All the Dirt on Gardening

Don't miss out on the third season of gardening in Oklahoma or other areas in zone 7 and above. Even though the August heat is still with us, we can plant cool season vegetables, perennials and spring flowering bulbs. If you don't know your plant zone click on the appropriate link - United States zones or worldwide plant zones or the AHS heat zone map . Hazzard's Greenhouse and Seeds lists thousands of varieties of flowers, vegetables, herbs, grasses, and walk-on-plant seeds in their online catalog. You can click on the Search feature and enter a common or Latin name to find what you need. Joyce Hazzard created a free shipping coupon for anyone reading this. Enter MSFS in the place for coupons at checkout or use the code for phone orders at 989.872.5057. Start seeds in containers so you can control moisture and temperature. This is especially true for heat sensitive greens. Refrigerate lettuce seeds for a few days and then soak them in water the day before planting. Flow...

The 2009 Oklahoma State Master Gardener Conference was held in Bartlesville last week. Conference topics included: Vegetable gardening, life in the soil, understanding chemicals, native plants, tree care, integrated pest management, and lawn care. The keynote speaker was Dr. Alan Stevens from Kansas State Horticulture Research Center. Here are some of the things we learned in the sessions Stevens said that the latest flowerbed and flowerpot design is a combination of colorful foliage plus flowers with foliage in the center of the design. The Prairie Star program at Kansas State University has a website of plants that performed well over a 2-year period prairie conditions. The annual plants are listed at www.prairiestarflowers.com/ . Perennials are at the Prairie Bloom link. Brian Jervis from the Tulsa Master Gardening program pointed gardeners to Kelly Solutions (www.kellysolutions.com) for information on all things bugging your yard and garden. At Kelly Solutions, gardeners can search...

Next week's garden column will focus on fall gardening so I called Sue Gray, Extension Educator, Horticulture, Oklahoma State University in Tulsa. Gray wrote a fact sheet for Tulsa Master Gardener's website and contributed to the OSU Fact Sheet number HLA 6009 on fall gardening. Gray said to clean up the bed and mulch it ten days to two weeks before planting so the soil can be cooled by the mulch. In the meantime, if you are dying to start seeds, start them in pots. It is still too hot to start lettuce outside so Gray is starting hers inside where the lettuce's preferred 70-degree temperature for soil and air can be met. P. Allen Smith's newsletter says he is planting spinach this week in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he lives. Smith prefers Bloomsdale Longstanding. Garden Guides says it is also time to put out flower seeds that need a cold stratification to come up and bloom next spring. Pansy, alyssum, calendula, bachelor buttons, love-in-a-mist and many other se...