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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jan 9, 2019 1:27:43 GMT -6
If anyone would like to buy seeds from these Heavy Hitter Okra plants, contact me by email: heavyhitterokra@gmail.com
I am out in my garden daily, but I check my email each evening when I come in, as that is where most of my new seed orders come from. I ship orders the same day as I receive them.
Well, looks like lunchtime is over, back to the garden now. I have lots of compost to spread while the weather is still decent.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jan 15, 2019 21:33:35 GMT -6
This rainy weather has put the kibosh on my composted leaf spreading project. Every time I get one wheelbarrow load of wet, composted, leaves pushed nearly the length of a football field from the woods to my garden, it takes all I've got just to spread them out and go home.
Something in there stirs my asthma so badly that it's all I can do just to walk back home, wheezing, and huffing, and puffing as if I've just finished running a marathon. I'll sure be glad when it dries out a bit.
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Post by Lovecestrum on Jan 16, 2019 5:36:56 GMT -6
Hi Ron, Hope you have been keeping well and loved looking at all your photos and updates. I’ve been trying my best to nurture and care for my last heavy hitter okra which was gifted few years ago, thank you. Despite constant watering and seaweed feeds, the plant doesn’t seem to be growing much and the weather has been optimal here in Australia. Perhaps it is stunted? If so, can this plant be saved and resume it’s normal growing habits? Thanks, K
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Post by john on Jan 16, 2019 7:09:30 GMT -6
Hi Ron, great job ammending the garden and building your soil. It is a big investment of time money and labor. But it does pay off in the form of many, many years of healthy productive plants.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jan 16, 2019 12:55:20 GMT -6
@ Lovecestrum,
Do you know how old your Heavy Hitter plant is?
Just like us, they have a lifespan. There comes a point which there is nothing you can do except save seed and replant. My plants live from April until October up here, then frost kills them before they have lived a full life, although, when shorter days of Autumn begin here in Mid September, the shorter days certainly take a toll on the plant's vigor. They begin shedding leaves, and production drops to almost nil.
Even though the plants are still living at that point, they are most certainly past their 'prime.' My climate doesn't allow me to 'know' for certain just how long these plants could remain productive if the days were longer and the nights were warmer. For me, the productive life span is only about 5 months, then Autumn decline sets in and they eventually are killed by freezing weather.
Hope this helps some. Let us know where you are with the age of your plant. I'll try to help by answering any questions that I can. Contact me by email: heavyhitterokra@gmail.com We'll figure out some way to keep you in okra for a while longer.
Best of luck, Ron Cook
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jan 30, 2019 1:55:22 GMT -6
Bon,
I've tried several methods over the years, and find that when I use raised beds with a drip line down the center, then cover those raised beds with black plastic, I get the best results. The black plastic helps build up heat in early Spring.
When the plants become tall enough to provide their own shade, the heat is no problem. (Just don't use black plastic on crops with very little foliage like onions, or cool season crops like cabbage). For those, I use white plastic.
The plastic retains moisture below the surface and helps microbes to break down nutrients for my plants to live on.
You can read page 34 of the report that OSU submitted at the end of their 2018 field trials for confirmation. I'll post a link below. Heavy Hitter Okra planted in black plastic yielded 17,430 pounds per acre (581 bushels @ 30 pounds per bushel) in their black Plasticulture trials. www.hortla.okstate.edu/research-extension-youth/vegetables/pdfs/18vegreport.pdfI also amend my garden soil with lots of dead leaves, wheat straw, aged chicken litter, and a Winter cover crop of Austrian Winter Peas that I plow under each Spring.
Best of luck this year, Bon. I always enjoy reading your reports.
Tomorrow is the last day of January. Winter is waning and it's nearly garden plowing time again, so I thought I'd paste this old photo and a short gardening story. This is a photo of Bill Trammel, plowing my garden with his old red mule, named, "Earl. The photo was taken in February of 2011.
(I sure do miss those days)...
Bill, Earl, and I are in no shape to do plowing like this anymore, but up until 2013, we would make our rounds each February, plowing several gardens along the way. Bill would show up at my house at Seven O'clock in the morning, driving a team of horses, pulling a wagon load of various plows, discs, and a harrow. I'd climb in and we'd take off. He'd have two mules tied behind the wagon following us, his black mule named, "Rita" and his red mule named, "Earl."
We'd plow gardens for our neighbors, on 5 different farms, all in the same week. We would hitch a different draft animal to the plow as they became fidgety from the boredom of watching the others work. (You could tell which draft animal was ready to plow next by the way they would become restless and start chewing things up, back at the wagon). It would take about a week to get everyone's garden broke in early February. We did this in February, in order for the turned up grass roots to be exposed to a good, hard, freeze or two before Spring weather arrived. Then, on Saint Patrick's Day, we'd come back around with a Lister, to open deep furrows, in order to plant about 300 pounds of potatoes between the 5 farms.
