Are you starting from seed? I'm trying to figure seed starting times myself. I just made my herb and ornamental list and I have seeds for 130 varieties of herbs and flowers I would like to grow. [Insert maniacal laghter] What have I gotten myself into? Many will be in pots, but I still think I've lost my mind.

Flowers definately have seasons. You may have noticed landscaped beds around businesses that change the flowers as the seasons change. That's because the pansies there in winter/early spring won't look good in June and July. Of course, those people yank out spent plants and replace them with new bedding plants.

I like to winter sow perennials, but it's not going to happen this year. They often have tougher seeds that benefit from warm and cold cycles to germinate.

Catalog descriptions usually tell you the expected bloom time, which should give an indication of their weather preference. Annuals that bloom in heat probably can't tolerate cold. Plants that bloom in spring? They would need to be in the ground to get started and bloom before heat. Some may need to be started in fall. My experience is limited and I am looking at some things wondering when I should start them.

Have you chosen what you want to plant? Sometimes it is easier to get answers for specific plants.

Looking back at last year, I started most of my herbs and annuals in mid to late March to go in the ground in mid to late April. I had notes to winter sow some things this year, but I broke my wrist and that is too fiddly to do one handed.

Pansies, violas, chamomile I know bloom early. I'm wondering about poppies.

Cosmos, zinnias, petunias, gaillardia, marigolds, nasturtiums, Celosia plumosa should work started in March OR direct seeded in April, if you like. I will direct seed Jewels of Opar (edible leaves) and maybe Amaranth. Probably Alyssum. I need some moss roses...

I hope I didn't go too far off on a tangent from your question.

LOL...No, not too far off on a tangent. I try to look at the seed packet, but most of them are like "after last frost" but man, here in Oklahoma, our stuff is always a bit different as far as gardening and grow times. I could never use phone apps for the same reason. Those dates are always off. I am growing from seed petunias, cosmos, asters, sunflowers, nastirums (sp?), and marigolds. I may purchase transplants of pansies and a couple others. Definitely want to do chamomile for the herb. And my herbs I usually get transplants at the farmers market.

I guess we were typing at the same time.

Most that say after frost say that because frost will kill the flowers. If you want earlier flowers, you have to start them indoors and transplant them outdoors after the chance of frost is greatly diminished. If you don't sow seeds until after your last frost date, you won't have flowers until late May or early June at the earliest.

Our weather is so crazy that I plant what I want when I want, but always with an eye on cold temperatures and frost blankets ready in case we dip below freezing. If I think there is a chance we will get near freezing, I cover them up. I'd rather spend the time covering them up than have to start over again after they freeze to death.

Some cool-season herbs and flowers have some cold-tolerance and some frost-tolerance. Chamomile sprouts all over my garden in February and March, and the specific timing depends on the temperatures. They really freeze after they spout.

With the exception of the heat-loving 'Laura Bush' petunias, most petunias will struggle in our summer heat. If I wanted to have regular petunias to put into the ground in late March or early April, I start them from seed 12 weeks before my targeted transplanting date. Mostly I just grow Laura Bush petunias because their foliage doesn't yellow and look like crap and they don't have to be watered three times a week in summer. You're further north than I am, so maybe normal petunias will do better for you, but in my garden, they are strictly spring bloomers that hate the heat and get replaced with heat-lovers by June. I love petunias when they are happy and in bloom, but they don't love our summer heat and drought.

Cosmos are warm-season so I don't direct sow them until April. If you want to sow them indoors in flats, they'll sprout well in soil-less mix at 60-70 degrees and can be ready to transplant into the ground by the time they are about 5 weeks old.

Asters, if you are talking about bedding plant and garden type asters, are cool-season plants and my Spring cool season is so short that I don't even grow them. Native asters grow fine here and bloom in summer through autumn, but they are not as showy as garden asters. Seed of native asters is available from many wildflower seed suppliers like Wildseed Farms.

