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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 15, 2015 12:48:37 GMT -6
Schader Farms,
Thanks for your order.
Ron
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Post by glen on Jan 21, 2015 16:43:17 GMT -6
Ron, I recieved the sedes here in Panama today. It took just 2 weeks to recieve the sedes. The package was opened and retaped back but the sedes were there! I will plant in April. I will also be the very first person to plant Heavy Hitter okra in Panama. April, when I plant the okra, will be about a month before the rainy season starts. And, we will get quite a bit of rain on and off for at least 6 months. I hope to be able to irrigate very Little once the rains come. Wish me luck!! Oh, my season is very long. The plan will be to prune the plants by trimming the branches back about half way once production slows down. I have never tried this but I think I will be able to get a second harvest!!!
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 21, 2015 18:21:39 GMT -6
Glen,
I prune most of the leaves off my okra plants once they get about waist high. Mostly because they get so bushy that you can't walk down the rows without itchy leaves getting against your arms in hot summer, but also to help them put more energy toward branching and okra production. Okra is a lazy plant, if you don't pick the pods, the plant thinks it did its job and will quit working for you. If you let it leaf out all it wants, it will go wild and waste all its energy on foliage. However, if you pick it hard, it will work hard trying to reproduce... If you pick hard for at least 3 weeks, before letting the plant set seed, it will produce a better seed crop. My picking season here is only from July until mid September, so I have a short picking season, before I have to start leaving pods to mature for seed production before frost comes.
Good luck with your longer growing season. I hope you get lots of great seeds, and pictures of some really strong plants!
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 21, 2015 18:23:38 GMT -6
Jim,
Thank you for your order!
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 21, 2015 18:25:16 GMT -6
Patti,
Thank you for your order!
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Post by glen on Jan 21, 2015 19:34:45 GMT -6
Ron, Thanx for the tips. If I plant in April, I should be picking sometime in June. I will still have at least 5 months of growing season left after that. I am excited about this Project and will let you know exactly how the plants do and how long the harvest lasts. Its going to be very interesting to see how this Oklahoma selected strain of okra will do in tropical hot, humid, rainy conditions. Cool. I have a friend that tried to start okra during the rainy season and he was unsuccessful. He said the rain just beat them down when they were seedlings and the plants just withered away. I thought anyone could grow okra. At any rate I tried growing it first, except I grew okra in April, before the rainy season actually started. The seedlings didn't need much wáter at first, just frequently. When the rainy season started my plants were already growing well and were strong. The rain didn't bother them at all. Except they just grew faster. I used a common every day variety of okra. My harvest was about 25 okra per plant on non bushy single stalk plants that grew about 6 and a half feet tall. Soil was full of rocks and crushed concrete block. I did not prepare the soil at all. I had the seedlings growing in seed bags and just used a pick mattock to plant the okra in holes just big enough to transplant them. Too much debris in the soil to do any better than that for them. At any rate, if I can get a crop in conditions like that I am pretty sure I will be happy with the results using the new seed, in better conditions. I expect 50 or more pods at the very least this season. If I do better than that I will be amazed.
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 21, 2015 23:36:45 GMT -6
Glen, A friend of mine down the road has a one acre garden where we used to go to break the "green broke" mule colts to plow. It's not fenced or anything. We just park trucks, trailers, and tractors at one end, in case the mules get spooked, so they can't run out into the highway. The ground down there is so gravely that it would destroy a roto-tiller in the first week, so it's never been tilled that way. He's got more gravel than top soil by a long, long, long, shot! Every year, he spreads a ton of composted chicken manure on it, hoping someday he'll eventually have created some dirt.
Every year, he plants it with okra and just lets it grow, weeds and all. He stops by from time to time to pick a mess for himself, but lets the neighbors have all the rest of it. Every year, I can see his okra doing great! There are so many pods that I can see them from the highway. So I guess rocks don't hurt okra production much. He plants his seed behind a tractor, pulling a 9 tooth tilling plow. I've often wondered "HOW IN THE WORLD DO THOSE SEEDS EVER FIND A WAY TO SPRING UP OUT OF THOSE GRAVELS?"
His whole family farms. They used to sell wholesale to the fruit stand markets in town back in the '60s and '70s. Now, all the brothers who are still living are in their 60s and 70s... They plant corn, beans, watermelons, and squash, behind a mule and double shovel plow about 3"inches deep, and it always comes up! If I planted that deep I'd never get a crop. That family amazes me; there are about ten brothers and sisters, their Mom and Dad are both dead. They just kind of took me in when I moved here. We all get together every Spring and break about 5 gardens amongst the kin folks farms, and we all plant each others potatoes too. It takes 5 or 6 men about two full weekends to get all that work done. They do the same thing at harvest time. after the crops are all in, they have a huge fish fry to relax and feed up from all the hard labor. It's a pleasure to be a part of it. I'm a lucky man! If you do a Google search for: heavy hitter okra, or Certified Organic Seeds the Old Fashioned Way, you'll find a URL for a crowd funding site called, "ROCKET HUB" --- If you go there, you'll be able to read about these guys, and what we do here on the farm. You'll also see a photo of Earl the big red mule, pulling a plow in my garden, back when it was just pasture (that picture was the first year we broke ground there) you can see all the bermuda grass furrowed up behind the plow.
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 23, 2015 22:09:46 GMT -6
Luckyduck, I found more pickled okra recipes today in my Mom's old cookbook ...