(A Lister is a type of plow with a double moldboard, used to prepare the ground for planting by producing furrows and ridges). I wish I had a photo, but I don't.
At the end of planting time, we'd all get together to cut up the 'eyeless' potato cores that were left over from the 300 pounds of potatoes. When that was done, someone would fry up a big mess of catfish and fried potatoes with onions. After all that work, everyone was ready for a big shindig, so while the men were tending to the mules, wagon, plows, and horses, the ladies would be frying up a big meal.
When July 4th came around, we'd come back with the mules and horses, to help dig and harvest all the potatoes that were planted back in March. Everyone worked together, going farm to farm and we'd have another big fish fry after the harvest was done. (This time, with freshly dug potatoes, onions, corn on the cob, cucumbers in vinegar, and a big mess of fried okra).
Over the next few weeks, Bill and I would load his wagon with freshly dug potatoes, onions, corn, vine ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, and okra, then, we'd head off down the dirt roads, stopping at each house along the way to see if anyone could use some vegetables. We'd usually make it about 5 miles before we ran out of things to give away.
On one of those trips, two ladies we had never seen before, pulled up behind us on the dirt road, honking their car horn and asking if their two kids could ride along in the wagon. We said, "Sure". After the kiddos were loaded up, the two women drove up ahead of us and disappeared around the corner. Bill and I thought they were just driving on ahead to park and wait for the wagon to catch up, so they could get their kids back.
We drove the wagon for several miles, then turned back to see if we'd missed them. By then, we were slowly beginning to realize we had been 'taken for a couple of rubes'.
After about three or four hours of searching, we found the two women at their house and gave their kids back. They had gone shopping at Walmart and just left their kids for us to babysit for the day.
Oh, well, Bill and I enjoyed another day of running the roads and handing out free veggies, and the kids had a good time passing tomatoes to people as we went along.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Feb 4, 2019 19:38:05 GMT -6
Bon,
Sometimes, when I need cardboard for something like covering beds or composting, I go behind the City Hospital and ask the janitors and dock workers if they'll save me some big boxes. (The hospital gets a lot of equipment, tables, chairs, things like that). They usually come up with something the same day I ask.
Also, places like Tractor Supply, Lowes, and Atwoods start getting their riding mowers in pretty soon after Valentine's Day. If you ask them, they might save you a big box from a mower. (Some of them come on pallets) but they usually have boxes too.
Cardboard ought to work almost as good as plastic, if you can find a place to get it for free, that would be a great plan. (Just remember to lay a soaker hose before you cover the ground with plastic or cardboard, or watering in hot Summer will be difficult if not impossible to do.
You should check with some of the experts on the PUMPKIN page of this website to ask what they use for compost to keep weeds down. Every time I plant pumpkins, they present a really big weed problem, so I stopped planting them inside my garden. I'd like to know how other folks control weeds in the melon and pumpkin patches where they garden.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Feb 8, 2019 10:40:29 GMT -6
Bon,
That arched trellis sounds like fun! I've seen those before in other gardens, but have never built one for myself. All my cattle panels get used up keeping cattle out of my garden. My old, barbed wire, garden fence got struck by lightning that evaporated about 900' feet of barbed wire. (Not just my garden fence), but the entire length of the fence, from one end to the other. It blew several steel tee posts out of the ground and showered the area with short strands of barbed wire anywhere from the length of one barb, to about 5' or 10' feet long. I have a one-gallon-can full of the barbs that I've found laying around like meteor fragments. (I still haven't found them all and gotten them cleaned off the ground.)
I need to go out there someday during Winter, while the grass is all dead and just pick up barbed wire all day. The lightning was so hot, it even burned a hole in my steel garden gate where the chain was wrapped around the gate post. Now, I have cattle panels down the whole length of my old garden fence. That way, I can take them down and lay them flat to drive my tractor down my fence row and till weeds every Summer. I have a post puller too, so I can remove the whole fence for maintenance, now.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Feb 10, 2019 9:38:12 GMT -6
Prairie fields don't heal very well. They'll cover back in a spot as big as a Volkswagen, but anything much bigger than that will leave a permanent scar. Our home back in Hulbert used to be surrounded by prairie hay, because it was so near the lake, that the Corps of Engineers owned all the land adjacent to us.
When the Government sold that surplus land in the '90s people started bailing hay off of it and killed it all out. Now, it's just hundreds of acres of sedge grass and thickets. It used to be full of wildflowers (many of them medicinal) like Snakeroot, Marsh Mallow, and Coneflower. Now, it's all just weeds and invasive grasses from too much human activity.