Sunflowers I mentioned in my post above. They are not always the smartest flowers. The seeds will get tricked by warm soil temperatures and will germinate and then the young plants will freeze on cold nights, so be careful about planting them too early.

Nasturtiums can be tricky. They prefer cool weather and sometimes we don't have cool weather long enough for them, but some years when June is wet and mild they will hang on and keep blooming most of the summer. If we get really hot and really dry extra early, they can burn up in the heat, especially in full sun. I usually sow the seed indoors in paper cups to get them off to a faster start sometime in February and transplant them out into the garden around mid- to late-March, depending on when we warm up.

Marigolds are very easy from seed, and the smaller-flowered ones bloom more quickly than the larger-flower ones. If you want to start them indoors, start them 5-7 weeks before your average frost date and transplant them out after your average frost date when it seems the chances of any more frosts or freezing temperatures are low. If you want to direct sow, the seeds will sprout pretty quickly in any soil temperature between roughly 60 and 80 degrees. They can sprout in a week or less when soil temperatures are right.

Pansy transplants are in stores here now. I don't know if they're up as far north as you are yet.

Often, if direct-sowing seeds, I watch my garden for wildflowers and volunteers of similar plants. For example. when the volunteer poppies and larkspurs (my plot is self-sustaining and has been for about 15 years) sprout, I can sow seed of virtually any cool-season herb or flower directly in the garden. When the volunteer moss rose plants sprout, I can sow most warm season seeds. Nature sends us lots of clues if we are just observant and learn from them.

Ever since we moved here there has been a patch of...chives, wild garlic...IDK, but it comes up every year. It is very green and about 6" tall right now. I should make a note and see when it comes up next year.

Thanks for the poppy info. I may do that today.

I'm debating on datura. How much water does It need? How do you keep dogs and chickens away from it? If I plant it on the fence will I have to worry about idiots trying to steal it to get high? Will it attract hornworms to my yard or lure them away from tomatoes?

Has anyone grown Ageratum houstonianum, floss flower? Info says it likes moist soil. I'm trying to group things in beds according to water needs, so I don't overwater some and under water others. I suppose I could put them in a pot. Some source said they repell mosquitoes. Yeah, I know, I'm taking that with a grain of salt.

Datura tolerates drought very well and also tolerates water-logged soil very well. In my garden it reseeds prolifically and it is a great alternate food source for hornworms. I almost never water it, but will water it about once every couple of weeks in July and August if the leaves are wilting badly in drought years. Our chickens, cats and dogs (and almost all wildlife, except for an occasional stupid deer) don't touch it. It is my understanding that eating the leaves can cause them gastric distress, and most animals are smart enough (perhaps it is instinct) to avoid eating plants that cause them gastric distress.

I see hummingbird moths visiting the flowers of the daturas at night, but I rarely see the hornworms on the foliage. I have no idea if my tomatoes are being protected by having daturas, brugmansias and nicotianas growing nearby, but I'll just say that in all the years we've been here, I have lost maybe 2 tomato plants total to hornworms. I bet I don't see hornworm damage to more than 1 or 2 plants per year and most years I see no damage, and I have a lot of tomato and pepper plants. As soon as I see the damage, I remove the hornworm and put it on plants growing outside the garden. If it comes back into the garden again, I kill it. I do grow tons of four o'clocks, mostly along the western edge of the garden, mixed in with the daturas and nicotianas. Four o'clocks are said to protect tomato plants from hornworms. I don't know how or why. I don't even know if it is true. What I do know is that I've always had four o'clocks, and even in years when I've grown 300-600 tomato plants, I saw little to no hornworm damage. You'd expect that with that many plants, we'd have hornworms everywhere, but we did not and do not.

