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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 12, 2017 16:25:36 GMT -6
Bon,
I liked the Early Treat tomato just fine. It was a good slicing tomato for sandwiches and had a uniform size for the slicing machines that restaurants used when I sold them my homegrown tomatoes. It also had a good texture and had good flavor.
Most of my tomatoes this year were killed by flooding, so I didn't get to try the Early Treat again in 2017. Better luck next year, I guess...
That's cool to hear you were an OSU student. How fortunate; I would have loved to have attended college there. I attended a few architectural classes at NSU from 1980 through 1982, back when they still offered an Industrial Technology Degree in Tahlequah.
However, I dropped out in 1982 to become a State Licensed Journeyman Electrician. I worked all over the United States doing Electrical work for the next several years. Most of my work was of an Industrial nature. I worked at DX Refinery, AB Jewel Water Treatment, Boeing Engineering in Seattle, Boeing Aerospace, and Defense, Boeing Satellite Tracking Division, Newark International Airport, Minnesota Power and Light, Bear Hill State Penitentiary in New York State, GRDA Powerhouse Unit 1 and Unit 2, things like that.
I had an opportunity to spend 6 weeks at OSU once while completing some training to work as a Correctional Trade Supervisor. OSU was a great place. You're right, OSU has a great Architectural Program. There is also one at OU in Norman. I like OSU better though.
I only got to visit the Engineering Department at OSU briefly while I was there doing my training for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. I eventually worked my way up to Building and Construction Administrator III. I stayed with the DOC for about 5 years, then went back to school in 1999 and finished a degree in Teaching. After that, I taught High School for awhile.
Through the years, I developed Epilepsy, started having severe seizures, and ended up having a stroke during brain surgery.
Now, I'm retired and am enjoying life as a farmer. In a way, I was blessed by this hardship. It allowed me to change course and to take a more peaceful path that I couldn't have otherwise experienced.
I'm thankful for what God has given me.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 13, 2017 23:41:55 GMT -6
Bon,
I never was an engineer. I just tried to learn everything I could to better work with my hands. Now, I just do a little homesteading and write for leisure rather than doing it for someone else. We cut our own firewood, raise our own meat, make a few cheeses, and pickles, do some gardening, make our own quilts, and try to live a more peaceful and less stressful life.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 16, 2017 9:52:19 GMT -6
This is the worst tomato year I've ever had. With all the rain this year, they became diseased and were turning yellow with black spotted leaves before they were 2 even feet tall. Many of them died before they ever set fruit. Now, all but half a dozen of over 200 caged plants are dead. The ones that lived are only barely alive, none of them are over two feet tall. I probably only got three grocery bags of tomatoes all season. The tomatoes would fester and ooze out white moldy juice and rot on the vine before they were ripe. Some of them have been dead for so long that the vines have decomposed, leaving no sign there was ever a plant there. I don't remember what varieties they were? I'll have to dig out the tags this Fall when it cools off and take note. I know one thing though... Every one of these plants came from Bonnie and were purchased at Lowe's in Tahlequah. I suspect they were contaminated with some sort of blight from the soil used at the nursery, as I have never seen such complete devastation of an entire crop within such a short period of time.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 24, 2017 15:24:24 GMT -6
Pecan wood is probably the best wood there is for smoking meats, even better than hickory. It has a flavor very similar to hickory smoke but does not leave a bitter after taste. Save any falling limbs for the grill. You'll thank yourself later. Pecan is excellent for smoking a Thanksgiving turkey.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 12, 2019 20:27:57 GMT -6
This year, I planted mostly, Early Girl Tomatoes. I set out 72 transplants on April 29th and when I went out to check on them today, they were already blooming. That seems crazy, knowing how young the plants were at the time of transplanting. None were root bound and none were over 6" inches tall at the time.
My raised beds and black plastic, combined with higher than normal rainfall, and a few warm days, have really caused these little plants to grow fast! I suppose the 2,500 pounds of chicken litter, one ton of composted leaves, 100 pounds of Austrian Winter peas that I planted as a Winter cover crop, and 560 pounds of pelletized lime may have had something to do with it as well?
