http://statebystategardening.com/ok/blog_03_summary/ en tjulich@hotmail.com Copyright 2012 2012-01-07T15:30:30+00:00 http://statebystategardening.com/state.php/ok/blog_03/happy_new_gardening_year/ http://statebystategardening.com/state.php/ok/blog_03/happy_new_gardening_year/ The New Year always brings me renewed hope for the upcoming growing season. I pour over the latest seed catalogs, wishing that I could order all of them. I envision the largest, fertile, most productive garden that I have ever had. Yes, The New Year is a wonderful time for optimistic gardeners like me, and if you are anything like me, you’ll be itching to get started on your 2012 garden. Planning your perfect garden for 2012 will take time and effort, but it will be well worth it when your garden begins producing. Take some time now to look over the records you kept from last year and evaluate what worked and what didn't. Since 2011 was full of extremes, with blazing heat and extreme drought, looking back just one year’s worth of records might not be enough for this year's planning. Dig out your records from several past years and review what plants did well, and which didn't. Ask yourself if you and your family liked the vegetable, and if the answer is “no,” don’t bother to plant it again. Start to narrow your wish list you started from pouring over the seed catalogs down to reasonable numbers, but always include a few new plants you’ve never tried before, too. If you didn’t keep good records last year, one of your New Year’s resolutions should be to keep better records for this year. You don’t need anything too elaborate, even a notebook or ring binder will work. I use a program on my computer, and there are several garden planning sites online you might want to check out. I hope you enjoy the winter months’ slower pace with fewer garden chores, but get ready for the best gardening year ever! Garden Planning 2012-01-07T15:30:30+00:00 http://statebystategardening.com/state.php/ok/blog_03/beautiful_blooms_adorn_the_christmas_cactus/ http://statebystategardening.com/state.php/ok/blog_03/beautiful_blooms_adorn_the_christmas_cactus/ Over the years I have gathered quite a collection of Christmas cactus (botanically known as Schlumbergera x Buckleyior Zygocactus) plants, including red, hot pink, white, and peach bloom colors. I also have an Easter cactus (Hatiora gaertneri) that usually blooms in the middle of February, instead of at Easter. The Christmas cactus is a hardy plant that should last for years, and it seems to thrive on neglect, so it is a perfect plant for me. For years my plants did well, putting on new leaves (which are really stems, the plant has adapted to a drier environment by loosing it’s leaves and using its leaf-looking stems for water storage and photosynthesis), but they rarely bloomed. This always bothered me, and I wondered what I was doing wrong that my plants never bloomed. I did a bit of research and found that the plants need either long periods of darkness, with no artificial light at all, or cooler nighttime temperatures in order to form flower buds. The last few years I have taken all of my houseplants outdoors during the summer, putting them in a shady spot close to the water hose so I can water them frequently. I don’t bring them back into the house until the threat of a hard freeze, which can vary from late October to early November. This year the plants had buds showing even before I brought the plants indoors, and they are now almost bloomed out. I doubt that I will have one bloom left by Christmas!     Since I have had problems with keeping the buds from falling off before they bloom I did a bit of Internet research and found that I am probably watering the plants too much after they start blooming. But maybe I’m not watering enough! The information online has given me both reasons for the buds to fall off before blooming, so I need to decide whether to water them more or less. You can find Christmas cactus plants easily this time of year. I have even seen them at the grocery store. If you decide to add a Christmas cactus to your houseplant collection, beautiful blooms and an interesting growth habit will reward you after the blooms have faded. With care, which is actually more like neglect, you should have a great houseplant for years to come.   2011-11-22T16:11:16+00:00 http://statebystategardening.com/state.php/ok/blog_03/time_for_a_foliage_tour/ http://statebystategardening.com/state.php/ok/blog_03/time_for_a_foliage_tour/ With the harsh summer weather conditions we had in central Oklahoma I wasn’t sure we would see much fall color, but I’ve been surprised and delighted by what I’ve seen in the past couple of weeks. The sumac (Rhus spp.) is beautiful, with colors ranging from dark oranges to bright red; and the willows and native pecans are beginning to show bright yellow. Even the oaks, which usually only turn from green to brown, have delighted me with shades of orange, copper, and dark maroon. I was so enthralled by nature’s beauty I decided to take a mini-foliage tour. What is a mini-foliage tour? No, it’s not just looking at small-leaved plants, it’s taking a few minutes of my day to enjoy the beautiful fall foliage. You can do it, too…. Slow down a bit… Drive the speed limit instead of trying to race the person in front of you for a 10 second lead. If you’re in heavy traffic, keep your eyes on the road, but if yours is the only car on the road, slow down and take a look around. If your daily drive to work or the store seems routine, adjust it a bit by going a block out of your way and then doubling back, especially if it means you will drive through a neighborhood you haven’t driven through before. Those homeowners have made an effort to landscape their yards, so take a moment to appreciate it. This is such a colorful time of the