One year some deer ate a lot of datura plants I had growing in an unfenced area beneath the pecan tree and west of the garden. It was a drought year and they must have been desperate. They only ate the plants once so I assume they learned some sort of lesson from it. We never found any dead deer lying around and the deer still came and scavenged the compost pile daily but they avoided the daturas. The seeds might be more worrisome, but they are in a round, spiky seed case that no animals will touch. I cut them off when deadheading the plants, and I cut them while still green. They fall to the ground and I suppose they rot. At the end of the season, I let the last seed cases stay on the plant and they dry naturally, turn a tan color and then they pop open and scatter the seeds and that's where the volunteers come from every Spring.

You might have to worry about some idiots stealing them to try to get high. It just depends on how many idiots you have in your neighborhood and whether or not they recognize the daturas as a potential intoxicant if misused. Mine grow far enough away from the road (by design) that no one can see them from the road. I have had teenagers stop and pick poppies that grow alongside our driveway and bar ditch. It makes me laugh because I'm not growing that kind of poppy! The poppies I grow alongside the roadway and driveway are not the opium poppies that the teenagers probably are assuming they are. I get the last laugh on that one.

I have grown ageratum both in Texas and here. It is pretty easy from seed and is very pretty, but it doesn't particularly like wet clay soil. It also did not thrive either here or in Texas in extreme heat, so when I grow it, I try to put it in a location where it gets afternoon shade.

I would say that if it has any mosquito-repelling properties, I never could tell it did, and that is true of most plants I've ever seen described as a mosquito repellent. Catnip, catmint and lemon balm might have some mosquito repelling qualities. When mosquitoes are buzzing around me in the garden, I grab a handful of catnip, catmint or lemon balm leaves and rub them all over my arms, hands, face and neck and the mosquitoes then leave me alone.

Dawn

This thread has inspired me to inventory and plan my flowers like I do the herbs and veggies.

Stay tuned, I'm going through all my saved bookmarks on companion planting. I figure I'll start a thread on that soon. I have tried some of the companion planting suggestions that didn't work, but it can't HURT to grow things together and it might help.

I think many forms of companion planting are overrated and scientifically unproven, but that doesn't mean I don't companion plant tons of herbs and flowers mixed in with all my veggies and fruits. I just don't worry that much nowadays about planting a particular flower or herb with a particular veggie for the most part. I just strive to plant as wide of a variety of herbs and flowers as possible within the fenced garden, figuring that the more garden diversity there is, the more beneficial insects will be attracted to the garden and will thrive there. The beneficial insects will, in turn, help control many of the pest insects. I have tried all the traditional companion plants and feel a small number of them make a difference but most of them do not, so instead of rigidly trying to plant flower A and herb B with vegetable C, I just plant everything together everywhere.

Among the companion plants that do seem to make a difference are some traditionally grown with tomatoes. I always grow borage and basil with my tomato plants, and they seem to help keep the plants healthier and the basil, at least, appears to repel hornworms. Cilantro and garlic seem to help keep most nearby plants pest-free, especially when you let the cilantro flower. Most years I don't see any hornworms and you'd think I'd have tons of them, especially since a large proportion of my garden is night blooming flowers and flowers that they like, including nightshade family flowers like petunias, daturas, brugmansias, and nicotiana.

I companion plant rat-tail radishes with brassica family crops and with squash family crops. I also companion plant marigolds and nasturtiums with brassicas. Marigolds are often lauded for pest-repelling qualities, but I just don't see it that much in my garden. However, they do attract some beneficial insects and I grow them because I like them. One problem with marigolds is that in hot, dry years they are spider mite magnets, and the last thing any of us needs is a plant that attracts spider mites to our gardens. However, in normal to wet years, the mites don't bother them. If we end up with a miserably hot and dry summer and the marigolds are attracting spider mites, I just yank out the marigolds and sow seeds of short forms of cosmos and zinnias, or sometimes moss rose, in their place, since all three of those grow fast and bloom pretty quickly from seed.

