My dh is thinking about taking a job in OK, and I am really trying to find someone there that could answer my questions about the area and gardening ect.
Is there anyone here :)
Looking for someone in the Lawton OK area
Hi! I'm one hour south (in TX). I could probably answer most questions, if no one esle chimes in. What are you wondering??
OH! thank you! Would you like to 'talk' here, or would dmail be better for you? It doesn't matter to me.
d-mail is fine -- though it really does not matter.
I am in Thackerville, OK along the red river separating south central OK and TX....sandy soil not very fertile unless amended but great for digging
I was invisionin trying to dig a rock hard piece of cement. :(
So is the soil fairly diggable, or is it really hard? sandy? I hadn't thought of that, I just assumed clay.
I guess that might depend on the time of the year. Around here, easy digging in the spring and fall, during the summer when it hits 100 and no rain for a month, don't even think of putting a shovel in the ground, ain't gonna happen!
the time of the year has nothing to do with it.......regionally does...we have in Texas and parts of OK, red clay soil that hardens like terra cotto, black gumbo that is nasty sticky stuff, caliche is like pre mixed concrete, red river sand that is like beach sand, and areas with wonderful sandy loam farm lands. I am not sure what Lawton has, but I would think the soil should be fairly decent there. My daughter moved to Missouri a couple of years back and she just raves about the great growing conditions there. One thing you will love here is that we have much earlier springs and winter is late ...sometimes we have off and on temps in the 80s almost up til January. Our coldest months are Feb and March.....wet months are late April and May........sometimes with lots of high winds and thunderstorms
so how would iris do there? probably rot in all that spring rain knowing my luck :(
I have Iris and it does just fine, amend the soil, plant shallow and don't plant in a low spot.
I am known around here as the iris lady........mine do great, but my soil is poor so I do amend it and fertilize the iris in the fall and before and after bloom with a very low nitrogen product....long as they don't stand in water they will do great
See my 2010 blooms at http://picasaweb.google.com/jackieshar/IrisBloomsSpring2010#
This message was edited Nov 5, 2010 12:23 PM
Wow!!! those are gorgeous you must be an Iris collector, I can see why they know you as the Iris lady, thank you for showing us.
WOW! Breathtaking! I'm curious do any of them smell like the old purple variety that was very common 30-40 years ago? I miss that. I remember my mom with bring in a couple, put them in a vase, and the whole room would smell wonderfully.. Memories!
yes, many are fragrant, some like grape kool aid, I have one called Gingersnap that smells like rootbeer. Some better potpourris are made from the dried rhizomes called orris root. I have several historics that date back originally as early as the 1800s, as well as the new larger more lacy and ruffled varieties. Many iris collectors belong to a historic iris society
pictured is Gingersnap with another oldie Agatine
This is soooooooooo totally NOT the picture I intended to send and NOT Gingersnap and Agatine
This message was edited Nov 7, 2010 9:28 PM
The greatest threat to spring bloom here can be a freak late frost, unusual but it does happen. Then there are the spring storms with gale force winds and sometimes hail...but every once in a while we have a perfect cold wet winter and a late spring like in 2010, my best year ever for iris...First iris to bloom this year was Persian Berry blooming on April 1st and then the last were blooming May 12th...
One of my favorite late bloomers is an older one from 1988 called Conjuration, Persian Berry is 1976
We can get those freak late frosts too, we had a beautiful spring this year, and early too.
Two years ago? maybe three now, there was a really hard freeze late in the spring, and all of the iris were froze off. I think out of 200 iris I may have gotten a handful of blooms.
From what little I know Lawton is farming country ,they have serious peanut industry so I would think that would mean very loose loamy soil...
it was the same here 2 or 3 yrs back with the late frost....If Lawton has loose loamy soil it doesn't get much better
I just looked at the link to your iris! Wow, I felt like I was in my own garden,
long time til spring ....
come on to Oklahoma then...bring your iris with you and maybe we can do some trading next summer, I hang on the iris forum most all the time
Red River Valley, home sweet home from Texarkana to Wichita Falls, Peach Orchard fried catfish to watermelon harvests, peanut fields, to sweet alfalfa fields, that caliche clay can grow stuff as well as the black gumbo clay, just depends on what you WANT to grow, chuckl.