It depends on when the potatoes come out of the ground.

If the potatoes are harvested in May, there's lots that could follow them, depending on what you already have growing: pepper plants if you have any left and the potatoes were not diseased (same family, same diseases), cantaloupes/muskmelons, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, southern peas, summer squash, okra, melons, watermelons, winter squash, and pumpkins.

If they are harvested in the first half of June, you still can plant cukes, okra, peppers (basically for a fall harvest), pumpkins or winter squash, summer squash, southern peas.

If the potatoes are harvested after mid-June, then it probably is best to follow with a succession planting that will give you a fall harvest. If the potatoes were not diseased, you could plant fall tomato plants there in that area any time from mid-June onward. You also could plant peppers or eggplant for a fall harvest. After that, we are sort of in a 'dead spell' through mid-July, but I often plant those things in mid-June that OSU recommends for a fall planting on/after July 15th. These would include: Cowpeas, Snap Beans (Pole), Cilantro, Sweet Corn, Eggplants (if you didn't plant them in May or June or if you want more), Peppers, Summer Squash, Winter Squash and Pumpkins or even Tomatillos. If you already have all those growing or don't want to plant any of the above, you can sow a quick succession crop like buckwheat and let it grow for a month or six weeks, then cut it, rototill it into the soil and start planting cool-season crops for a fall harvest. The time to plant those would depend on where you live in OK, since they are planted earlier if you're further north and later if you're further south. The recommended planting dates for the cool-season crops can be found on the last page of the OSU Fall Garden Planning Guide.

Fall Garden Planning Guide from OSU

Last year, my potatoes were done pretty early. In one potato bed, I planted southern peas on a trellis along the northern edge of the bed, which runs east-west, and a row of leftover pepper plants along the southern edge of the bed. In the second bed, I planted cantaloupes/muskmelons on trellises (so I could squeeze more into the space available). I already had some growing, but wanted more. In the third potato bed I planted another round of summer squash plants. All produced well into fall---in fact, pretty much until the first freeze.

Hope this helps,

Dawn

Thank you both! I'm in Lubbock, TX.... and this is my first year gardening here so I'll play it by ear and see when the potatoes finish up. I think it will be on the early side so I'll tentatively plan on peppers and zucchini. I already have cucumbers and tomatoes in the ground . Here's to an early Spummer! (Spring+Summer lol)

You're welcome. I think that here at our place Spummer begins today, after an early morning low that is (so far) 38 degrees. We're supposed to warm up rapidly, and I am so ready. I'm a little worried that Spummer will arrive today and Summer will arrive next week. It feels like one of those years when Spring itself may be very short. I'm watching the weaher like a hawk because, if we warm up too early, the cool-season plants just will not be happy at all. I've already cut way back on how many cool-season plants and seeds I have planted because I don't want to give too much space to cool-season plants that might nor produce well if we get too hot too early.

Our lows show to be in the mid 40's for at least the next 10 days, so no more 30's here! I completely skipped cool season and started with warm season stuff. We have already hit 90 at least once but our soil temps are still a little low.... I decided to plant anyway. After removing those crape myrtles, I couldn't wait to fill the garden up!!

I cannot say I blame you. I am getting close to putting warm-season plants in the ground. The forecast looks good, the ground is nice and warm here and will warm up more over the next couple of days now that this cold spell is ending. Today would be nice if the wind was not blowing so much, although it took forever for the temperatures to warm up today. It still felt cold at noon, but it finally feels decent now and I am about to head outside to the garden for a few hours of mostly planting flowers and flower seeds.

Here in central Missouri my earliest potatoes, Yukon Gold, are ready for harvest in early June most years while the latest potatoes are in late June to around 4th of July. I always plant fall carrots in one of my potato beds. This year I plan to follow the bed with fingerling potatoes with the carrots in late July. Another bed will get some yellow straightneck summer squash and zucchini, one bed will be fall bush beans, and the bed with Yukon Gold will get some acorn squash since that bed will be available first.

I am waiting to receive my German Butterball and Austrian Crescent seed potatoes from Debruyn seed in Michigan. They say that they start shipping in mid March weather permitting. I looked at the weather forecast for Zeeland. MI where they are located and daily highs for the next 10 days are in the upper 30s to mid 40s so I am hopeful that they can start shipping.

Lone Jack, I hope they do ship the potatoes soon since the temperatures seem decent.

Our forecast is insanely good, so I put 23 tomato plants in the ground today. Our low temperature for tonight is supposed to be 62 degrees, and in the 50s and/or 60s for the next week, with highs in the 70s and 80s. What's not to like about that? We'll see which gets big first---potato plants or tomato plants. The race is on.

I love March. No matter what I do in the garden in January and February, it is March when everything really starts taking off and growing like mad.

Dawn

Same here Dawn! I have 10 tomato plants, 6 cucumbers, and 13 potato plants in the ground. I would expect the tomatoes to get big first, but I swear the potatoes are growing at least an inch a day! Every evening I cover them back up with soil to just find them the next evening sticking their leaves right back out again. It's as if they are saying "You can't keep us in the dark any longer!" I LOVE spring time!

Dawn - You are way ahead of me up here!! We were at 57d this morning here and there are no lows in the 15 day forecast below 40 with highs in the upper 50s to 70s with 78 forecast on Sunday.