year, so take a few minutes to appreciate the beauty of nature’s fall foliage bounty. This is such a colorful time of the year, so take a few minutes to appreciate the beauty of nature’s fall foliage bounty. Fall Foliage, Naure 2011-11-08T17:12:49+00:00 http://statebystategardening.com/state.php/ok/blog_03/a_welcome_rain_and_time_for_fall_gardening/ http://statebystategardening.com/state.php/ok/blog_03/a_welcome_rain_and_time_for_fall_gardening/ It was so great to wake up to the sound of rain hitting the roof this past week. It probably won’t be enough rain to alleviate the extreme drought conditions we’re having, but it is welcome nonetheless. The cooler weather we are experiencing is also nice, and while I’m not planning on building a fire anytime soon, it is nice to be able snuggle up in a warm sweater in the morning and again late in the evening. My fall garden is not doing as well as I had hoped. Several things didn’t even come up, and the bugs or bunnies ate other plants that did sprout. The only things that are doing well are the arugula (Eruca sativa) and the zucchini (Cucurbita pepo “Eight Ball Hybrid”). Male and female squash blossoms.  A small zucchini. Hopefully it will be dinner soon.   The zucchini have started blooming, and I have seen both male and female blossoms, so it won’t be too long before I’m harvesting the squash. I chose this variety of squash, called “Eight Ball,” for my fall garden because it had a shorter maturity date, and also because it was described as “very unique and tasty, a round zucchini with dark green skin that can be picked at any size between a golf ball and softball.” It just sounded like a fun squash to try. Another of my semi-successes is an experiment I am trying with lettuce. Believe it or not, in all my years of gardening I’ve never grown lettuce before, especially since I love salad. At a spring garden show I had seen lettuce for sale growing in a small decorative pot. While it would only have yielded one or two salads at the most, I thought it was a good way for a “beginner” to grow lettuce, and that it would look ornamental as well as being tasty. I planted seed from a packet described as mixed or “mesclun,” with six different types of lettuces, in a couple of pots that sit next to my front steps, a location getting almost full sun, and close to the hose so I can water them as often as I need to. The seed was planted on September 5th, and I saw tiny sprouts coming up by the 10th, but only in one of the pots. The only problem with this is that I have no idea what the seedlings are supposed to look like, and since it is a mix of seeds, any of the little seedlings could be the plants I want and not the plants I want to weed out. So, I’ll let the seedlings mature a bit more before I start pulling weeds, and hopefully I will be able to tell them apart when they are bigger. Next time I will either plant the seeds indoors in a seed-starting tray, or I’ll only plant one variety. At least until I get used to what the little lettuce seedlings look like. As for the pot that has not shown any signs of sprouts, well, I guess I need to just dump that pot of soil out and start over.   Planting Lettuce Seed I added baskets to cover the top of the pots to keep my cats from sleeping in them. They just love a freshly dug pot of soil.   The sprouts! Now I need to figure out which are lettuce and which are weeds...   Last week I was surprised to see several fall garden vegetable plants at the garden center section of Lowe’s. The feed store where we buy chicken feed also carries fall garden varieties, and many local nurseries will stock a good variety of vegetable plants. If you’d like to try adding vegetables to your fall garden this year, it’s not too late; check out what is available for you locally and enjoy harvesting delicious veggies later in the year. 2011-09-24T20:00:46+00:00 http://statebystategardening.com/state.php/ok/blog_03/so_whats_good_about_the_hot_weather/ http://statebystategardening.com/state.php/ok/blog_03/so_whats_good_about_the_hot_weather/ Gardeners in Oklahoma have to be eternal optimists. With the blazing hot weather, the drought, and the insects we have plenty to battle to have a beautiful yard or bountiful garden. This summer has been memorable for the records set with high temperatures and extreme drought conditions. My vegetable garden has suffered from those factors and then the grasshoppers came! An entire bed of beans was stripped of every leaf and two of my pear trees have been almost completely defoliated by the buggers while leaving the peach trees untouched. There might be a scientific explanation for the grasshoppers to avoid the peaches and flock to the pears, but the results are still stressed trees that might not make it through the rest of the year. I certainly hope they will; that’s my optimism coming through. Being an optimist I have looked for the good things that the heat and drought have brought, and here are a few: There are fewer mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, and other pests that plague our dogs and cats. My Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon) and Johnsongrass (Sorghum halepense) are stressed, and hopefully won’t survive the summer. I’m really being an optimist in that regard! The ragweeds (Ambrosia spp.) are not as prolific as in past years. This will be great for allergy sufferers in the fall. I haven’t seen as many snakes as in years past, and my brother reports that when mowing large fields with his tractor he hasn’t see as many mice this summer. So, even though the heat and drought have been devastating, I can find a silver lining. Have you noticed anything good about the heat and/or drought this summer? Please leave a comment and let me know. I always enjoy meeting another optimist.   Weather 2011-08-16T19:22:07+00:00