Recipe #1
2 POUNDS FRESH OKRA - 3" INCHES LONG 5 HOT RED PEPPERS 5 CLOVES GARLIC 1 QUART WHITE VINEGAR 1/2 CUP WATER 8 TABLESPOONS PICKLING SALT 1 TABLESPOON CELERY SEED
pack okra, alternating the okra facing up / facing down, in 5 sterilized pint jars, together with 1 pepper, and 1 garlic clove per jar. Mix remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Pour over okra and seal. Let stand three weeks before serving, for optimal crispness.
RECIPE #2
1 POUND TENDER OKRA PODS 2" TO 3" INCHES LONG 1/2 SMALL HABANERO OR OTHER HOT PEPPER 1 SMALL ONION SLICED THIN 2 CLOVES GARLIC SLICED THIN 1 CUP WATER 3 CUPS WHITE VINEGAR 1 TABLESPOON PICKLING SPICE 2 TABLESPOONS PICKLING SALT
Pack okra pods in sterilized jars, alternating stem up / stem down place remaining ingredients in non reactive pan and bring them to a boil. Pour over okra, seal jars, and let sit for 3 weeks, before opening.
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 29, 2015 9:31:12 GMT -6
For those of you who are just now visiting our Heavy Hitter okra thread; it's a new strain that I've developed over the last decade or so, through seed selection toward more desirable traits; such as very heavy production, and very heavy branching.
If you go to page one of the replies, you can seed photos of the plants that I call Heavy Hitter okra.
If you need seeds from Heavy Hitter, or Zeebest okra, send an email to: fourteenmilecreek@yahoo.com
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Post by glen on Jan 29, 2015 18:12:18 GMT -6
Ron, I am wondering when you are going to join the fórum. Are you still a guest? Only took me a minute to join. I just planted some heavy hitter okra in the back yard garden. They started germinating in 2 days and now every seed I have planted is showing after only 4 days. Are you jealous? Pretty cool to be able to plant okra in January. In between the okra sedes I planted sweet potato slips. I think they will live together pretty well. I believe that I am the first person to ever plant this strain of okra in Panama. Cool.
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Post by duckcreekfarms on Jan 29, 2015 18:59:36 GMT -6
Ron, I am wondering when you are going to join the fórum. Are you still a guest? Only took me a minute to join. LOL I've wondered the same thing
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 30, 2015 9:35:50 GMT -6
I'm not much of a button pusher; I guess it's just been too easy to post as a guest?
Hats off to George McLaughlin for getting this whole thing started; he's done a great job of keeping a lot of things going at once! I'm lucky if I can just figure out how to post a reply.
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Post by snickeringbear on Jan 31, 2015 18:27:30 GMT -6
I vote to block Ron from access until he gets legal. He is like a guy mooching free milk when the rest of us had to buy a cow, a pig looking for free corn when everyone else had to buy their own corn, or a guy turning okra seed into coffee substitute when everyone else has to buy real coffee. At this rate, he will be telling another one of those hard luck tales about grasshoppers eating his apple trees and we will have to suffer through the induced gales of laughter when the game warden wants to know why he is fishing with a vacuum cleaner. Remind me to tell you about the time I let my wife ride in the travel trailer while I was pulling it down the road. She wanted to fix her face up a bit before visiting relatives. We drove about 4 miles on an easy back road. There were only a few potholes, one or two large bumps, a couple of volkswagens turned upside down in holes to fill them in. Nothing major I promise. When we got to our destination, I went back to open the door on the travel trailer expecting to see her looking her very best. Imagine my surprise when the door FLEW OPEN in my face and I saw the wild eyed "I'M GONNA KILL YOU" look on her face. What did I do? I did the only reasonable thing any man should do. I ran as fast as I could around the side of the trailer with her in full pursuit. Fortunately, given the emergency, I was able to outrun her. Let this be a caution, NEVER let a woman fix her face in the travel trailer while you drive down the road! And that is why I want to block Ron from access until he gets legal.
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Post by duckcreekfarms on Jan 31, 2015 18:40:38 GMT -6
Funny
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Feb 1, 2015 0:59:34 GMT -6
Snikeringbear,
Your post reminds me that I forgot to mention the time we were baiting Japanese Beetles away from our okra patch! I had baited the first beetle trap, and was holding it suspended from a string, as I went walking through the garden, and noticed hordes of these insects were actually leaving my okra plants to follow the scent of the hormone trap bait wherever I walked.
By the time I got the trap hung in a tree someways off from my crops, there were hundreds of these little devils, bouncing off the plastic baffle and landing in random places on the lawn. I went to the house to get a plastic trash can lid, and filled it with soapy water to place below the trap in order to drown the stray beetles that bounced off the hormone trap, but missed the collection bag.
We had friends over at the time, who were happily playing golf on my 9 hole course out by the campground. When I returned to the game, I had not washed the hormone residue from my finger tips, where I had accidentally touched the hormone pellet. There were still Japanese Beetles following this scent trail. I walked up behind one of my opponents, who just happened to be up next to swing at his ball. I tapped him lightly on the shoulder, then rubbed the back of his head teasingly, saying it was for good luck!
When he stepped up to swing, the beetles hit him in the back of his head by the dozens. Every time he would take a stance to concentrate for a swing, the beetles would annoy him into a swatting frenzy! Finally, he stepped away from the ball, holding the back of his head, saying, "What's up with these stupid bugs!?"
Everyone was dying with laughter, as many of them had seen what I had done. It was hilarious to see him trying to be so serious while the rest of us were just enjoying a friendly Sunday afternoon game. Eventually, the scent wore off, or else we played too far from the garden and the beetles lost interest, but what a good time we had with that!
He'll get me back someday, and he'll have a good laugh doing it, but that's what friends are for!
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