Heavy Hitter Okra

[woodeye]

heavyhitterokra, I forgot all about the plastic that you use for your okra. That definitely would not be good to get that wrapped up all inside the brush hog. The job of removing a garden hose that my brush hog found was bad enough, but the worst thing I have ever hit (so far) was a old hidden barb wire fence that was laying down in tall grass. It took the better part of a day to ever get that mess out of there. Anyway, I'm happy that you got the last of the stalks taken care of today.

hahaha, yeah I don't think the email stuffing scheme is gonna work out for any of us.

I got an email notification that my onion plants are on the move now, but surprisingly the delivery day not until Friday. They left Shreveport, LA this morning, and although it's about 400 miles for them to travel, it seems like 4 days is a long time to go that distance. I have the tiller on the tractor, just waiting until I get the plants in my possession, and the rainfall total I get is confirmed, before I can plan a definite planting day...

[heavyhitterokra]

I've had things like that happen here before with mail-ordered onions. They didn't arrive when I thought they would, then the weather went foul and my garden became too muddy to work. I made the mistake of feeling sorry for the transplants when they arrived and gave them some water before my garden was dried up enough to work. Boy, was that ever a mistake. The water brought them out of dormancy and caused them to start sprouting and rooting in the case. What a setback! Untangling those long roots later caused them to become stunted. Live and learn I guess?

[woodeye]

I did the very same thing years ago, boy was it a maddening experience getting those things apart. Yep, live and learn, and then try to remember how you done it.

All I do now is open the box, take the rubber bands off each bunch and stand them up in the shipment box, which is usually a medium size flat rate box for 10 bunches, and leave them in a cool bedroom until planting day. 

When I was much younger, I could find good plants at the feed store in Chandler. Those days are over for the most part, the last time I bought some that way production was dismal. I have gotten my onion plants from Brown's of Omaha, Texas every time since. Not sure why, but the plants from that grower do much, much better for me than mail order onion plants from other growers. 

They will be okay for a couple of weeks like this. This is 10 bunches of Candy onion transplants back in 2018.

[heavyhitterokra]

Man, Woodeye, Candy Onions are the bomb!

A slice of candy onion between two slices of bread and a piece of bologna makes a meal around here. Add to that, a slice of garden-ripe tomato and you've got a meal fit for a King! Even our dogs like Candy Onions.

Thanks, for that tip about Brown's, the Omaha, Texas onion supplier.  I've not heard of them before, I've always bought my onions from Dixondale.  It's nice to know they have some competition.

[Raul R Castilla]

How can I get (buy) some Heavy Hitter seeds? Thanks

[heavyhitterokra]

To: Raul R Castilla,

I apologize that it took so long for me to see your post. I've been busy building a fence and clearing out old garden plants for Spring. We have an okra seed-selling website, www.heavyhitterokra.com/


Thank you for your interest.

[Tucson Grower]

heavyhitterokra, once the seed have begun to sprout in the napkin and you plant them out, how long does it usually take before they pop up?

[heavyhitterokra]

Tucson,

That is a very good question that I can't believe I don't really know the answer to.

If I was just making something up I'd say about three days, but that's just off the top of my head.

They are sometimes a little troublesome in sandy soil too, being how they have large seed leaves. Sometimes they like doing handstands until they kill themselves, so you have to watch them fairly closely unless you have enough seed to replant.

[Tucson Grower]

heavyhitterokra, Thanks for getting back to me about the sprouts. Since the night before, when I planted a dozen of each of these HH sprouts into 2, 12-pacs (24 total), sometime the next morning many radicles, though not all, had found their way to the drain opening of their individual cells. Now, several days later, many have already popped up, but only in one cell-pac, the other has many swan-necking, but not any popped. It could be because, at the time there was room under the lights, but not on the heat mat. I realize, there is now room on the mat - I think I'll move them right now.

Very sandy, for sure, where they are in the garden. I'm keeping an eye, out, absolutely, to be sure nothing goes wonky. This first year is most important to the success of my red heavy hitter project.

[Tucson Grower]

Well, since they spent the last few hours at 80F, on the heat mat, both 12-pacs look almost the same - each cell has a sprout, many are beyond their swan-neck stage, all have left their seed coats behind in the media. This would explain why they're being much slower outside, our daytime temps warm the soil well, when the sun is shining on them, but, at night the air temps dip into the low 50sF and even the mid 40sF, sometimes. Though I have a wide assortment of okra sprouts, in cell-pacs, which are continuing to develop in those conditions.

