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Post by Heavy Hitter on Aug 8, 2015 9:58:43 GMT -6
George,
I'll bet you're on to something good there.
Maybe you can experiment with something I've recently read about fertilizer as well?
I have been reading a lot this week about the needs of okra plants, and timing of fertilizer applications. It is said that okra needs a lot of Phosphate, even more than it needs Nitrogen; but you have to time the application just right or the plant will go to leaf instead of pod production. From what I read, you need to apply the fertilizer as a side dressing, just as the pod heads begin to form, before any blooms appear (don't let any of it touch the plant). That way the plant gets a boost of energy right as it starts producing okra blooms. Hormones within the plant will automatically check leaf production in favor of reproduction.
I've never used commercial fertilizer, as I make my own from seasoned chicken litter, green Austrian Winter Pea vines, wheat straw, dead leaves raked in Autumn, or some other good source of carbon, and a few shovels full of topsoil for the enzyme action needed to initiate rapid decomposition.
(I first noticed this natural composting process as I was working on the NSU grounds crew in 1991).
Part of my job was to shovel the parking lot edges, and street curbs, on campus; where build up of grass clippings, pine needles, stray leaves, and the dirt that accumulates after repeated edging along walkways, and curb edges occurs.
By the end of the day, I would have the back of a long bed Ford pickup about full of the most beautiful compost you ever saw!
I was told to take that out back of the parking lot across the street from the old Science building and dump it in the landfill there. By the end of Summer that pile of bricks and broken concrete blocks would be growing better grass than the lawns near where I was shoveling curb edges.
That was where it first dawned on me that God had designed plants to create their own best topsoil... What an ingenious self-sustaining system! When I got home I began experimenting with different combinations of those same ingredients, plus added a little chicken litter to up the Nitrogen, and Phosphorus.
I'm telling you... that stuff could grow peach trees on a manhole cover!
Since I've never used commercial fertilizer, I know very little about what one should buy. From what I understand, Phosphate is represented by the middle number of the three numbers printed on the bag. I don't know what combination of numbers one should apply? I'll have to do a lot more reading before trying something like that.
At the very least, I imagine your plants would benefit from a smothering mulch to keep down the weed competition. Old cardboard, piled with grass clippings would probably be the easiest, and quickest way to get smothering results, but that wouldn't provide any nutrients to the okra plants, it would just provide relief from weed competition.
You might be able to amend the grass clippings with a top sprinkling of fertilizer? It would be my guess that fertilizer would leach through to feed the okra plant's root system eventually. You just don't want to feed the weeds any more than you can help it.
When I dig sweet potatoes, I wrap the green vines around the base of my Pawpaw trees. The vines smother weeds, then I top dress the vine pile with chicken litter, and straw from my used nest boxes. My 5 year old Pawpaw tree in front of the chicken house is 18' feet tall now. The trees without amendments are only 5' feet tall. All are bearing fruit, but the un-amended trees are struggling to bear the burden of fruit production, and have not grown much taller this season.
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Post by heavy hitter on Aug 9, 2015 6:18:40 GMT -6
Here is the URL to a photo of one of my 2011 hottest Summer on record okra plants, posted on Dave's Garden, after temperatures dropped in very early October of that year.
Our high temperature that year was 115 degrees on August 2nd, 2011. What a contrast to this year's high in the upper 90s.
To view my 2011 Heavy Hitter Okra, just click the link to davesgarden below:pics.davesgarden.com/pics/2012/02/13/fourteenmilecreek/6ef6d1.jpg
Read more: seedsavingnetwork.proboards.com/thread/15/heavy-hitter-okra?page=4#ixzz3iJq6aBOD
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Post by heavy hitter on Aug 9, 2015 17:13:02 GMT -6
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Post by glen on Aug 9, 2015 19:04:34 GMT -6
Ron, thats the biggest bushiest okra plant ever. I think you gave it steriods. Isn't that cheating?
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Post by Heavy Hitter Okra on Aug 9, 2015 23:01:08 GMT -6
Actually, that plant was an orphan that was overlooked by the deer that ate 300 plants from that row in May. Only 33 plants along a 170' foot row survived the carnage.
One day, as I was picking okra, I got 8 pods from that one plant, then 12, then over 20, then 44, then I stopped picking it and saved that plant for seed.
I darn near picked it too late into the season, as a killing frost came on the 6th of October with sustained temperatures of 21 degrees for six hours. I stayed up with a wood and charcoal fire in the make shift hoop house all night, but the 30 mph winds ripped the end out of the hoop house, and made it impossible to save the plant. The plastic top of the hoop house was flapping in the wind so hard, it sounded like a covered wagon being pulled down the road by a run away team of horses. As a result I was only able to save 5 viable pods for seed, the rest were not mature at freezing.