I'll need to cage these plants this week before they get too big and become a major pain to trellis. They are growing really fast. Early Girls are a 55 day variety that grows tennis ball sized fruits. They are a good size for slicing and sell well at burger joints, because of their uniform size and shape. I usually harvest about a thousand pounds from 90 plants, but this year, I was only able to find 72 of them for sale. The rest of my 120 plants are Heidi, Baker Family Heirloom, black cherry, Super Fantastic, Better Boy, Beef Steak, and Yellow Pear. I grow a lot of tomatoes for the Tahlequah Farmers' Market, in addition to local restaurants, so that's why I planted such a wide variety. Hopefully, I can make everyone happy that way. I'm hoping to have lots of tomatoes for sale by July 4th. I already have 300 pounds of them spoken for, by a single customer who likes these Early Girls for canning salsa. Their smooth, round, shape and very small cores make them good candidates for the blanching pots when it's canning time in Mid-July to early August. Maybe, this year, the weather will cooperate. I've not had a good tomato year, since about 2014. Our crazy weather this past decade has really made gardening a tough business to be in.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 23, 2019 21:51:39 GMT -6
One of the advantages to planting Early Girl Tomatoes, is that you often end up being the first at the Farmers' Market with fresh, homegrown tomatoes. These tomatoes were just transplanted on April 29th and already have several fruit sets. With temperatures forecast to be in the high eighties, for the next several days, we should see astronomical leaf growth really soon! Sometimes, these plants will grow up to 6" inches per day, under the right conditions. When that happens, it sure does keep me hopping, trying to keep up with trellising over 100 plants per day. Within two or three days time, the limbs that have bolted will become too long to poke back inside the cages and will need to be supported by tying outside the cages with old tee-shirt rags. So far, this appears to be a very healthy crop of tomatoes, despite the incredible amount of rain we've had recently. These little tomatoes should begin ripening within the next 28 days, if my past experience with Early Girls remains to be true. A few of my Early Girls are approaching 24" inches in height already, only 24 days after transplanting, without pruning for that affect. That's rapidly approaching an inch per day of growth.
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Post by macmex on May 24, 2019 13:52:17 GMT -6
Be sure to save seed of Black Moor! I was given the original seed by a couple (Grunt and Grungy) I met over at the Homegrown Goodness forum. Both have since passed away. They were so very generous, overwhelming me with tomato seeds!
Grunt & Grungy's Blog site is still up.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 24, 2019 20:05:05 GMT -6
Good story, Bon. I always enjoy hearing about your gardening plans, I could really use some of your enthusiasm over here in Cherokee County. It has rained here every week for so many weeks that the weeds are really starting to take the place over from me not tilling in the mud. We've had 10" inches of rain in the month of May, alone. When it dries up a little bit, it will be so humid that weeding will be torture. It helps though if I set my sights at weeding only one row per day. My rows are 150' feet long... At that rate, I can have it all knocked out in 7 or 8 days. Plus, I could really use all the 'green manure' from pulling weeds to add to the compost pile that I depleted last Winter. All I really need is a wheelbarrow to put weeds in and a good attitude toward accomplishing my goal. I've already got a good wheelbarrow, so I'm half way there! That homemade compost is magical stuff! But it sure is hard work. I suppose, in the scope of life, anything worthwhile is going to be hard work. Hopefully, my bum knee will hold up until I'm through crawling around all next week, pulling weeds. Maybe, I'll send along a few photos as the weeds become ready to make some composting magic! I'll need to drive into town, to look for a bale of straw to mix with the green weeds as I pull them, because I used up all of my carbon supply this past Winter while working 2 or 3 acres of leaf litter into my garden soil. My hen house needs cleaning too, so that will time out just perfect for building up the layers as I go... Now, I wish it wasn't already dark outside, so I could go get started on it tonight! I apologize for the blurry photos, that's what happens when I try to take pictures without my glasses on. These are a couple of composting mulch piles that I've started already this week. They are just composed of dead, dry, Winter grasses that I set aside last year, for this purpose; lots of freshly pulled, Spring grasses, like Chickweed, and Hairy-vetch, plus a little topsoil as an enzyme to get the whole process rolling along. I didn't add any chicken litter to these two compost piles, because I don't want e-coli anywhere near my tomato plants. Any chicken litter added to any compost will be used to fertilize things not eaten raw, like to spread around the base of my baby pecan trees. (They are too young to bear this year, so they will benefit from the nitrogen boost without risking contamination.) In case you can't tell because of poor photography on my part, these are caged tomato transplants from some seeds planted about 8 weeks ago. (They are just babies right now), but they'll soon grow up to be part of my Fall crop, after the Early Girls are long played out and gone. This is why I've not been able to till my weeds for several weeks... It just won't stop raining long enough to get a tractor in there this Spring. No need for dismay though; this too, shall pass. By mid-July, we'll be glad for the accumulated moisture here on the low end of the garden. The cucumbers will love those moist conditions, but the okra prefers it a little higher and dryer.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 25, 2019 8:19:14 GMT -6
Bon,
Your mention of learning from 'successive growings' struck a chord with me. It reminded me that sometimes, I don't learn by past experience very well ...