Sunflowers are interesting and I used to grow a lot more of them in my garden than I do now. I love looking at them, but they are pest magnets. For me, their job is to draw pests (especially stink bugs) away from my garden plants, but for that to work I have to plant them outside the garden or at least right at the garden fenceline. When I see the stinkbugs descend upon them, I kill the stinkbugs there, hopefully before they get a chance to move on to other garden plants.

Any kind of flower with larger flowerheads consisting of many tiny to smallish flowers like yarrow, dill, fennel, bronze fennel, Florence fennel, lavender, catnip, catmint, chamomile, tansy, etc., and most all herb flowers attract lots of beneficial insects including tiny beneficial wasps and many kinds of pollinators, so I have them growing in literally every bed in my veggie garden and scattered along the fence lines as well.

Some traditional companion plantings like pairing sage with cabbage to repel cabbage worms did not seem to really make a difference, but growing wormwood in general around the garden does seem to help. Wormwood plants can be difficult to use as companion plants as the common ones grown from seed are huge thugs that take over space quickly and they reseed abundantly---much too abundantly. Using companion plantings can become a problem if those same companion plants compete too much with your veggies and culinary herbs for space and nutrients, so balancing the use of them is an issue when space is limited.

I have attempted to acquire ornamentals that attract beneficials. I'm trying to remember why they were on my "things to try" list, so I'm re-reading my saved info. Last year I read some thing about nasturtiums that led me to buy a bunch, but by the time I planted I couldn't remember WHY. LOL. I'm not real fond of Nasties. They are supposed to be good with cukes. But they also attract aphids in my garden.

Generally in the evening is better for plants to survive the onslaught of replanting.

Planting in the morning gives a newly planted seedling more stress. Planting time of seeds is not no important as the seed needs first to come to live.

Nasturtiums are beneficial in several ways. They might have been on your list because they attract hoverflies and other beneficial insects to the garden. Some people feel they repel squash bugs, but I cannot say I've ever noticed that. Be sure you plant the short bushy nasturtiums and not the vining ones. The vining ones will spread and spread and conquer everything in their path. They'll even climb tomato cages.

I started nasturtiums indoors last year. I really liked them, but when I put them in garden in the spring (I had hardened them off) the wind whipped them so horribly. I'm now remembering that the wind has been my biggest issue in the spring. The ones I grew were Southern Charm Jewel Mixed Colors. They didn't get very tall at all. I kept expecting them to vine, but then read the description. They only get a foot tall.

When you harden them off, you are hardening them off as much to the wind as to the sunlight. I generally harden off nasturtiums that were started indoors over a very long period---several weeks---to give them time to adjust to all that wind. It varies from year to year, but I try to harden them off until they thicken up and toughen up. Nasturtiums can stay kind of tender, but over time and with more wind exposure they do toughen up somewhat. Wind is almost always a problem here in OK. We all just do the best we can to protect our plants from the wind to the extent that we are able to do so.

The wind has been gusting as high as 42 mph today, so none of my plants got to spend any time outside in that wind, though I opened one greenhouse door to keep the greenhouse from overheating. I couldn't open both doors or it just would have been a wind tunnel. The chickens spent most of their day huddled beneath plants to stay low and out of the wind. One good thing about the wind is that post oak leaves that still have been clinging to the branches are coming down today. Of course, so are any acorns left on the trees and some small limbs. This is pretty fierce wind for January, but then our weather has been all over the place already this month,so I'm not surprised the wind has gone nuts too.

Tomorrow I want to check the garden to see if any self-sown volunteers are erupting from the soil yet. The weather has been so up and down that nothing will surprise me either way.

Here's a list of flowers that can take the heat.