As you can tell by it's stature, the compost I make from green Austrian Winter Peas, chicken litter, wheat straw, and top soil, really have an impact on plant growth.
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Post by john on Aug 10, 2015 7:26:25 GMT -6
Ron what an effort to try and get mature seeds. My hat is off to you. Also, That compost blend sounds great! The beauty of building your soil is that you are actually investing in something that will last and get better with time. When using commercial fertilizers you are really not building anything, just really giving a short term boost, which is O.K. , I guess. But why settle for that if we can do better?
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Post by Heavy Hitter Okra on Aug 10, 2015 17:30:47 GMT -6
John,
I got my compost / homemade fertilizer recipe from Charles Wilber's book, "HOW TO GROW WORLD RECORD TOMATOES".
It's one of the few things in life that can really accomplish the results that it claims it will. If you ever get a chance to buy it, or to read it, it's certainly worth the time and money spent.
To test the compost last Spring, I bought a $2.00 peach tree that was on clearance, due to being damaged in a parking lot of a farm supply store. The top was broken off, but for $2.00 the tree looked like it might stand a chance.
When I got home, I planted it in the spot where I had made my okra compost the year before. Some of the remnants of the compost remained in a heap about 3' feet South of there, so I planted the peach tree at the base of the heap; planning on coming back later to remove the rest of the compost to my okra patch, but never did.
The peach tree was in a small pot (1 or 2 gallons) and was only about 3 feet tall, with about an 18" inch leaf spread, and a girth the size of a silver dollar. By the end of the season the tree had grown 6' feet wide, and taller than I was. By Autumn, it had grown to a girth the size of a baseball bat.
Now, after a year and 5 months at the base of the compost heap, that tree has a spread of more than 10 feet wide, and is more than 10' feet tall. It has a girth about as big around as a softball. The local paper was out here today, interviewing me about gardening, composting, working mules, growing okra, etc. I showed the reporter the peach tree, and she took several photos of it.
Now, maybe the Lady at the farm supply store will believe me when I tell her how much it has grown? I give her an update on the peach tree every time I see her, just to give her a hard time.
If compost can do that for a peach tree, imagine how it would help your okra.
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Gary in Mississippi
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Post by Gary in Mississippi on Aug 10, 2015 20:47:11 GMT -6
George, I'll bet you're on to something good there. Maybe you can experiment with something I've recently read about fertilizer as well? I have been reading a lot this week about the needs of okra plants, and timing of fertilizer applications. It is said that okra needs a lot of Phosphate, even more than it needs Nitrogen; but you have to time the application just right or the plant will go to leaf instead of pod production. From what I read, you need to apply the fertilizer as a side dressing, just as the pod heads begin to form, before any blooms appear (don't let any of it touch the plant). That way the plant gets a boost of energy right as it starts producing okra blooms. Hormones within the plant will automatically check leaf production in favor of reproduction. I've never used commercial fertilizer, as I make my own from seasoned chicken litter, green Austrian Winter Pea vines, wheat straw, dead leaves raked in Autumn, or some other good source of carbon, and a few shovels full of topsoil for the enzyme action needed to initiate rapid decomposition. (I first noticed this natural composting process as I was working on the NSU grounds crew in 1991). Part of my job was to shovel the parking lot edges, and street curbs, on campus; where build up of grass clippings, pine needles, stray leaves, and the dirt that accumulates after repeated edging along walkways, and curb edges occurs. By the end of the day, I would have the back of a long bed Ford pickup about full of the most beautiful compost you ever saw! I was told to take that out back of the parking lot across the street from the old Science building and dump it in the landfill there. By the end of Summer that pile of bricks and broken concrete blocks would be growing better grass than the lawns near where I was shoveling curb edges. That was where it first dawned on me that God had designed plants to create their own best topsoil... What an ingenious self-sustaining system! When I got home I began experimenting with different combinations of those same ingredients, plus added a little chicken litter to up the Nitrogen, and Phosphorus. I'm telling you... that stuff could grow peach trees on a manhole cover! Since I've never used commercial fertilizer, I know very little about what one should buy. From what I understand, Phosphate is represented by the middle number of the three numbers printed on the bag. I don't know what combination of numbers one should apply? I'll have to do a lot more reading before trying something like that. At the very least, I imagine your plants would benefit from a smothering mulch to keep down the weed competition. Old cardboard, piled with grass clippings would probably be the easiest, and quickest way to get smothering results, but that wouldn't provide any nutrients to the okra plants, it would just provide relief from weed competition. You might be able to amend the grass clippings with a top sprinkling of fertilizer? It would be my guess that fertilizer would leach through to feed the okra plant's root system eventually. You just don't want to feed the weeds any more than you can help it. When I dig sweet potatoes, I wrap the green vines around the base of my Pawpaw trees. The vines smother weeds, then I top dress the vine pile with chicken litter, and straw from my used nest boxes. My 5 year old Pawpaw tree in front of the chicken house is 18' feet tall now. The trees without amendments are only 5' feet tall. All are bearing fruit, but the un-amended trees are struggling to bear the burden of fruit production, and have not grown much taller this season. If you ever get the time to start a pawpaw thread and post some photos, it would be great. Pawpaws are of great interest to a growing number of people, including myself. btw, I'm assuming "heavy hitter okra" and "fourteenmilecreek" are the same person. Correct? I've noticed posts under both names. Thanks to all for the very interesting info here.
