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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 4, 2019 8:01:53 GMT -6
Also, I've noticed during dry Summers past, that I can see the root zone of trees in my yard, due to large patches of dead grass surrounding them. This happens because of all the water that trees suck up.
(Bon, You were correct in your observations about trees pulling water out of your swampy soil).
I've got a lot of trees here and twice have planted a garden at what I thought was a 'safe distance' away, only to have tree roots sap my plants from June until Autumn.
I once planted all the way on the opposite side of the dirt road from some big oak trees, only to discover later in the season that any corn or okra within 50 feet of them was stunted and only grew about a foot tall. Large trees have a crazy, vast root zone.
My garden was on the South side of the timberline, so the light was not an issue, it was just a lack of water and pour nutrients, due to nearby trees. My own personal opinion is that nowhere within 50' feet of a large tree is safe for unimpeded gardening.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 5, 2019 18:17:28 GMT -6
Buddy; our black haired stock dog, got his revenge on the female gosling who has taken to attacking him so often lately. As Buddy was walking past the goslings this morning, minding his own business, she began to persist in unprovoked attacks on his nether region. Buddy won't hurt her, so I wasn't watching too carefully.
After a while, I heard a shrill, and very distressing cry, coming from Buddy's direction... "PEEP!!! PEEP!!! PEEP!!!"
I glanced over and saw that Buddy had taken the little gosling out! Probably not in the way you are thinking...
No, instead of turning to bite the gosling, Buddy just sat down on top of her and pinned her to the ground. It was hilarious! I wish I had brought my camera. All you could see were her two little pink feet waggling up and down from under his tail. All you could hear were her muffled cries, "PEEP!!! PEEP!!! PEEP!!!"
The little gosling was not hurt, it was just distressed by getting a dose of what it so richly deserved.
When I got Buddy off of her and turned her loose again, she ran away to be by herself for a while and then came right back to harass him some more, but this time, not from behind. Now, she pecks at his front feet and Buddy patiently endures it.
Hopefully, they'll work things out eventually, but judging from the little gosling's persistent behavior, I'd say she's got another time out in her near future.
Things like that are what make daily treks to the garden so much fun.
Tomorrow, I am hoping to get some more planting done, but today is Sunday, so I'm taking a day of rest.
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Post by macmex on May 6, 2019 4:36:35 GMT -6
Buddy is such a great dog! Bet they will work things out soon.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 6, 2019 17:44:19 GMT -6
The forecast calls for rain nearly every day this week. I can already hear the thunder to the South of us. I'm headed toward the garden to plant my third round of okra seeds before the rains hit.
Thursday night is forecast to be in the forties. I hope my seedlings are still short enough to utilize the heat built up in my beds by the use of black plastic. That usually makes a huge difference unless it's too windy or it's raining a lot.
There was a drastic soil temperature difference today, between rows covered with black plastic and those that were not. The black plastic created ideal, warm, moist conditions for immediate, healthy root development of my transplants.
The bare soil rows were cold, clammy, muddy, and highly detrimental to root development in these areas, due to recent cold rains. Any transplants placed in bare soil today would most likely revert to dormancy until warmer conditions make themselves available following much hotter days.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 8, 2019 20:35:03 GMT -6
That sounds great Bon! Bermuda grass will eventually die out, if you keep on pulling it by hand. Heavy Hitter Okra usually puts on blossoms about 55 days after germination, so you'll get a crop from it, even if planting right it up to the 4th of July. Sometimes, I plant it right after I've harvested sweet corn and potatoes in early July, for a Fall harvest of okra for the freezer.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 8, 2019 20:43:20 GMT -6
Well, I don't have to wonder if 'Blackberry Winter' will ever come this year; according to the forecast, it will arrive bright and early, tomorrow morning and stay here for nearly a week.
Hopefully, our cold weather will be gone by Mid-May.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 10, 2019 7:35:53 GMT -6
The last real cold snap of the season?
To, all my gardening friends in the 'Green Country' area; I think it's safe to say that after this coming Sunday's cool snap, it will be alright to plant your okra with little fear of it becoming stunted by temperatures below 45 degrees.
It was 36 degrees, here on the farm, at 7:00 am this morning. It seems like just last week, we had daytime highs near 80 degrees... Well, that's Oklahoma for ya.
My grandma Fannie would have called this last, really cold snap, "Blackberry Winter." Every year when this same weather pattern repeats itself during the full bloom of the blackberry bushes, it causes me to marvel at the accuracy of the astute agricultural knowledge that our ancestors possessed and fully relied on.