[heavyhitterokra]

Okra is very temperature sensitive, especially during the development stage. Nighttime temperatures in the 40s stunt the heck out of okra seedlings when they are young. One year I had the bright idea of planting a hoop house full of okra almost a month early, thinking the warmth of the hoop house would really put them ahead. Trouble is, it's only warmer out there during the daytime. At night, it was regularly dropping to 45°.

When summer came, the plants that were growing outside the hoop house did a lot better than the okra planted inside the hoop house. The only difference was that the okra planted outside had been planted two or three weeks later and had not experienced the cooler nights.

Looking back on that, I think that the higher daytime temperatures probably contributed to their demise by causing an even greater fluctuation in temperature between night and day.

Just my thoughts on the subject though. I still have a lot to learn.

[Tucson Grower]

I too, find that I am constantly learning, and sometimes to my chagrin, relearning.

Here's hoping they will avoid some of that stunting, by staying subterranean, like the peanuts did. If not, it's why I planted the two 12-pacs, on the heat mat, so I could ameliorate some of my foibles, of this type. And, just-in-case, I still have four backup packs of 50 seed each.

[Tucson Grower]

I just checked on the 12-pacs, nearly every one are now fully emerged, with root/radicle down and cotyledon/seed leaves up. Only a few have yet to unfurl their seed leaves completely. At least the mice aren't interested in any of the okra seedlings. Hopefully they will be ready to transplant, if that becomes necessary. Either way, I plan to put these fully to use; as fill-in or as an entirely new row, if the originals make it. If those already planted show any signs of stunting, I will only save seed from non-stunted plants (epigenetics could mess with my goals, otherwise).

Epigenetics is a method nature uses to control the phenotype without permanently changing the genome. Environmental influences can affect the phenotype of those affected plants progeny, sometimes for several generations.

[Tucson Grower]

Serendipity just struck. About a week ago I pre-soaked 56 HH seeds, then wrapped them in a moist paper towel and sealed them in a ziploc bag. In about 2-3 days, at my chilly, unheated room temperature (goes down to about 60F, most nights), every single one of them were sticking their radicles out. Several days later I did the same with a batch of SIR seed, but only one promptly stuck out its radicle. The remainder of the SIR seed I was about to write off, but thought to see what would happen if I squeezed the SIR ziploc into a spot between cell-pacs on the 80F heat mat. After all, what could it hurt. So, I did that last night, this morning when I checked on it, half of the ungerminated seed have now begun germinating. I'd say, some okra seed are more temperature sensitive, than others. 80F is probably a good temperature for germination testing.

[heavyhitterokra]

I hear ya, Tucson, anything that gets the job done.

Back in the days before the advent of heating pads at my place, I'd place germinating seeds on top of the hot water tank to keep them warm. Since the tank is thickly insulated (at least mine was) it never got very hot up there, only about 80 or 90 degrees. Some winters (early-spring) I've germinated whole seed trays of peppers and tomatoes down on the floor behind my wood stove in a place where it doesn't get too hot or too cold.

I've also incubated seeds in my shirt pockets, even taking them to bed with me in my pajama pockets to keep them warm at night. Anything to keep them warm. I've lost a few good seeds that way to being squished right as the root tip was appearing, but if you watch them closely and remove them from your pockets just as the seed coat begins cracking they will be alright. They just need that initial heat source until their seed coat splits open.

When I first started gardening I didn't know that about seeds and wondered why I was getting such spotty germination. I think when I was kid growing up, things like that were kept some sort of 'big secret' due to nursery owners wanting to protect their trade and keep on selling transplants.

I remember asking Rhoda Burgess how to germinate tomato seeds once, and all she told me was, "Plant them in February." She never mentioned anything about incubating them. I lost countless tomato and pepper seeds to hypothermia in those days by trying to germinate them in a dish pan on the kitchen table. Of course, we heated with wood in those days and there were times in February when ice would form in a glass of water left on the kitchen table. We had well water and a bucket back then, and no pipes to freeze, so little care was taken at night to avoid freezing temperatures. (That's what feather beds, wool blankets, and homemade quilts were for). In today's world of gas heat and running water that rarely happens.