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Post by Heavy Hitter Okra on Aug 11, 2015 1:45:38 GMT -6
Gary,
You are correct, Heavy Hitter and fourteenmilecreek are the same person. I have dial-up Internet service which impeded me from registering on this site as a member for quite some time. Then, finally I drove to Tahlequah to use a wifi connection to register as a member. When I got back home and tried to post as fourteenmilecreek, this site just tells me that name is already taken. As a matter of convenience, I started posting as "Heavy Hitter Okra".
Ron
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skip
New Member
Posts: 43
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Post by skip on Aug 15, 2015 11:26:33 GMT -6
Hello everyone.
Ron, is that compost book the compost tea you told me about last spring? If so I need to dig up that old email. I used to have issues with the invasive air potato vines and thought about using those leaves. However (an forunately), the state released a lot of tiny red beatles that eat nothing but air potato. They've about wiped it out. While that is a good thing, don't have a vine substitute to use anymore.
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Post by heavy hitter okra on Aug 15, 2015 16:20:12 GMT -6
Skip,
I made manure tea from a 55 gallon barrel full of water sitting on top of a wood platform I built to keep it off the ground. That way, I could tap the bottom of the barrel with a spigot and drain off the tea with a short hose and a 5 gallon bucket.
We had about 60 head of cattle, so I made the tea with a potato sack full of cow manure hanging from an oak limb. I would fill the potato sack with fresh manure and soak it in the barrel for a few days to drown all the grass seeds. The next week I'd dump the spent manure in a compost pile, and refill the potato sack with more manure.
The book I was referring to was called, "HOW TO GROW WORLD RECORD TOMATOES" by Charles Wilber.
He would use a layer of green Kudzu vines, a layer of wheat straw, a layer of top soil, and a thin layer of chicken litter to build heat in the pile. The pile needs to be 4' feet tall to get heat from pressure of all the weight. (You want it to get to 160 degrees to kill grass seeds, and disease).
I use Austrian Winter Pea vines in place of kudzu, because Kudzu doesn't grow where I live.
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Post by Heavy Hitter Okra on Aug 19, 2015 22:03:19 GMT -6
My Heavy Hitter okra made the front page of the paper again today. I'm getting a crazy amount of requests for seeds. I picked 30 pounds of tender pods today from just one row. I've got three more rows to go. It was 55 degrees when I came in, I was actually shivering. I felt like I had been picking okra inside a walk-in cooler; this August weather is crazy!
I still remember 2011 when it was over 100 degrees every day, right up to September 1st.
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Post by Heavy Hitter Okra on Aug 23, 2015 4:11:32 GMT -6
I picked 85 pounds of Heavy Hitter okra over the course of this week. Fifty-five pounds of frying size pods, and thirty pounds of pickling size pods. (Those pickling size pods took forever to pick!)
The elbow I rest my bucket bail on while picking, sure knows I worked it this week, but it made a lot of folks happy to have so much okra to freeze and to can for pickles this Winter.
We pickled 22 pints of okra in the month of July, now, there are only 9 pints left... I guess I need to pickle some more next week if I want any to last until Winter.
Ron
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Post by heavy hitter okra on Aug 24, 2015 8:23:06 GMT -6
Starting August 23, 2015 send seed requests to heavyhitterokra@gmail.com
-- I've changed providers, my fourteenmilecreek@yahoo.com service has too many advertisements and takes forever to open with dial-up.--
Sorry for the inconvenience, Ron
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Post by heavy hitter okra on Aug 27, 2015 16:57:17 GMT -6
I got my first customers using my new email address: heavyhitter@gmail.com this morning.
When they got here, we picked 36.4 pounds of okra. 26 pounds was frying size okra. 10.4 pounds was pickling okra.
Last week, I picked 85 pounds; with today's total that puts me at 121.4 pounds within the past ten days, and I still have plenty left over for seed.
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