It is a good list overall, but a few of those flowers do not take the typical summer heat and dryness here where I live and when I tried them in Texas, they didn't handle it well there either. Of course, some of them may have been improved since I tried them in Texas. And, I'm a hard case----I do not want to water any flower 3 to 5 times a week no matter how much it likes the heat. My flowers have to survive not only the heat but also minimal irrigation---meaning I don't want to water them at all in the summer if I can avoid it, and certainly no more than once or twice a month. I'm not one of those people who's going to be out watering plants every day or every other day in the hot weather, so my list of what does well in heat really is a list of what does well in heat with little to no irrigation and/or rainfall.

Of these, I have grown Blanket Flower, cox comb, cosmos, gazania, lantana, moss rose and zinnia mostly with good results. What is on your bullet proof list?

purple coneflower, mexicanhat, indian paintbrush, bachelor buttons, zinnias, marigolds. Of these, only the marigolds required watering to keep in bloom.

Bachelor buttons produce nectar on their leaves! Trying them this year. Hope my coneflowers come back, Don't have Mexican hat or Indian Paint Brush...like I NEED more seeds.

Well, there's different degrees of bulletproof depending on what the summer weather is like. Some flowers that seem bulletproof with highs of 100-105 suddenly are not bulletproof with highs of 105-115. Much depends on how long the heat and dryness persist.

The most bulletproof, hands-down, is gomphrena, aka globe amaranth. It grows in the gravel (with red clay beneath) alongside our driveway between the gate and the mailbox. It never gets irrigation and has reseeded in this location for at least 10 years. It was the last flowering plant to dry up and die in 2011, lasting longer than the native prickley pear cacti, which I thought merely shriveled and dehydrated but, nope, they died and did not come back. The gomphrena I have at the end of the driveway is the red one named "Strawberry Fields".

Second to that is probably verbena bonariensis. It has very small leaves that eventually will shrivel up if it goes more than maybe 6 weeks in the heat with no moisture, but it rebounds once rain falls. The flowers sit atop tall stems. It is a butterfly magnet and a very airy plant. 'Laura Bush' petunias are probably third on the list.

Other extremely heat-tolerant and drought-tolerant flowers in our garden are moss rose (also reseeds readily, making it self-perpetuating just like the first two I mentioned), gazania daisies, cosmos, datura, zinnias, mealy-cup sage (more heat tolerant than other salvias I grow), the small flowered forms of marigolds, bat-faced cuphea, lantana, Mexican hat, catmint, celosias (including cockscomb, which I've grown since I was a child, and amaranths of all kinds from the very dwarf ones to the tall grain types, though sometimes the foliage scorches if rain isn't falling, blanket flower which for me it is a late spring flower, blooming in May and not for all that long before the heat gets it, angelonia, moss verbena, nicotiana, scabiosa, vinca (will need irrigation at some point most years), balsam (surprisingly heat- and drought-tolerant but eventually burns up in August if not well-watered), four o'clocks, helenium and dusty miller. Dianthus is not thought of as a heat-tolerant plant, but mine bloom from March through autumn with no extra irrigation other that whatever irrigation the vegetables might get (and the veggies don't get much irrigation either).

Most garden-type salvias have a lot of heat tolerance and some drought tolerance, but if they get too dry, the foliage turns black and withers. Cleome is really heat-and drought-tolerant but takes up a lot of space. Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) is one of my favorite summer flowers but I don't consider it bulletproof as its leaves easily blacken and wither if you don't provide it with a fairly steady flow of moisture during the heat of the summer, so it is happier in my garden in a wet summer and not nearly as happy in a dry one. Purple coneflowers tolerate a lot of drought, but if the drought drags on long enough, they'll have to have some irrigation. Sunflowers vary a lot, but most have pretty good heat tolerance. The heat- and drought-tolerance of the native sunflowers, including Maximilian's Sunflower, are much better than that of standard garden varieties of ornamental sunflowers.

Some of the flowers on that list of heat-tolerant flowers that have not proven to be drought-tolerant in our garden are melampodium, coleus (even the sun-type coleus need water), fanflower, torenia, and lisianthus. Native lisianthus grew better in Texas in my brother's native caliche clay than here in OK in our red clay, even when the red clay is well-amended.

