Good job, Kim! My spinach has mostly bolted. I'm trying to make myself go out and harvest green beans before the rain. I have fruit on tomato plants, but only a couple of sun golds so far. Lettuce, if the heat doesn't make it bolt. Lots of herbs. There are still some turnips I could/should pull. Onions. Garlic is close, kale, chard, Korean squash.

Considering that we have a problem with herbicide carryover, we are getting a few things. Kale, tendergreens, onions, zucchini, dill, lettuce, sage, thyme, parsley, cucumbers, baby beets, carrots, and bok choy earlier. Many of these are planted outside of the regular garden beds that received the contaminated hay. Have a peach tree that is loaded... shuuush! Don't tell the squirrels. My son has his pellet gun loaded and ready. ;-) Millie

Most of the early spring stuff has been eaten (spinach, radishes, lettuce etc.) We are getting a bit of sorrel and have picked two tomatoes (better bush and black cherry, but lots of blooms and green fruit. I have a nice looking Hungarian wax pepper that I full grown; just waiting for it to turn color. Quiet before the storm, I should have peppers and tomatoes out the ears in about 2 weeks :-)

I just finished up harvesting my broccoli main heads this weekend and got about 20 vacuum seal bags in the freezer. 2 large romaine lettuce heads were harvested and one of them was just over 4 lbs!! Garlic scapes are just about all cut and garlic and potatoes should be ready to dig in a couple weeks. My snow peas caught powdery mildew so I pulled them out on Sunday and planted some pole beans in their place.

Dawn are you planting tomatoes and using row covers to get them that early? That's my goal next year - to harvest tomatoes before the heat hits! I planted seeds Feb 1 in the greenhouse and have green tomatoes on several right now but would love to have been harvesting since March!

Jack, It ounds like your cool-season is starting to wind down. To me, PM is the sign that the warm season is beginning to encroach on the cool season although, for me, it usually happens in late April or early May since I'm so much further south. Sometimes in a really cool Spring, though, the peas can stay happy until the beginning of June.

Katie, I use the row covers if needed. This year, I think I covered up the tomato plants three times after planting them around St. Patrick's Day, and we never dropped down to freezing or had enough of a frost to be a problem. It is just that I covered them up out of an abundance of caution because the weather could have gotten cold enough to harm them.

The plant from which we were harvesting in March was purchased in January at a Wal-Mart. It was one of those large plants in about a 2 or 3 gallon pot with the built in trellis attached, and it was blooming when I bought it in mid-January. It had small fruit on it within 7-10 days of the day we bought it and brought it home. I mostly kept it in the house because I was too busy to carry it outdoors every morning and indoors every evening like I usually do. It sat in a sunny south-facing window in the spare bedrooms upstairs that also has two east-facing windows so gets tons of light in the winter (compared to other parts of the house) and that's also where I have my plant light shelves and start seedlings indoors.

When we put our own home-grown tomato plants in the ground in mid-March, most of them were flowering, some had small fruit, and the SunGolds had produced ripe fruit indoors while still on the light shelf. So, the SunGolds also were producing in the ground in March and in April along with that one Better Boy plant. In May we have harvested from about a dozen different varieties that we put in the ground in March, including Better Boy (the purchased Walmart plant, now in the ground), SunGold, Cherokee Carbon, Santiago, Vorlon, Black From Tula, Lemon Boy, Arkansas Traveler, Sophie's Choice, and some other pink that I can't think of at the moment.

If we are not harvesting tomatoes from at least April through November (and sometimes December), then something in our gardening year has gone horribly wrong and I'm not a happy camper. We weren't always able to harvest so early, but once I mastered planting early in order to get early fruit set, I've never looked back. For years, I tried to exend the harvest on the back end of the season by moving tomato plants in pots in to the garage or the unheated greenhouse. (I could heat it, but I don't really want to because I don't think we'd get enough harvest to justify the expense.) The problem is that the sunlight in autumn/early winter is decreasing in length and in strength and winter tomatoes, even those that set in late summer or early autumn, mature at an excrutiatingly slow rate. Not only that, but without heat and intense sunlight to stimulate the production of their flavor compounds, they really are only a tiny bit better than grocery store tomatoes. So, I don't think extending the season in winter is worth the effort. Because our winters are increasingly becoming oddly warm much earlier than in the past, that's where I focus on lengthening the tomato season by getting an early start.

