Heavy Hitter Okra

[fourteenmilecreek]

Here is the URL of 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.

pics.davesgarden.com/pics/2012/02/13/fourteenmilecreek/6ef6d1.jpg

[glen]

I believe that Snickering bears observation that day length has something to do with the fact that my plants refuse to Bloom could be correct. I am not worried though. I have planted okra here in April before one other time. I used a variety from Southern Seed Exchange called Green okra. I planted in extremely por soil, only using a Little compost and cheap fertilizer. The plants grew very quickly and within 60 days I was harvesting okra. I don't what was different except maybe day length.

[fourteenmilecreek]

Glen,

I've been reading where okra bloom is day length sensitive, but Clemson Spineless is not as sensitive as other varieties. Reportedly, a day length of 11 hours or less causes flowers to bloom on most okra, but days longer than 11 hours cause okra to abort. According to UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS, AT PINE BLUFF: Clemson Spineless is not photo period sensitive and is the long excepted standard for growing in temperate regions where day length is longer. Heavy Hitter was developed from the Clemson Spineless variety.

However, I have noticed more than once, that I lose several pods each year, for about the first two weeks of bloom. They abort when the pod is only about 1/2" an inch long. I've always credited that to wet, cold nights, but now, I'm not sure? That also coincides with the longest days in mid June. After June 21st or days get shorter.

During that time, I have pruned excessive leaf growth to promote air circulation to help dry the plants out earlier in the day. It might just be coincidence that they stop aborting pods soon thereafter?

I've got heavy hitter growing in Monrovia, Liberia, Africa. They have reported heavy harvests there. Their planting season starts in late December - to late January. Days to maturity are about 56 to 60, I don't know the day length there during harvest?

[glen]

Ron, I am extremely confident that I am going to be successful with the heavy hitter sedes. I am not even worried about it in the least. I will let everyone know how well it does right here on the fórum. I have never had problems growing okra until this last try. And, my current plants look fine also. They are just not blooming or trying to Bloom, nor are they even growing anymore. I also know where some okra is growing now in someone elses yard, a variety that I have never seen before, and I noticed that those plants aren't blooming or setting fruit either. My entire garden has actually shut down somewhat due to the time of year it is. Bittermelon is not producing now, nor are the beans or luffa. They are just sulking. My tomato's have shut down as well. I noticed that my chili peppers are not putting out new blooms either. Its just the time of year that it is. When I plant that Okra this April I am going to have a good crop. I am very confidant in it. Once we get close to the beginning of the rainy season here things take off like a rocket ship. I truly believe that the issue here is day length which would vary mostly likely. Or, there is some kind of cycle here that affects plant growth. Cause everything here seems to just be shut down starting in Dec. The temps are pretty much the same all year long. The only thing that seems to be growing at all is the Cuban pumpkins.

[idigmygarden]

Ron,

From what I've read, you have the best okra in the World. I have been growing okra for a number of years, but have not seen any plants that look as intriguing as your Heavy Hitter. Great pictures, you have a wonderful garden!

I am definitely putting this variety on my wish list for Spring!

Cheers

[macmex]

Ron asked me to get this picture in here. This is the picture he mentioned, which he had posted on Dave's Garden.

[glen]

Ron, that is a very impressive photo. It appears that a family would only need about 3 of those plants to have all the okra they needed. Maybe even 2 plants would be plenty. A home gardener could even stage the plantings to insure a steady supply for the whole summer if you had a long enough season. Absolutely beautiful.

[fourteenmilecreek]

Glen,

That particular plant changed my mindset from being a gardener who reaps everything he sows, to being a seed saver, who sets things back for coming years. The last time I picked that plant, I got 44 tender pods in one morning. That was the day I decided to set it aside to bare seeds; that takes several weeks time though. Despite my best efforts, it was killed by an early hard freeze shortly after that photo was taken. I only salvaged 5 pods of mature okra seeds from it, most of which I donated to OSU for use at their experimental agriculture research station.

That was the year I learned to be more cautious, to share with others, and to grow seed crops in multiple locations to insure survival from the rigors and steady onslaught of nature. The year I grew that plant, I had planted 1,500 Heavy Hitter okra seeds. That plant was one of about six that survived a tornado, a flood of 22' inches of rain in 11 days, an ice storm the 1st of May, a drought that started the next day, and lasted for over a year, a wildfire that burned several homes to the ground, driving legions of grasshoppers ahead of it, 65 consecutive days over 100 degrees, two weeks over 110 degrees, one day that hit 115 degrees, Japanese Beetles, and deer predation, only to be killed by a freak storm that brought sustained temperatures in the low 20s nearly a month ahead of schedule. I nearly lost a decade worth of work in the span of one night.