Also pretty much bulletproof?Some of the perennials and/or tender perennials and/or half-hardy annuals. Cannas (even if drought kills them back to the ground, they regrow once rain starts falling again, and it takes a lot of drought to kill them back to the ground), hardy hibiscus, trumpetflower vine, French hollyhocks (Malva sylvestris, especially 'Zebrina'). One of the most heat-tolerant and drought-tolerant flowers I grow is crium lily, but if it stays dry enough long enough, the foliage dies back. The plant itself though survives and regrows quickly once rain returns. Plant crium lily where it will stay forever because it will take a backhoe to dig one up and move it after it is well-established. Many herbs that I let flower in the garden, including tansy, silver tansy, dill, fennel, pineapple sage, sage, catnip and lemon balm are remarkably heat- and drought-tolerant. Borage can dry up in the worst of the heat if not watered, but I usually grow it with tomato plants so it gets enough water since it gets watered a couple of times a month with them. Chives are very heat- and drought-tolerant.

For flowering vines, the most heat- and drought-tolerant probably are purple hyacinth bean vine, cypress vine and cardinal climber. Morning glory and moonflower vines are heat-tolerant, but not extremely drought tolerant and do better with regular irrigation. Black-eyed susan vine tolerates heat very well and drought moderately well. Mina lobata tolerates pretty dry clay and lots of heat. I have some old climbing roses (I brought them with me from Texas and have no idea what their names are) that grow on the dog yard fence outside my kitchen window and never get irrigation. I'm surprised how tough they are.

David Austin's English roses, if grown in well-drained, humusy soil are surprisingly drought-tolerant and heat-tolerant, but eventually need some water at some point in the summertime. The one that has tolerated our weather the best for me is "Graham Thomas". I mostly steer clear of roses nowadays because of all the disease issues.

In well-drained sandy, loamy soil some plants may be more drought-tolerant than they are for me, but some may be less drought-tolerant. You just have to experiment to find what grows best in the soil you have and in your typical growing conditions.

I've been hoping to thin down my list it just keeps getting longer.

Amy, I didn't know that about bachelor buttons. Since it was one of the first, we are in love with them. Last year we had volunteers and they were big beautiful bushes with more flowers than we could keep up with.

orange is lil miss' favorite color. I hope to coax a ring of marigolds around the mandella garden this year.

I remember one year my youngest son got a kit from someone. That is when we moved 6x in one year. We'll he planted those marigolds and they traveled all over Texas with us. By time we got to shamrock they were 3 feet tall in a 6 inch pot. Prettiest marigolds we ever had

Wow. Three foot in a 6 inch pot. That must have taken some love and care and sheer determination considering ya'll were moving so much.

Amy, My lists are always long and just get longer the more we talk about the flowers because I'll realize that there's a favorite flower or two that was missing the year before.

Kim, Those marigolds wanted to grow and bloom and apparently liked to travel as well!

Dawn

I think they liked the abuse. I had to tie them to different things to keep it from tipping over.

I worked on my flower inventory and found a lot of single packs of flowers. Well I got a zipper bag and started dumping those seeds in there. I am going to sow about 30 different things in one giant bed. I hope there wasn't anything invasive in there.

If there was anything invasive, you'll soon know. I don't mind invasive flowers. If they reseed themselves and spread, then that's one less thing I'll have to plant in future years. I'd rather weed out excessive flower or herb seedlings than have to weed out plain old weeds like henbit, Queen Anne's Lace, pigweed, lambs quarters or quack grass. Let's face it, wherever there is soil available, some sort of plants are going to pop up---it is more fun when they are desirable plants. In my garden these reseed vigorously everywhere: datura, moss rose, zinnia, Laura Bush petunia, tansy, nicotiana, silver tansy, morning glories, dill, fennel, chamomile, comfrey, basil, lemon balm, catnip, verbena bonariensis, larkspur and poppies. I find it a whole lot easier to weed out the excess flower and herb seedlings, and to dig up and move some of them to new spots that suit me ,than to have to sow seeds of all of them and wait for them to sprout. Sometimes other flowers self-sow and volunteer---hollyhock, marigolds, nasturtiums, violas, etc. but not as often or in such profusion as the ones I listed above.