Honestly, we are tomato hogs in March, April and May and eagerly devour every fresh tomato we get. By June, we are already getting tired of them a little bit (our own fault, for being such pigs early in the season) and I start canning, dehydrating and freezing more of them so we don't "have to" pig out on fresh tomatoes daily. We've lived and gardened here long enough now that we know our best chance of a huge harvest always, always, always involves beating the heat in summer, so that's why we plant early. Every year, it seems like I have to cover them up less and less on the occasional late cold night than I did the year before. Our climate is changing slightly, with more warmth earlier (though that doesn't mean the cold completely stops), so early planting seems like it gets more and more important every year. When I see someone on Facebook saying last week or this week that their tomato plants finally are blooming, I am stunned and think to myself "just now starting to bloom?" I don't mean that as a criticism, but just that it reminds me how far ahead of the season we've gotten over the years. I like being ahead of the season. We've already had the sorts of temperatures here that shut down fruit set (we hit 100 degrees last week for example), though thankfully they have been followed by cooler temperatures. That sort of day or days reminds me that the opportunity to get tomato fruitset down here in southern OK is diminishing rapidly. People further north in OK probably aren't having to worry about that yet, but down here....it's happening...and it is the reason I'll keep on planting early.

I am not insane. I wait for the soil temperatures to be in the right range, which also can happen really early here--especially in my raised beds which often have soil temperatures as much as 10 degrees warmer than grade-level soil. I wait for the cold nights to be seemingly few and far between. I have row cover to use if needed, though I hate dragging it out of the garage and down to the garden, so I don't use it if it is not needed. I can do all these things because my climate is more like the climate in Dallas-Fort Worth than in OKC, and that makes sense because geographically we are closer, mileage-wise, to the DFW metro than to OKC. D-FW had their last freezing night on January 8th this year. Of course, at that time, no one knew it was their last freezing night, but after 3 or 4 weeks, most people I know down there were itching to get their tomato plants in the ground in February, and who can blame them? When Mother Nature gives you a hot winter, you've got to take advantage of that, and I always do.

Dawn

Right now, lots of herbs (parsley, dill, cilantro, thyme, rosemary, and a little bit of basil), the first few cherry tomatoes, red scallions, and I just picked the last of the sugar snaps. I have lots of large green tomatoes, but I feel like I'm tapping my fingers impatiently wanting them to ripen.

I hate to break it to you, but tapping your toes won't help make the green ones ripen any faster. (grin)

We have tons of large green tomatoes too. There's a part of me, of course, who is thrilled to see that but then there's the part of me that knows my gardening hours become seriously curtailed when tomato canning begins. I did notice yesterday that I'm seeing the first signs of breaking color on quite a few varieties that have not yet produced their first tomato, so I'm excited about that since some of those varieties are new to us and I'm looking forward to tasting them.

I was checking both bell and jalapeno pepper plants yesterday to make sure we'd have enough peppers when salsa canning begins, and I believe we will. That's good, because some years the bell peppers lag behind and I have to buy bell peppers if I want to stick to my canning schedule. Otherwise, I have to prep the tomatoes for salsa and then freeze them while waiting for the bell peppers to catch up. The jalapenos never lag behind, but bell peppers can be slow some years. This year they are not. If I have to buy bell peppers, the world doesn't end. I buy them in bulk at CostCo....because the important part of the salsa is the homegrown tomatoes. Everything else in the salsa is just 'stuff'. That's not really a fair statement either, because it is the 'stuff' (onions, garlic, peppers, etc.) that turn tomatoes into salsa, but since I'm a tomato maniac, I'm always going to be most fond of the tomatoes anyway.

I have a ton of potatoes to dig and I don't really want to dig them this week but I guess I will anyway. It isn't like the weather will suddenly turn back cooler and it will be nice weather for digging potatoes. Unless someone is digging their potatoes young and on the small side while the weather in OK still is mild, potato digging always is a hot chore here. I have been trying to dig them young and on the small side but they grew so fast in this year's mild winter and warm/hot spring that they are pretty big anyway.

Dawn

Hi Dawn - yes my cool season garden is winding down except for my potatoes and onions which I consider cool season stuff. My Yukon Gold potatoes and early planted fingerlings are dying and probably have another 2 weeks before they are ready to dig. My later planted fingerlings and German Butterball are just now blooming and should be ready to dig by early July at the latest. My onions started bulbing a week or 2 ago and are right on schedule to start falling over in a few weeks. Garlic should be ready to dig in a couple more weeks as well. I need to schedule a couple vacation days to get this all done.

