to climb. Otherwise, the cukes tend to hide on the ground under leaves and may get too large to taste good before you find them. There are some bush-type cucumbers, like Picklebush, that are easy to handle and can even be grown in containers. Some cukes are better for fresh eating and some are better for pickling, so choose your variety carefully. Be sure you do not plant your cukes until the soil has warmed up to 60 degrees or they will sit there and sulk.

Early in the flowering process, you'll have a lot of flowers on your plants but no cucumbers. This is normal. These monoecious plants produce a whole lot of male flowers (often, dozens of them) before the female flowers appear. Some of the newer hybrids, though, are gynoecious, which means they have only female flowers. So, how do they get pollinated? A few monoecious seeds are included as pollinators. Some of the newest cukes are parthenocarpic, which means they product without pollination and are essentially seedless.

Usually bees take care of the cuke pollination for you, but you can do it by hand if needed.

BLACKBERRIES are ridiculously easy to grow. They do enjoy well-enriched soil, and are especially fond of manure. Just remember to prune them at the right times because the fruit they produce this year are from canes that grew last year. So, the time to prune is when your harvest is over in the late spring to mid-summer. Prune off the old canes that produced fruit in the current year because they've done their job and are finished. Don't prune the current year's new growth, except for a little tip pruning to encourage branching.

Pick your berries when they're ripe but remember that you may have to fight the birds and other wild critters for every one of them. Space your berries 4' to 6' apart because they will grow like mad. Mulch heavily to keep the weeds and grass away.

Of the crops that are new to you, if you want to grow in containers, you can grow lettuce, bush-type cucumbers and garlic in containers.

What else do you need to know that I didn't mention?

Dawn

Hey, Dawn! Your advice is what keeps me coming back here. Thanks so much.

I made my seed orders with Seed Savers Exchange last night. I got Slobolt lettuce, at your suggestion, and White Wonder cucumbers, at the suggestion of a friend.

They would not be able to ship any garlic until September, however. Not sure why. So I guess I'll hold off on that for a while... or I'll just plant some from the grocery store and see what happens.

I think you might've been under the impression that I've planted onions before. I haven't. The only bulb plants I've ever done were tulips and daffodils.

That's not really important, though. I'm sure it's easy enough to plant them.

I was wondering if you had any specific instructions for raising these cucumbers and lettuce from seed. Should I sow them directly into the soil, or might they be better in containers (at first, or for the whole season?). If so, should I use any special kind of potting soil? All I have is ordinary potting soil. Nothing special.

Also, I know you always say "compost, compost, compost," but what kind of soil conditions do cukes and lettuce grow best in? Is poorer soil better, or tolerable, for them? Some plants are that way, I find, and don't like rich soil very much.

Oh, I almost forgot. I got a packet of ground cherry seeds as well, just for fun. It looks like they have a lot in common with tomatoes or tomatillos. Anyway, should be interesting to see how that turns out.

I'm looking forward to trying some new things this year, and I'll be doing the rest (tomatoes, herbs, peppers) by transplant from whatever I can pick up at my local garden store and/or the Sand Springs festival.

This should be a good year. I'm ready to put in the work.

Jeff,

They don't ship garlic until fall because it generally does better if planted in the fall.

I'd direct sow the lettuce and you can sow it anytime after the seed arrives. It can take a lot of cold weather, but you might want to throw a sheet over it if you have a night going down into the 20s.

With the cukes, you could direct sow after the soil reaches 60 degrees, which ought to be early April, I'd think, in your part of the state. You can start them in potting soil, inside in a bright location, if you want to but it isn't really necessary. If you direct sow, start them in mid-March to set out in early to mid-April. All you need is 3 or 4 weeks lead time. You don't want to start them too early because they transplant best when small. Cukes are easy so don't sweat it. If you plant them, they will grow.

When you do plant garlic, it (like onions) likes loose rich soil. With onions you set the plants just deep enough that the soil with hold them upright, so they are planted very shallowly. With garlic, you can plant the cloves an inch or two down in the soil--they're not quite as picky as onions.

I'd plant both cukes and lettuce in good compost-enriched soil, but if you are running out of space and need for one of them to go into a poorer soil, then cucumbers would tolerate it better. I usually put cucumbers (and okra and black-eyed-peas and pumpkins and squash and melons) in my poorer, less-enriched soil because they do well in less-rich soil.

Just treat your ground cherries the same as tomatoes or tomatillos, and they'll be fine. Because they are a little wilder in nature, they could handle less-well-enriched soil too, and I bet you could direct-seed them too. I've never grown them, though, so I'm just guessing.

I hope you have a good year, and I hope your family is doing well. Seems like the youngest member of the family ought to be old enough to "help" you in the garden this year or next. : )

Dawn