In my head, I know successive plantings are the best way to go. I normally only plant a few tomato seeds every few weeks, or at 10-day intervals at least. That way, not all my tomatoes come on at once and overwhelm my market and my resources... Resources, such as time and energy to harvest and preserve them by canning, by dehydration, or by freezing.
Sometimes, my urge to plant outweighs my common sense. This year, I planted 72 tomato plants that were seeded into starter pots on the same day. Then, I followed that, by planting about 50 more a couple of weeks later, so this year, I only have two plantings a few weeks apart, rather than several successive plantings, ten, to fourteen, days apart.
When these come ripe in two large waves, I'll probably be sorry I jumped the gun at seed sowing time. I guess I can't help it? When Springtime comes, I get Spring Fever and feel like I gotta plant something.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 27, 2019 6:32:35 GMT -6
I got a chuckle out of that one, Bon. Here is an update on the Early Girl Tomatoes that I transplanted out to my garden on April 29th. (28 days ago). They are varying in size right now, ranging from 24" to 32" inches in height, Many of them have set fruit, some of the little, green, tomatoes are as large as 1-5/8" inches in diameter. It's really hard to hold up a ruler and snap a photo at the same time with one gimpy hand, so I just did my best, hoping the readers of this thread can make heads or tails of what I was trying to reference. I planted one row of Early Girl tomatoes on White Plasticulture this year, and then planted another row on Black Plasticulture; right beside them, just to see what would happen ... It's hard to foretell at this point, which color might work out best in the long run. In the beginning few weeks after transplanting, the tomato plants transplanted into Black Plasticulture grew about twice as fast as the tomato plants transplanted into White Plasticulture. As the weeks go by, it becomes harder to tell which ones are in the best condition. Right now, both rows are about the same height. However, the tomatoes transplanted into White Plasticulture seem to be filling in thicker. On the other hand; it looks like the tomatoes transplanted into Black Plasticulture are setting fruit a few days sooner than their counterparts planted into White. Because of this phenomena, there also seems to be more fruit early on, using Black Plasticulture. It will be interesting to see how the Summer heat affects these plants, or how Autumn temperatures might come into play. I'll try to keep you posted.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 4, 2019 10:59:38 GMT -6
I managed to get the whole garden tilled, just before the rains, but now, I can't get out there to enjoy it, for all the mud. I planted mostly, Early Girl Tomatoes this year ... No diseases are visible at this time, which is saying a lot, considering how much it has rained this year and all the handling of the plants that needs to be done to keep a hundred cages tended on a daily basis. I plant my rows wide enough apart to drive my pickup truck between the cages to harvest tomatoes and stack them directly onto the tailgate. I do that to keep from carrying tomato baskets half the length of a football field to the other end of these long rows. Every step counts when you are gardening and harvesting this many plants alone. I sure am glad I got all my tomato leaves poked back inside these cages before I tilled Saturday, because, now it's so muddy I can't step foot out there without losing a shoe. I took this photo for a comparison shot between the use of White Plasticulture and Black Plasticulture. It appears that the plants growing on White Plasticulture are filling in thicker around the bottom of the cages. (I don't know if that's good or bad), considering many soil borne pathogens take the vector of lower leaf canopy to spread disease among the plants. (The larger leaves in the foreground are cabbage plants that horned in on the shot).