I have one of my 'early' tomatoes that just sprouted yesterday that were sown last Sunday. I am going to sow the majority of my tomatoes tomorrow. My peppers have almost all germinated now. I'll be planting out my onions started from seed this weekend to go along with the DD onions I planted 2 weeks ago. I started hardening off my brassicas, lettuce, and leeks last night and will plant them out next weekend.

My 4 week old snow peas survived the 19 degrees on Wednesday morning with a double layer of AG19 so I am hopeful that I might get some harvest in May before the heat sets in.

crholme, With this early, early heat and warm soil temperatures, visions of corn and beans, cukes and squash now are dancing in my head. If it is warm enough for volunteer watermelon seedlings to sprout here (and it is!), then why am I not out there wildly planting warm-season things?

Lone Jack, Well, I am a lot, lot further south, so that's the easy explanation. And we are warmer than average....our low temperature early this morning just before sunrise was 64 degrees. It feels more like early May right now than mid-March, It is just strange!

I hope peas do get a chance this year. The early heat worries me in that regard. At least you got yours started really early so they have a good chance to beat the heat.

I swear, if I find a bean or a southern pea sprouting in my garden this weekend, there will be no stopping me from planting everything. I've never had potatoes emerge from beneath 8-9" of soil so quickly. Now, if only it would rain at some point to fuel their growth. Other than watering in transplants when I plant them, or lightly watering seeds after I sow them, I haven't been watering anything that's in the ground, but with this heat, I won't be allowed to get away with that much longer.

Dawn

My potatoes from Debruyn seed were delivered on Saturday. They had 2 days shipping. Both the German Butterball and Austrian Crescents looked perfect...I think the GB have the smoothest skin I have ever seen on a potato and the AC are curved like miniature crescent rolls. Now I just need for them to sprout some eyes before this weekend but sprouts or not they are going to be planted. I already dug the trenches in the raised beds so I won't have to do that in wet soil with rain expected Friday.

No sign of anything above ground on the fingerlings and Yukon Gold that I planted on March 4 but I wouldn't expect them to sprout until late March at the earliest.

It was 70F here this morning. We finally have several days in the extended forecast with rain expected. Hope they are correct on at least a few of them but I'll pass on anything severe. The storms we had on March 6 that brought 5 tornadoes to the KC area one of which went just 8 miles north of me and did a lot of damage was enough.

I hope you do get some rain soon Dawn. Looks like a hot one today and tomorrow in Ardmore but then cooling down into the 70s with rain on Friday and several more chances for rain towards the end of March.

Jack, We're supposed to get rain at the end of the week, but with very hot (around 90 today and was 87 yesterday) temperatures combined with March winds, the garden plants are thirsty now. I watered them lightly both yesterday and Saturday and may water them more heavily tomorrow. We'll see. The hot wind is just beating up the small plants something fierce. That rain keeps missing us. We have a Mesonet feature that tells you your moisture levels (admittedly at the Mesonet station and, unfortunately, not right here in my yard) at certain depths. With one of them, when the plant available water is below 0.50 at 4" deep, you're supposed to be watering your plants to prevent water stress. Right now, in our county, that number is 0.22. Just a couple of days ago it was 0.28 so the soil is drying out rapidly. We may set up our drip irrigation lines before the end of March. I don't like to set them up too early because a late freeze can crack them if there's water in them, but a late freeze is seeming less and less likely every day.

Y'all certainly have already had more than your share of severe thunderstorms with tornadoes this year, and it seems to odd to have them this early. I know it happens---a community in the adjacent county (Lone Grove, which is west of Ardmore in Carter County) got hit a few years ago in February by an EF-4 that I believe killed either 8 or 9 people, including a trucker driving a semi on I-35. It was terrible, and was a good reminder to all of us that tornadoes can happen year-round.

I hope the rain expected on Friday brings all of us good moisture and no severe stuff, but am enough of a realist to know that it may bring severe weather to somebody in the risk area. I need to open up the tornado shelter, air it out and sweep it in preparation. We haven't opened it up for any reason at all, I guess, since last spring or maybe earliest summer.

Good luck getting your potatoes in! They sound perfect and hopefully the weather will cooperate with you a little bit. Walking outside to 70 degrees in March is sort of heavenly as long as it isn't a precursor to what summer might bring. Our temperatures at our house today are expected to be about 20-25 degrees above normal. That's just wrong somehow. I'd certainly hate to have summer temperatures that were even 10-15 degrees above normal.

More of my potatoes emerged from the soil yesterday and held their foliage up to be admired by both the sunshine and I. I said hello to them and them dumped 3" of mulch on top of them. This is more to keep the soil cool in this 90-degree heat than anything else. Thankfully, tomorrow will be cooler than today, and Wednesday will be cooler than Tuesday, but even then, we'll still be hotter than our average March temperatures. At night, our lows right now have been about what our usual daytime highs would be. I wonder if these odd temperatures confuse the plants, the animals and the insects like they sometimes leave us feeling discombobulated? (That's my big word for the day.)

I believe today will be another day with lots of sweet tea and popsicles in the garden. That's my main survival technique in the heat, other than coming indoors occasionally to cool off.

Dawn