Just wanted to say welcome, and pull up a chair. There's plenty of room here. I don't have an answer for you, but I'm sure Dawn will when she's able to check back in.

Hi Okra, Welcome to the OK Gardening Forum.

I don't think early squash are a problem. The squash plants I put in the ground in mid-March have been producing ripe squash for about a week now. This is about what I would expect based on those varieties' DTMs. We've been picking and eating the squash at full-size and they've been tasty.

Our weather has been all over the place, but in March it was really warm really early so I took a chance and planted squash really early. Our soil temperatures have stayed pretty warm since then despite an occasional cool night. The early squash (and cucumber plants) have been growing like gangbusters ever since, even though the weather turned back colder for a few weeks. We're certainly hot again now---a high of 86 yesterday, and 87 today, so of course the squash plants are going to be producing. So is the zucchini (2 different varieties) and the 2 early cucumber plants that were planted at the same time. To me, it always is exciting to get a chance to grow squash and harvest them with no problems.....because, eventually, the squash bugs and squash vine borers are going to show up 8 years out of 10. I just try to enjoy the pest-free time we have with early production before pests show up and before Mother Nature throws tornadoes or microbursts or whateve at us.

So. I'm not sure why you're twisting them off and not letting them mature. The more squash you get before (a) pests, (b) disease and (c) bad weather arrive, the better.

If the plants are too small to carry mature fruit that would be a different issue, but normally a squash plant will abort fruit if it sets more than it can carry to maturity.

I cannot say what is happening in your garden, but I can tell you what is happening in mine: it has been warm, the nights have mostly been warmer than average, we've had a lot of sunshine (and not much rain in south-central OK). The garden is way ahead of itself, so to speak. Why wouldn't it be? We barely had any winter, and ever the occasional late cold night hasn't been all that cold. I planted everything I could squeeze into the space available as early as possible. We have harvested/are harvesting salad greens, radishes, red cabbage, a few early (immature) onions, several tomatoes from a Better Boy plant put into a pot in mid-January and from a SunGold plant put into the ground in mid-March (it had green tomatoes forming already indoors before I moved it outdoors). Our broccoli is almost full-sized and I expect to be harvesting before the end of the week. The herbs are huge, except for basil, which is a little behind the others. Some of our intermediate daylength onions are maturing and their necks are softening and they are falling over already. This is maybe a week earlier than usual, so a little early but not a whole lot. So, the onions are doing what I'd expect based on their DTMs. We have tons of tomatoes of all sizes. All my pepper plants are either in bloom or have peppers on them, some of which are almost full-sized. Our asparagus produced spears almost two months earlier than usual (mid-January versus the usual mid-March). Our potato plants are about 3' tall and most already have bloomed. I expect the potatoes will mature earlier than usual too. It is just one of those years. We had volunteer southern pea plants popping up in the bed where I grew southern peas last year about two months earlier than usual this year. Is is bizarre? Well, it seems odd, but based on the early warm temperatures, it isn't so shocking.

Early warm to hot weather in January-March has affected the flowers as well. Zinnias that reseeded from last year's plants germinated extra early thanks to the warmth and already in bloom, which is perhaps a little odd for warm-season flowers, but not terribly. What is odd is that some of the cool-season flowers like Oriental poppies and larkspur didn't germinate on time (maybe the soil was too warm for them), so germinated fairly late after the weather had cooled down again, and are only just now beginning to bloom. The first larkspur bloomed last week and the first poppy in the garden bloomed yesterday. The poppies down in the bar ditch began blooming a couple of weeks ago. The Texas Bluebonnets bloomed maybe 3 or 4 weeks early.

So, based on what I am seeing here....I think the early heat and fairly consistent warmth just sped up everything, but especially warm-season type plants. Our fruit trees all bloomed extra-early but lost their blooms to later frosty weather. That's not even that unusual here. The wildflowers have been early. Butterflies and bees were out extra early. The hummingbirds were back here at the beginning of April if not sooner. The purple martins were back, about the same time as always, with scout birds here in mid-February, maybe 4 days earlier than what is typical, and the rest of the birds a few weeks later. We had mosquitoes all winter, crane flies were 2 months early, so were some of the June beetles, which showed up in March or April. Snakes (especially copperheads and rattlesnakes) were out sporadically in January and February, and to stay beginning in March. I've had too many snake scares already. This is what I call an early year, when everything in nature is earlier than usual. The native dewberries have been ripening here for a couple of weeks now. What's not to like about that? On the other hand, the grasshoppers were late to show up, and I'm not complaining about that.

Relax and enjoy it. It makes up for the years when Mother Nature keeps sending us one cold night per week all the way through the first week in May. When Mother Nature gives you lemons, make lemonade. When she gives you early squash, for goodness sakes--let it grow and mature and eat it! Mother Nature is not always so free with her gifts, so we might as well enjoy it.

If you think things are early here, think about the folks in the DFW metroplex, who saw their last freeze on January 8th this year, about 2 months earlier than usual. As early as my garden is here in southern OK, I cannot even imagine how early some DFW gardeners' may be seeing things happen in their gardens, if they planted early to take advantage of the early last freeze.

Dawn

Welcome, Okra!