Because of the wildfire that drove so many grasshoppers ahead of it, we spent the next two years going out at night with flashlights and gathering about 3,000 to 5,000 grasshoppers per trip. There were so many that they ate the bark off the apple trees, killing an entire orchard within a few weeks. George had the idea of gathering them with a wet-vac, which worked very well once I got power to the garden 500' feet from the house. We found out by and by, that the best way to catch grasshoppers was to go out just before dawn, while they were still slow from cool temperatures, and grab them a handful at a time, feeding them to the suction hose of a portable wet-vac that I made from a 5 gallon bucket.

One morning, while drowning about half a 5 gallon bucket of grasshoppers at the River, a Game Ranger drove up on me and asked, "Why are you fishing with a vacuum cleaner?"

[macmex]

This is one reason that regional adaptation is so important. It is also why, sometimes, a variety from another region does well here. That other region may have similar conditions.

Ron, I remember that summer! For a month and a half I was out from 3:30 to 4:30 AM, almost every day, vacuuming a couple of gallons of grasshoppers. I would stick them in the deep freeze while I went to work and then feed them to the poultry in the evening. Somewhere I have a picture of a plastic water bucket, in one of our goat pens, that got knocked over and left in the sun on one of the hottest days. It MELTED!

George

[glen]

Ron, I think you are doing the right thing by sharing the seed. As food prices get higher and higher people need plant variety's that can do well in the Victory Garden. My theory is that the US dollar is going to eventually go down in value, lowering our standard of living. I believe we are in a global recession. In the future, the victory garden could make a comeback. You cannot wait for a crisis to happen to start learning to grow your own food. Its a process. So, for me, learning to grow edibles in a severe environment is part of the process for me. Okra and sweet potato's are important for this.

[fourteenmilecreek]

My Daughter and I went out on the day it got up to 115 degrees, on August 2nd of that year and put a digital thermometer in the stake hole of our black trailer. It went up to 140 degrees, then burned out the LCD display of the thermometer. We cracked an egg on the hot steel to see if it would really fry, but it dehydrated so fast in the 20 mile an hour wind that it just shriveled up in a white, bubbly, mess that is probably still stuck to the trailer bed. (That was the day of the wildfire that came over Moodys Hill, bringing the grasshoppers ahead of the smoke and flames. That night, we went out with a flashlight and the grasshoppers were so thick on the apple trees that they were touching each other in a writhing mass of insect flesh, tobacco juice, and crawly legs. Thank the Lord for grocery stores that Winter, because we would have starved. (Was that the year of the 20" inch snow storm, and the 15 below zero temperatures that froze the peach and apple blossoms in the wood, so they never boomed?) I know it was the year I grew the Heavy Hitter okra in the Dave's Garden photo, because the Department of Agriculture drove out from Oklahoma City to see it, and booked me at the Bricktown Convention Center to show people the roots and branches of it after they dug it up that Fall.

[green eggs and ham]

I first saw your post on Garden Web, then came here to read more. This okra is amazing! I've got a small garden and I am going to give Heavy Hitter a try. I Can't wait for the beginning of the planting season!

[macmex]

Glen, I completely agree with your post, three places up from here. And, in regard to sweet potatoes, I would add that they are exceedingly nutritious and have high production of very useful nutrition. I don't know the exact term, but what I mean, is that they are something, that, if I had to subsist on them, I wouldn't feel deprived. I'm pretty sure, that with some greens and protein to supplement them. a person would do just fine. We ought to start a thread on sweet potatoes! Duck Creek Farms is our local expert on those.

Ron, I'm not sure, but I suspect that exceedingly cold winter was a year or so before the record breaking hot summer. But then, I could be wrong.

Green Eggs & Ham, welcome!