I envy your prairie ground. Those kinds of fields are beautiful.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Feb 13, 2019 0:36:27 GMT -6
I've been out in the garden, sowing Winter Wheat in some of the bare spots where deer decimated my Winter Peas.
Wow! was it muddy out there!
I almost got my truck stuck in the mud, just from slowing down as I drove past the gate. I did finally get 50 pounds of wheat seeds sown over the peas, but things were a muddy mess by the time I was done.
I'll bet the crows will be happy out there tomorrow! I'll have to come back in a little while and get myself a couple 'Black Partridges' for Valentines' Day Dinner. I'll tell my Wife, "They're Cornish Hens".
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 4, 2019 16:32:21 GMT -6
Bon,
No'Black Partridge" yet.
Those crows are crafty. They post lookouts. My garden is 500' feet South of my house. Every time I hear the crows raiding my garden and slip out the back to see if I can get a crack at one, a crow way up in a tree, right outside my door will sound a warning call and they all take off.
Unless I have nothing to kill one with, then they seem to do crazy stuff, like two of them fighting over a red plastic cup all the way to the ground, as if I was not even there watching them.
After the fight, I just had to go see what was so interesting inside that cup, that the crows would do such a crazy thing like that.
When I got to the spot where the two crows had abandoned the red cup, I saw that it had melted ice cream in the bottom of it from a recent Birthday party for one of our grandkids.
Next subject: Has your dead elm tree fallen yet?
George pulled off a pretty good crop of pumpkins one year by planting them in the wreckage of a fallen maple tree.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 4, 2019 16:36:19 GMT -6
Spring, right around what corner?
I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready for this winter weather to end. It snowed again last night and was still only 9 degrees by 8:00 am this morning. Saint Patrick's Day is two weeks away and our soil is still frozen solid about 4" inches below grade.
I've got 5 more rows of plasticulture to pull off before I can plow this coming Spring, which is what... 17 days away?
At least, I did finally get all my okra and Roselle pulled.
I did accidentally discover a better way to 'pull' my okra this season. However, it might be unique to my situation? I have all raised beds with plasticulture stretched over the top. I discovered a couple of weeks ago, that there is a 'zone of decay' that takes place just above the soil, but below the plasticulture. If you give the pant a quick shove, about 8" inches above that ring of decay, the shock of that force will break most of them in half. It's similar to the way karate works. You've got to shove it hard and quick to get that shock effect, otherwise, it will just bend like a bundle of wet noodles.
I was able to 'knock down' more okra in one day than I could have possibly pulled by the roots in two weeks. (What a back saver!)
Now, all I've got to do is to pick them all up and take them to the Hugelkulture pile.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 4, 2019 19:35:39 GMT -6
Bon, I probably only remember about half of what I've learned over the years, and still, don't understand a quarter of what I know. Do you have a jigsaw and a drill? That would be easier to work with than a 4" inch hole saw bit. I do a lot of woodwork. On something like chipboard, I'd just mark my layout lines and drill a 3/8" inch hole where ever I wanted to get my jigsaw blade started and then cut out each circle by hand. Every Autumn, I make these wooden, Haloween candy boxes from sawmill pallet lumber, using a 3/8 drill and a jigsaw. Oddly enough, the face on the lower right corner is my best seller. In October, I see these things all over town and know they all came from the little woodshop in my backyard. I made them tough, to be used year after year. I've sold about 30 of them so far. The lids all come off, so you can put candy inside or else light them like a Jack-O'-Lantern using an LED flicker light instead of a candle. One of the Banks in town has three of them across the Teller's counter for their customers to get treats from. If you want to avoid cutting all those holes, you can space the plywood about 4" inches apart and plant your okra between two boards. I've done that with scraps of old carpeting before. The drawback with using carpet is that it doesn't degrade very well and will leave long strands of Rayon to get tangled in your equipment for about 10 years. That's why I now use black plastic. I can tear that out pretty easily to be disposed of later. Make sure if you use chipboard, that it's not close to your house, because termites will build nests under it when you start watering. They like cool, dark, moist environs and could easily migrate to your house in Autumn unless you use a pretty powerful insecticide before you lay your wood pieces down.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 5, 2019 16:39:03 GMT -6
That's what life is all about; Experimenting with different ideas and new techniques. Keep us posted, Bon. And thanks, for the input. I'm all for new ideas. I have okra come up volunteer in my walkways every year. I'm guessing it's hardier than we give it credit for.
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Post by Matt on Mar 11, 2019 20:58:18 GMT -6
Ron,
When will you be putting your okra in the ground this year? Any details on 'ideal' planting conditions would be appreciated.
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