Dawn, I read in "Carrots Love Tomatoes" that henbit is edible. That must be why that little bunny gorged on it between onions last year. I've read that rabbits are repelled by onions, but that little bunny didn't mind them. She/he just ate around them. With all the henbit in my yard/garden at least I know I won't starve;)

Luvncannin, I have a bunch of those single packs of flowers, too. A lot of them expired a few years ago. I'm tempted to do what you are doing and just mix them up and toss them someplace. What comes up, comes up.

. I get frustrated planting certain things and they don't come up so if I mix 20 or more and I get 5 I'm a happy girl. Alot of them are old or saved bits I got from friends, sister or ? I look forward to seeing the results.

Mary, I've never tried henbit and likely never will. I'll just leave it for the wild things. Our wild rabbits don't eat it. I'm not sure I've ever seen any of it looking nibbled. I let it grow right along the garden fenceline for the sake of the butterflies. I don't eat lamb's quarters either. Just because we can eat something doesn't mean I will eat it. I'm kinda picky. I guess if I was going to starve I could eat it, but I feel like I'd have to be pretty close to starving to eat it.

Kim, After the drought of 2011, our pastures were pretty bare because so many of the wildflowers didn't survive long enough to set seed. So, in 2012 and again in 2013 I mixed together a gazillion seed packets of flowers and overseeded parts of the pasture with them. Then, afraid that wouldn't be enough, I bought 3 different seed mixes from Wildseed Farms and overseeded with those too. We had all kinds of flowers in those areas, and the ones from my random mixed seed packets (some of which were pretty old) looked just as pretty as the ones from a fresh seed mix from Wildseed Farms. I think doing that sort of thing is a great way to use up old seed as at least some of the old seed usually germinates.

Sometimes you don't even get plants from all the seeds the first year, and you'll see even more the second year. I figure any seed we can sow to help have blooming plants around as much as possible is a good thing.

Today we have hundreds of bees out. They are everywhere. I put out extra cracked corn "for the mourning doves", but really, the extra was for the bees. They need all the help they can get at this time of the year. Those bees are all over that cacked corn and have been all day long.

Dawn

Henbit came up in large swaths of my yard the first couple of years of living here and my daughter loved to pick the flowers to eat. The last couple of years we have had barely any henbit, which I assume resulted from variations in the weather. My daughter still remembers it and asks me about henbit in an accusatory tone like I did something but we have never put any herbicides/fertilizer/anything on the lawn.

I adore nasturtiums and insist on growing them. As some of you warned (Dawn, I remember you saying this), they shrivel up to nothing as soon as it gets hot. But because I can't give them up, THIS year I started them a week ago indoors. And last summer, I sewed them in the beds in August and by October, they were spreading and getting huge. So I figure I'll have them in the spring and early summer and then in September and October and November. I can live with that. :) Love throwing the flowers in my tossed salads for cuteness.

And love all the flowers I got for summer pots up north that grow here in the ground and reseed and flourish. Gaillardia, Mexican sunflowers, verbena, lantana. . . my flower list is long this year. Gaillardia, nasturtiums, more zinnias, hyacinth beans and black-eyed Susan vines (thank you, Dawn--haha); more verbena, more lantana, bachelor buttons, cosmos (love cosmos), Mexican sunflowers, red giant mustard, a few different sedums, flowering kale, echinacea purpurea, Joe Pye weed (one of my favorites), gypsophila (pink) and paniculata, couple rose bushes of some sort, rose campion (don't know how well it does down here, but I love it and will find out),

I have marigolds sprouting from where I planted them year 1 (this will be year 3), 4 o'clocks, cleome, bee balm (monarda), penstemon (3 different ones), peonies, endless summer hydrangeas, dayllies and lilies, morning glories and moon flowers, climbing hydrangea (maybe be too hot for it-- it's growing, but don't know if it will make it--I'm hoping; gaura, my new crape myrtles last year, heuchera, cannas, achillea, asclepias.