[glen]

MacMex, You are very correct about the sweet potato's and yes, a thread should be started. Maybe I should start it? Sweet potato's are important for different reasons in the US. The US produces a lot of sweet potato's but they are used mostly in baby food. People don't eat them that much in the US as a staple. But, in the tropics, sweet potato's are extremly important as a food source since they love heat, humidity, rainy seasons etc. You just about can't kill them. Okra is the same way. In fact, Okra and sweet potato's should get married since they can be grown together in the home garden. The okra towers over the spuds. The spuds will just crawl around under the okra. You can just walk in the patch of Green and pick the okra since it doesn't seem to bother the spuds much. I let the sweet potato's grow under my fruit tres or under the banana tres etc and that doesn't bother them either. Sweet potato's need very Little fertilizer or wáter and the pests leave em alone pretty much also. Same with the okra. Super easy, super productive and super nutricious. Even a beginner gardener can grow both of these plants successfully. Oh, the leave of both the okra and the sweet potato's are bother super nutricious and delicious. In fact, the sweet potato's have protein in them and are even more nutricious than the spuds. I have at least 3 different types of sweet potato's growing now in the garden. They look good but they aren't growing much. All that changes as we approach the rainy season when the vines will grow 6 inches or more per day though. Start a sweet potato thread Macmex. That would be a great idea.

[fourteenmilecreek]

George,

You got me curious, so I went back and read my weather journal. January 31, through February 2, of 2011 we got 10" inches of snow here; then February 8-9, we got another 10" inches of snow on top of that. February 10th, got down to -15 here and as low as -28 in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. It froze the peach, pear, and apple blossoms in the wood and killed them. None of our fruit trees bloomed that year. We built a 7'foot tall snow fort on the side of the hill, and built the "ARMASLEDON" sled jump trail down the side of the pass that we had cleared while cutting firewood. People came all the way from Tahlequah to ride on it.

When my Father-in-Law and I went out the 1st of March to plow the garden with his 1950 David Bradley walk behind tractor it wouldn't pull. We thought that was strange, as it had pulled just fine the year before. When we raised the plow, it had ice on the point. We found that we were trying to plow 8" inches of black mud that was sitting on a layer of frozen red clay.

I planted 1,500 Heavy Hitter okra seeds on April 15th, as it was unseasonably warm that month...

On April 21st it was 28 degrees; we got freezing rain, but the okra was barely opening at the two leaf stage, and was below grade, in warm, black Plasticulture, so it was not hurt by the cold.

On April 22, 2011 a tornado touched down 2 miles East by Southeast of Moodys, knocking down several huge oak, hickory, cherry, walnut, and hackberry trees in a straight line from Combs Bridge to the Moodys Cemetery. Bill Trammell and I cut 25 ricks of wood from the cemetery between April 23, and May 10 in order to have the grave sites cleaned up and mowed for Decoration Day...

From April 21, through May 1, we had freezing rain, 22" inches of hard rain, and tornado fallout that ripped out 114 of my 200 tomato cages, wire, stakes, fence posts, and all, but didn't kill most of the tomato plants. They were safe from freezing rain, because the black Plasticulture was still warm when the storm hit.

May 18, deer ate all but 300 of my 1,500 heavy hitter okra plants. Army worms ate my whole lettuce crop. We were too busy hauling up the 25 ricks of wood in the 90 degree weather to re-plant the garden. Deer came again and ate over 300 cucumber starts, most of my green beans, corn, and most of the remaining okra. (This would have been a great year to let the garden lay fallow).

Our first 100 degree day came in June, we had 65 consecutive days over 100 degrees, during that 65 day period two weeks were over 110 degrees; we were in a hard drought, but the ground water staved it off for the first month of high temperatures; by the second month, the tomatoes were all but dead. 100 degree plus temperatures and hard winds burned the blossoms off the plants, before pollination. On August 2nd, it was 115 degrees. The air conditioner over heated and shut off. The truck driver delivering my refrigerator refused to drive down our dirt road, and dumped it off at Moodys Store. I had to borrow Bill's one ton truck to go get it off the loading dock. No one was in a good mood that day.

It was late August to early September before my okra started really bearing. That was a blessing in disguise though, because the school needed okra, and I had a 20 pound per day business for a couple weeks at top prices, everyone else had quit gardening by mid July. I also grew my record production Heavy Hitter okra plants during that time, as the deer had eaten the rows down, leaving 20' feet or more between many of the plants. That made it easy to tend, because I was rationing water, plus the weeds never grew that year, so there was very little that needed to be done, aside from concentrating on my okra plants.