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Post by glen on Jun 4, 2019 18:28:29 GMT -6
Looks beautiful Ron. Good work. I have only 6 tomato plants in pots in the back yard. Enough for my salads. Mine aren't looking nearly as nice as yours.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 4, 2019 21:01:21 GMT -6
Glen,
Those six tomato plants ought to be a lot more fun than what I've got going here, and six plants are plenty for the kitchen, for two people. You can pamper and spoil those babies!
Mine are kind of overwhelming sometimes; I'll want to compost the heck out of one or two, or prune some for a certain outcome, but it takes time away from everything else, so it rarely gets done. Gardening for fun was sure a lot more enjoyable than gardening for tractor payments.
It's a lot of hard work, but it sure is a "feel good" thing when it all comes together.
Bill Trammel, and I, used to drive the dirt roads, handing out surplus garden crops from the back of a wagon, pulled by a team of his mules. Bill was my neighbor, down the dirt road, about half a mile from here. He had once made the comment that he wished he had some good ground to break a pair of mule colts to plow. Then, I commented how I'd like to have a team of mules to break some good ground ...
It was sort of like one of those old Reese's chocolate and peanut butter commercials; before we knew it, we had a hundred pounds of red potatoes planted and then a hundred tomato vines, who knows how many cucumbers, squash, onions, cabbage, turnips, green beans, corn, and okra plants we put out that year? We planted a half acre garden that Summer. We couldn't eat it all, so we gave away what we couldn't put up in the pantry.
We kept that up until the Farmers' Market started in Tahlequah, because there was no where to sell things back then.
After the Farmers' Market got started, we gradually stopped driving the dirt roads, but we still had surplus from time to time, and started donating it to nursing homes in town. Eventually, Bill got too gimped up to garden with me anymore, but I still give it a go every now and again. Hopefully, I'll be loaded with enough surplus to give tomatoes away at the nursing homes again this year. I love seeing those folks get those boxes of good, vine ripe, garden tomatoes. I take them okra too, but that's not quite as easy to pass around. I usually just leave a few paper grocery bags of okra on the table, beside the shopping cart, so they can take what they need and push the cart back to their room. (It kind of acts as a walker) that way, no one falls down while trying to carry a grocery bag.
I can usually pass 20 pounds of tomatoes out by hand pretty quick, but okra takes several individual bags, plus you never know how many to put in each person's bag.
I leave a few tomatoes at different locations, so no one gets overburdened. Tahlequah is kind of the Nursing Home Capitol of Oklahoma, so there are plenty of places needing fresh veggies in Summer ... Some of those smiles are worth more than a hundred dollars.
I used to be kind of the go-to-guy at the Farmers' Market, for one old man in particular; He would search me out and buy my biggest tomato of the year, to use as his seed stock.
In 2012, I grew a German Johnson Pink tomato that was 18" inches in circumference. I couldn't bring myself to sell that thing, so I gave it to Him when he came around; he was more than 90-years-old at the time ... The gratitude that I saw in his eyes on that day was worth all the work I'll ever do on any tomato for the rest of my life.
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Post by glen on Jun 6, 2019 12:28:56 GMT -6
Ron, that is a nice story and I know that the residents of the nursery home really appreciate getting real organic locally grown tomato's with real flavor. I know it is hard living in an elderly residents home. Those folks deserve a little extra from time to time and those tomato's make em feel loved. Good job!! I know what it is like to live where you feel isolated sometimes since I live in the country side here in Panama. Very few English speakers.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 6, 2019 20:53:04 GMT -6
I hear ya, Glen. And very few tomatoes there too. Your story reminds me of the two years I spent, 3,000 miles away from home. There is nothing there that is familiar to you and it gets pretty lonesome.
Sounds like this year, at least you'll have some Heidi Tomatoes to supply you with a little taste of home. I'm glad George sent you those seeds when he did.
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