Their family's future depended on knowing the seasons well and paying attention to every detail that might lead them to predict what might happen next. These signs were especially important to know and understand, during Spring planting time; the success of one's entire Autumn and Winter seed saving endeavor might depend on it. One miscalculation in predicting the last frost date could wipe out an entire season's effort.
Nowadays, with grocery stores, central heat, and air conditioning, people tend to forget the old sayings; but mark your calendar, for as sure as the sun shines in Northeastern, Oklahoma, 'Blackberry Winter' will return each year, during the full bloom of the blackberries.
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Post by macmex on May 10, 2019 13:43:21 GMT -6
It most certainly does, no matter how warm it seems, blackberry winter always strikes!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 10, 2019 14:48:49 GMT -6
Last night's failure to frost, made this the first time in the past three years that I've not had a light frost, right up until Mid-May. If you ever want to 'feel better' about your current garden situation, just flip back a few pages on this thread to, page 13, May 30, 2015. It was a similar year to what we are experiencing now, but to the extreme... That was the year that we had 82.5" inches of rain by Christmas Day. seedsavingnetwork.proboards.com/thread/15/heavy-hitter-okra?page=13Thank you, George, for all your hard work in putting this website together. It sure is nice to be able to scroll back through the years, reading the daily journals (great memories) and way more details than the old paper garden journals I use to keep previous to the Green Country Seed Savers' website. I think this website and others like it, will come in handy for decades to come, as a tool for comparing weather patterns and monitoring crop yields. (A great scientific tool for planning future gardening endeavors, one, our grandkids, and our great-grandkids, alike will enjoy having at their fingertips.) Can you imagine being able to read your grandma's field notes from nearly 100 years ago? That would have been so awesome!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 12, 2019 19:57:23 GMT -6
It looks like tonight might possibly be the last night of temperatures in the 40s. My garden sure will be glad to see some warmer nights, that's for sure! My potatoes are loving it though, and there are very few bugs right now, because of the cold nights and heavy rains. I suppose there's an upside to everything.
I just finished walking out my potato rows, only to find three Colorado Potato Beetles and two sets of their bright orange egg clusters. (It sure does feel good to mush one of those clusters, knowing I just killed several dozen potential Potato Bugs!) That's not too bad, for 500' feet of potato rows, to only have three potato bugs in sight.
If Lady Bugs were a bad thing, I'd be getting concerned though. There were several dozen Lady Bugs out and about. some of them were mating (always a good sign when you see that your Lady Bug population is about to explode!) Things like that make me glad I've been hand picking beetles, rather than using poison.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 13, 2019 23:54:37 GMT -6
Oh, Bon, that sounds about 'Par' for the course, for here in Oklahoma. I woke up one morning in the month of May, with 114 tomato cages, aircraft cables, Tee posts, fence ties, and all, laying in a twisted mass of steel, out in my neighbor's cow pasture. Another year, in May, I woke up to find most of 200 tomato cages washed away down the flooded creek. I had tomato cages wrapped around trees from here to Moodys... I hope we don't get anything like that again for a long, long, long, time.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 14, 2019 0:24:48 GMT -6
Tonight's forecasted low is said to be around 59 degrees. It was still 70 degrees at 8:00 pm this evening. This will be the first night since April 10th that it has been warm enough to leave my Cotton Patch Goslings outside for the night. They were sure, not happy about that! I closed them up inside the wooden goose house that I built for them, inside the wire covered goose run. The wooden house has sliding doors on both ends, that open and close, so when the goslings grow up they can run up the ramp, hop through the goose house, jump into the swimming pool and climb the stairs to get out the other side to do it again. They have all kinds of fun playing out there during day, but they sure would rather be sleeping inside their crate in my well pump room at night. Oh, how they cried like babies when I tried to leave them out there! I probably spent 30 minutes holding their heads and singing lullabies until they all finally went to sleep so I could sneak off. (They are just as sweet as babies, when they all begin to churttle and coo, as they are dozing off.) They are just at that age (36 days old) when their voices are beginning to change from goslings to geeselings. So, when they start to doze off, they begin to snore. When they snore, they make a quiet, little, "Peeep... Honk... Peeep... Honk... Peeeep... Honk..." sound. It's so heartwarming to hear that happy sound. It sure was hard to leave them out there for the first time since they hatched on April 7th, but it has to be done sometime. They can't stay inside at night forever. This is the