Hi Regina, Welcome to the forum.

We can address each insect pest when it shows up, but one of the most important things is to make sure you are not over-feeding your plants too much nitrogen. Plants that have a diet high in nitrogen produce more carbohydrates in their leaves and this makes them more attractive to insects. Still, the pests will come and there is a different method used for controlling each one. Do you prefer organic methods or will you be using synthetic pesticides? It helps to know that info so we know which kinds of things to recommend.

I think you would be safe sowing seeds of marigolds and nasturtiums directly in the ground now. We are getting pretty warm and the forecast looks fairly favorable.

As far as putting warm-season plants in the ground, it all depends on how much of a risk-taker you are. I am in southern OK and likely will put my first tomato plants in the ground sometime between now and the end of March but I'm not going to do it this week with all the rainfall that is expected. Peppers usually need to do into the ground a couple of weeks after your area's last frost/freeze date. If they are exposed to nighttime lows that are too cold for them, they can remain stunted and non-productive more a very long time afterward, so there's no reason to rush them into the ground. The same is true of cucumbers, eggplants and melons. They do not like cold weather.

Often, we get a little cold spell around Easter that can make planting warm-season crops before Easter a little risky. Having said that, if the weather stays warm, I'll turn into a planting machine and start planting like mad next week, but I'll be sowing corn seed and maybe bush beans, as well as putting some tomato plants in the ground. All three of these will tolerate cool but above-freezing temperatures, whereas melons, cukes and eggplants like it a bit warmer.

You absolutely should plant melons again. Their delicious flavor is so worth it! Just move them to a different area from the spot they grew in last year. The best way to get control of pests is to religiously scout your plant leaves and remove and destroy the pest eggs. When you find the eggs, and before you remove them, if you'll describe them, we usually can tell you what kind of egg they are. You wouldn't want to remove and destroy the eggs of beneficial insects who will help you out by preying on the pest type insects. Lady bugs, for example, will eat aphids.

Yesterday's weather was beautiful and it was tempting me to believe I could just go ahead and plant everything yesterday. However, based on past experience, I know better than to let a couple of warm days in March lull me into thinking it is time to plant everything. I'm watching the 10-day forecast like a hawk to see if the warmth continues or if a big cold spell is going to come around the end of March or in early April.

When I start planting down here in southern OK, y'all will hear about it. I am 100 miles or more south of OKC, so I can plant a little earlier, but I always remain cautious because I am in a low-lying area that gets surprisingly cold surprisingly late in spring. I work around that by using floating row cover in the frost blanket weights to cover up the garden when temperatures may drop down close to freezing. If you have that sort of row cover, it is fairly easy to plan early if the soil is warm enough because you know you can protect plants if the air temperature gets cold again. Without row cover or some other means of protecting your plants, planting early can be risky.

In 2012, we were able to plant very early and it paid off with huge yields and early yields. I am not quite ready to declare 2015 is another 2012, but to me, the weather this year does remind me strongly of that year. So.......I think we will be able to plant early, but it all hinges on soil temperatures. Plants won't grow until the soil temperature warms up to the range of temperatures they like, and for melons, cukes and eggplants, as well as peppers, it isn't there yet. I think I could plant tomatoes now and my soil in my raised beds would be warm enough and will stay warm enough, but I'm resisting the temptation to put them in the ground ahead of this week's rain and cooler temperatures.

Some people are risk-takers and will plant earlier in central and even northeastern OK than I will down here in southcentral OK, and if you are a risk-taker and want to plant early, there's nobody saying you can't. Just understand that if you plant early and cold weather returns, you might lose everything and have to replant.

Thank you Dawn for your awesome info. I am doing only organic - preferably no spraying at all. And I will keep checking my leaves for eggs in the future - as of right now there are no leaves yet. As for my soil - last year I got a truckload full of soil mix from a supplier and I haven't added anything else besides compost and some mulch to the soil. I did get a testing kit, guess I could do my magic there and see what my soil has in regards to P, N, and K.

As far as risk taking goes - I am still so new to gardening that most of it is more of an experiment to me, if it grows: yeah! if not: then I just want to figure out what I did wrong. I can see how unreliable OK weather is - so I decide to wait a bit longer to see if we will get that freezing spell like last year.

Also I just ordered a beneficial bug seed mix that will go along the side of the back yard. Saw that in another post on here. For now I will seed my marigolds and nastarturiums :)

Will keep you all posted

R

I also direct-sow the nasturtiums and marigolds. I don't usually buy them unless they were on clearance (eg at Lowes) and I wanted some quick blooms.

They grow quite fast and continue blooming until frost, so if you have seeds, go ahead and plant them. Just watch out for the cutworms and slugs, if you have any in your garden, so be prepared that you might need to plant 2-3 more times in case your first round was taken out by anything that eats the seedlings. It seems like slugs come first, just coming out after things get warm, and then cutworms show up soon after for me, so I hope to get in a few seedlings that can survive the onslaught.

For slugs, snails and pill bugs/sow bugs, I scatter Slug-Go Plus around the young seedlings and it works great. Slug-Go itself worked well on all the above, and then they added Spinosad for the pill/sow bugs and it works even better. Slug-Go is organic (and, unlike the synthetic snail baits) not harmful to wildlife or pets. Its' active ingredient is iron phosphate. I used it for pill bugs and sow bugs for several years, as did many folks across the country, and then the manufacturer added Spinosad and named the new product Slug-Go Plus and labeled it for snails, slugs, pill bugs and sow bugs. I don't know if it is related, but in the areas where I use Slug-Go or Slug-Go Plus (or other similar products by other manufacturers) I rarely have cutworm problems.

And, I should add, that once you have marigolds and nasturtiums, they often reseed, although in my clay soil, the marigolds reseed a lot more than the nasturtiums, which only reseed occasionally.

My experience with Spinosad has been just that awesome. Couldn't find the Slug-Go (and didn't want to order online), but I found liquid Spinosad at Atwoods. It really decimates the pill bug population and keep the grubs at bay sufficient for my seedlings to get established. It has a multitude of other applications, like web worms, that makes it worth every penny.