I have a gorgeous area behind my vegetable pen that is some awesome big rocks jutting up everywhere--and am excited to get a rock garden out there. Anyone doing any rock gardening? I've dug into it a bit, but it'll probably happen somewhat slowly. Would love any ideas of plants. I think many will do well there if the deer stay away (Thank you to our dog Titan!). We've noticed they haven't been showing up much the past 8 or so months.

One big deciding factor for me is how much the deer love my flowers--and while I adore lilies, daylilies and hostas, I soon discovered that so do the deer. I haven't totally given up on them but know if I want them, I have to keep them right close to the house, with one of my fishline fences heavily threaded to surround and protect them. One of my husband's most fun things is when I run out into the yard at midnight in my nightgown and slippers, waving my arms like a madwoman and barking at the deer. He thinks that's very funny. Can't imagine why.

I am having an absolute ball reading all of your comments, everyone! Just what this Minnesota/Wyoming girl needed to get going! And I love love love it down here. Feeling totally blessed despite the 100-110 temps in July and August, despite the rattlesnakes, chiggers, ticks, fleas, crickets, possums, armadillos, rabbits, voles, moles, deer. I'm in heaven!

Mars in tulsa, That is too funny. I'm not sure how easy it would be to get rid of it if someone wanted to. It seems to pop up here, there and everywhere most years.

Our henbit in our yard is highly variable and I think it must relate to the weather. I see entire yards covered in the stuff some years, but we don't have that much at our place. When we do have it, for the most part it pops up on the edges of the garden, both inside and outside the garden fence, and in one part of the yard underneath the pecan tree (which seems to be everything's favorite place to grow).

Some years the henbit germinates here in November or December and other years not until January or February. We have a handful of plants underneath the pecan tree, but so far there are not any in any other location. The extreme cold we had in early January likely took care of any that had germinated really early.

I believe that anyone who wanted to prevent henbit from germinating would have to use a pre-emergent herbicide in the fall before the seeds germinate, but since the Swallowtail butterflies that are plentiful here love the henbit, I'd never do anything to harm it. Based on how everyone's yards here look during henbit season, I'd say there's precious little use of pre-emergent herbicides here. I love seeing the purple haze of henbit flowers in bloom in early spring because all the beneficial insects, including the bees, need that early nourishment.

Nancy, I love nasturtiums and grow them too, but they really do burn up in the heat most years. I still plant them anyway. We have to have some beauty in the Spring, and there will be plenty of summer flowers to replace them as they fade away.

Rose campion does really well here most year. Sometimes I grow it, but finding space for anything that doesn't already exist and reseed readily is a challenge.

Our deer didn't bother the daylilies I grew outside the garden fence, but the heat of 2011 got them. There were not in good soil at all. Now I only grow daylilies inside the fenced garden. To have any sort of lilies protected from the voles, I have to have them in hardware-lined beds or containers. I love hostas and planted some our first year here. They survived the first year (the deer might have been too skittish about having new human neighbors to come that close the first year), but the deer got them the second year. At our house we jokingly refer to hostas as Deer Chow.

I'm glad you're so happy here. Yes, we have many challenges when gardening in Oklahoma, but we also are blessed with a really long growing season that allows us to spend about 3/4s of the year gardening. Or, more than that for anyone who keeps stuff going, indoors or out, in the wintertime. The people in Oklahoma are the kindest, friendliest people I've ever known. People here really will give you the shirt right off their back if you need it.

Dawn