goose run from the outside. It's 48' feet long, by 16' feet wide, by 8' feet tall. It's covered with 1,500' square feet of chicken wire, reinforced with treated 2x6 lumber, steel bracing, and 128' feet of 52" inch high cattle panels that skirt the entire bottom, up to the height of the 2x4 that you see behind the ladder. The bottom of the run is also covered in wire so no predators can dig under to get inside. It has a steel, walk-thru door with a dead bolt lock and a key, to prevent grand-kids from turning my babies loose while I'm not watching. The wooden goose house is at the far end, by the front door. It has two sliding doors, one on each end and a 120-gallon pool built in on the opposite side. (I've built a wooden ramp with traction cleats, since this photo was taken.) The goslings can run up the ramp, hop through the goose house, and jump into the pool on the other side. There is a wooden ladder so they can climb out and go around to do it again. I turn the goslings loose, twice per day, to graze weeds in my garden, Once at sunrise and once again at sunset. This is to teach them a routine, so they can help me control weeds this Summer. I'd venture to say, that due to this breed's temperament, Cotton Patch Geese are capable of making loyal pets, second only to dogs. I've never seen such affectionate poultry as these things are proving to be. They seek out human attention. I give them 'snuggle time' every evening before our walk home at bedtime. I'm pretty sure I'll end up naming this little gander, "Sweet Pea" you can't get away from him without a snuggle before he turns in at night. He'll sneak up behind me in the garden during the day and poke his head up the back of my windbreaker jacket, trying to get me to stop and show him some attention. He reminds me a lot of, "Skippy" my pet grey squirrel.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 14, 2019 13:22:23 GMT -6
Bon, Shhh. My Wife already wants me to take that door off the goose run and put it on our house. It's better looking than our back door; better looking from the outside anyway... I bought that door second hand at a resale shop, for $25.00 with all the hardware still attached. It's an exterior steel door, but it wasn't designed for use without a soffit to protect it from the rain. (Hopefully, I fixed that, by trimming it with double drip flashing and some silicone.) I did have to do a little re-working on it, to get it to swing open freely again... The previous owner must have kicked it in because the deadbolt was hung in the half-open position and the wooden frame was cracked by some kind of heavy, blunt force trauma. All it really needed was some TLC with a 3-pound "Engineer's hammer"; you know, the kind of hammer Engineers use to beat on boilers to get them to running right again. Now, it's almost good as new.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 14, 2019 23:05:48 GMT -6
Today was 82 degrees and just perfect for planting okra seeds, but I had a funeral to attend this morning that prevented me from getting any gardening done today. However, I've put 200 Heavy Hitter Okra seeds in an 8 ounce washed sour cream container, on top of a generously moistened paper towel, to soak overnight. Hopefully, I'll get the chance to plant them sometime tomorrow. I started using the sour cream containers rather than Ziplock bags, because on days when the wind is howling, the sour cream containers stay in place. I've had more than one Ziplock bag of seeds get blown away before I got all my seeds planted. It looks like we've got about three days of sunshine coming our way, so I'd better take advantage of that for sure. I've also got 120 tomato plants that need to be caged, so my time tomorrow will be at a premium. I took my Cotton Patch Goslings to graze weeds among the potato vines this evening, before putting them up for the night. They got quite a bit accomplished before dark. I have several photos of them creeping along between the potato plants, targeting any small weeds they came across. They are interesting to watch. They typically lay on the ground and graze a half moon pattern around in front of them, as far as they can stretch their necks, then they get up and move ahead a few inches to repeat the process, picking every weed in their path as they move along. They are very efficient grazers, hardly missing a weed. Cotton Patch Geese are very proficient, stopping to pick even the tiniest of weeds. They don't miss a spot, even with taller weeds easily within their reach, they'l concentrate on thoroughly cleaning a spot, before moving on. These two are working over a Bermuda sprig they found, meticulously stripping every frond, before giving up and moving to the next weed. Headed home after a day's work. They act like they know exactly where they are going. Once I sow my okra seeds into the black plasticulture to their right, I'll have to keep a closer eye on them, as they will gobble any seedlings that look appealing to them, until the plants have reached a size that no longer interests them. Given a choice, they prefer thin bladed grasses, like Bermuda, or Nut Grass, but if okra seedlings are all they see before them, they will take whatever is available.
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Post by glen on May 15, 2019 12:28:43 GMT -6
They sure are growing fast Ron. Real pretty birds. And, they work!
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