Do you mean starting zinnias indoors or sowing the seed directly in the ground...or transplanting zinnia plants into the ground?

I was actually going to ask if it was warm enough in SE Oklahoma to direct sow okra now. I am itching to plant some of that heavy hitter okra!

I'm planting okra this year, first time in 30 years, but if I recall correctly my Dad planted okra seed in May. I would love to be able to ask him, but he's been gone from us since 1996. Since it produces best in the heat of summer, I'm sort've wondering why the rush to get it started ???

I wait till May to plant okra. It doesn't like cold feet and doesn't germinate good in cool soil. if you do get it to come up it will just set there till it warms up and possibly develop disease or fungal problems.

I'm in se ok also.

kfrinkle, If you plant by the calendar, the OSU-recommended planting date range for okra is April 10-30, with the April 10 date being for far southeastern OK, the April 30th date for far northwestern OK and all the areas in between falling somewhere in that range between the 10th and 30th.

If you plant by soil temperature, I wouldn't put okra seed in soil that is colder than 65 degrees and it will germinate much quicker if you wait until the soil temperature at planting depth is 70. My soil temperatures have been all over the place, but were really warm last week and a bit cooler (though still pretty warm) this week. Our weather generally has been running about 10 degrees above average lately so it seems warm enough for okra, but there's no guarantee we'll continue running 10 degrees above average.

For what it is worth, I always toss a few late-season okra pods on the ground and leave them there. When their seed germinates on its own with no help from me, I know that our soil temperatures are warm enough for me to plant okra. My okra volunteers began germinating last week (along with zinnias and squash volunteers). I don't always sow my own okra seed as soon as I see the volunteers popping up in the ground, but at least I know that I can. Sometimes I don't sow okra seeds at all (unless I'm wanting to grow a different variety from what I grew last year)....I just dig up the volunteers and transplant them to where I want them. I've got warm season herbs, flowers and veggies popping up all over the place, so at my house, I'd feel comfortable sowing seed of just about anything now. It is early, by the calendar, for some things, but the plants don't grow by the calendar---they germinate when the soil temperatures are in the right range for them and they grow the same way.

Yesterday I noticed the June bugs (the medium-sized brown ones) are out, making a nuisance of themselves by the porch light each evening, the tent caterpillars are hatching in the fruit trees, the hummers are building their nests and mosquitoes are waiting outside the door for me early every morning. It feels later in the year than it actually is. My garden is about a month ahead of itself compared to most years, and I don't mind that at all. We have been hot, hot, hot ( 88 degrees one day last week, and 89 another, and some nights in the upper 60s and lower 70s) and those warm temperatures speed up the seed germination and plant growth. It's your okra, so if you want to plant it, go ahead. The worst thing that happens is that it germinates slowly, so then you sow replacement seed and by then the soil is warmer and ALL the seed from both plantings sprouts all at once. Been there, done that.

lcdollar, I suspect the rush to get it started mostly is just spring eagerness, but also the longing for a nice mess of fresh okra fried in bacon grease after being dipped in cornmeal perhaps. And, for some of us in southern OK like kfrinkle and myself, between the regular droughts and the huge hordes of migrating grasshoppers that fly into our home gardens from surrounding rangeland, earlier plantings get to produce a lot before you are fighting drought and lots of grasshoppers. We can warm up awfully early down here so we usually are planting a couple of weeks earlier than folks further north.

Dawn

Dawn, I'm going to direct seed the zinnias.

Ya'll I have a lower slope that is reading at almost 70. It's very warm there and should be ready within the next couple weeks. I've been craving some heavy hitter okra !

Thanks jmichigan. That's the impression I'm getting, but I've no hard experience.

Bon, Yesterday I transplanted about 6 dozen zinnia transplants into the ground in bloom, and had to work in one area around a gazillion 1/2 to 1" tall zinnia volunteers that had recently sprouted. Must have been in last 5 or 6 days because I didn't notice them there last week. I say "go for it". I only have one flat of home-grown flowers and herbs left to transplant into the ground and I'm doing it today if the storms don't kick up too early. From this point forward, everything is direct-seeded. This will be the earliest in the year I've totally emptied my greenhouse, other than the plants I'm holding on to for the Spring Fling.

It isn't even that we are going to go from cold to hot fast, we already have done that down here, and it happened the minute the snow melted! I've never had as many days in the 80s and 90s in Jan-April as we have had already this year. Except, possibly in 2011, but it wasn't raining at all that year and it is raining regularly (at least at our place) this year, so I don't mean to imply we will have that sort of drought. Just that we have that sort of early heat.

During the day, some of my soil temperatures have been hitting the upper 70s every day and a couple of times the mid-80s but that's just during the hottest part of the day. Our averages have run in the upper 60s and lower 70s, though the last few days cooled them down a lot.

Any volunteer, reseeding plants that routinely pop up here have already done so, most of them 4-8 weeks earlier than normal. The four o'clocks were up in early to mid-March. Usually I am lucky if they pop up by the third week in April, etc. The cannas were popping out of the ground and containers in February and I had to cover them with row cover when it snowed in March. We'll be harvesting our first tomatoes (only bite-sized ones, not big ones) by Saturday. I am caging some tomato plants today because they're growing so rapidly they'll be too big to cage if I wait any longer. I had left the cages off when I planted to I could keep them under low tunnels covered with deer and bird netting for hail protection, but I need to pull the low tunnels this morning and put up the cages.

I planted corn and beans a couple of weeks ago and most of the plants are not only up and growing, but getting tall quickly.

I am fairly sure my broccoli will bolt because of the heat. That's just how it goes in years like this when we go from cold to hot too fast.

There's wicked weather in the forecast for much of OK, so I'd better get outside and get busy before the wind gets too crazy and the hail starts falling.

Dawn

Like 2011 ?? Yikes. I'm glad it has rained. I need to get that next layer of hay down as soon as possible. I'll pull it off the zinnias after they sprout. I'm transplanting today, too, because of the cloud cover. They'll probably burn up tomorrow. lol

My last freezing night in 2011 and this year occurred at about the same time---nice and early. In 2011, we had a totally different rainfall pattern though, and a lot more wind, so plants went into the summer already in horrible shape. This year we have had a lot more rain (at my house, and I am not sure that holds true for anyone else except SE OK and parts of E OK) and a lot less wind. I do not at all feel like we are going to have a summer of 2015 that resembles the summer of 2011. I do, however, acknowledge that we heated up early in exactly the same way, and that is somewhat rare---maybe 2 or 3 years a decade we will have our last freeze as early as it was in 2011 and (so far) in 2015. Just because we warm up early does not mean a hotter, drier summer.....but sometimes it does. I don't think it does this year.

yes thank you just need little rain now.