As soon as I harvest one more large Romaine head, I will have a small raised bed open to plant some Acorn or Butternut squash. I have some 8 week old leek seedlings that will replace part of one Broccoli bed after I get one more harvest of side shoots this weekend. And before long I will be starting my fall broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels Sprouts.

Lone Jack, My head refuses to think ahead to fall, but then we get to start autumn plantings later than you do.

I am digging the rest of my potatoes today, and happy to be doing it while the weather still is relatively cool. I dug Yukon Gold and Red Pontiac either last week or the week before, mostly, and then finished that bed today--not because the taters needed to stay in the ground longer but because I just couldn't get back to it until today. Now, I'm racing to get them dug before this week's rain arrives.

This morning I dug all the Norkotahs and half the Kennebecs. I'm taking a break from the heat to cool down and then I'll finish the Kennebecs. It is a great potato year, especially given that I am choosing to harvest kind of early to beat the heat. I'm not totally beating the heat because it is 90 degrees, but I'd rather dig in 90 degrees than in 100 degrees. If I left the potatoes another month, I'd probably get more and larger ones, but we have plenty and the largest ones are already the size of good-sized baking potatoes, so waiting an month and digging in hotter weather isn't worth it to me.

I have several kinds of melons and squash started in flats to go into the former potato beds this evening after I finish digging the potatoes, add some Garden-Tone fertilizer and dig it into the soil before I transplant.

I'm ready to have all the cool-season stuf out and done because our cool weather is ending. Only the garlic and some onions will remain after today, and they will tolerate the heat for a while longer.

Dawn

And I'm just tapping my fingers, waiting waiting for potatoes and tomatoes (and peppers) You SAY it doesn't help, but . . . .

My bush beans are SO yummy. Brought in a bunch of Korean Squash. Do you refrigerate that after harvest? The carrots that are bolting are not big roots. Will they taste bad after bolting? I'm debating whether or not to let them flower and see what comes of them, out of curiosity. These are SUPPOSED to be dark red and dark purple, but they're almost yellow.

Begging to get my pathway and ramp tomatoes. Cukes and Zucchini.. beets are almost ready along with some carrots. Having fresh green beans and new red potatoes tomorrow. Enough that I can skip over most of the produce department and that feels fantastic. We need to keep a close eye on the peaches until I learn when they will actually ripen down here. It has been 35 years since I gardened here.

only thing I have had the good fortune of eating this year was a lot of Bok Choy, a half dozen crooked neck and straight neck yellow squash and about a saucer full of snow peas that were to die for and a few onions.

I can already tell what kind of year it is going to be for me. In 3-4 weeks everything in the garden will mug me all at once with a wheel barrow load a day for about a month and work me to death then nothin.

LOL, and you wouldn't change a thing. I know all about grumpy gardeners. ;-)

yea Im busted. ha

Korean Squash, Dawn says in another thread it keeps on the counter. I forgot I put the first one in the fridge and I have to say it didn't look good tonight. I cut that one day last week, so it was a little old anyway, but I don't think the fridge did it any favors.

DH wanted to know when I was going to pick the chard today. I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. He was looking at beets. I was proud, it did look like chard.

I had one large beautiful bundle of red chard I took to market and was glad I did. A lady was so excited to get it. One young lady thought my beets were radishes. After we talked about roasting she was excited to try it.

I'm pulling a bunch of carrots today. I have set DH on a Craigs list search for a second fridge, but what suggestions do you have for preserving. (He keeps the fridge so full, he gets annoyed by stored veggies.) Last year I cooked the tops in the crock pot for Veggie stock. You can cook them like any other greens, too, though I'm not sure DH could cope with that.

Onions curing, garlic curing, potatoes, basil, oregano, marjoram, yellow squash (!), corn, pole beans, broccoli, cabbage.

I don't have much of everything, but I notice the garden is slowly filling up vacant spots on a plate or two in the evenings.

CORN! The kids have had small ears of corn every night this week and they're like... MOOR please ... This is just the early Sunglow. I guess it tastes really sweet for an early corn! I'll definitely make a bigger patch of early corn next year. I only planted 6 plants of these.

We've had early squash most nights. I've killed a few squash bugs on these plants, but not real threat or even damage!! There are some on the c. moschata pumpkins, but I leave them. The c. moschata can handle the damage and it's working like a trap crop? Still, there are not very many!