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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 11, 2019 21:53:30 GMT -6
@ Matt,
That was a very good question, Matt; Ideally, nighttime temperatures need to be consistently above 45 degrees before planting any okra outdoors. Some people,(like the OSU Horticulture guys) actually start their seeds indoors in individual seed starter pots, for transplanting into the field in mid-May when seasonal temperatures are much more stabilized.
Okra originated in West Africa or possibly Egypt. I don't think anyone knows 100% for sure. As a result, they are not accustomed to cool nighttime temperatures. Anytime temperatures fall below 45 degrees, it is inevitable that your plants will suffer some sort of setback from the shock of cold weather, often resulting in severe stunting of your crop.
Also, okra requires full sun and benefits greatly from raised beds, irrigated with drip tape under black plastic. The black plastic works well for heating the soil in early Spring, often times, giving you a couple of weeks head start on other growers.
This 'trick' also provides some semblance of providing a little heat from below the leaf canopy on cooler nights, sometimes making the difference between losing a crop and saving one, by as little as two degrees ambient air surrounding the plants on a calm night. (Not so much so on windy nights. In those cases very little can be done to protect your plants, save from installing low lying row covers.
Okra also requires soil, rich in organic matter and at least 1" inch of rain per week in order to reach its optimal potential. It will usually thrive under lesser conditions, but for a 'record plant', you'll have to provide 'record nutrients' and exceptional growing conditions.
I hope this was of some help, Ron
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Post by hedgeapple on Mar 12, 2019 6:38:27 GMT -6
Ron,
Thank you for your help - I will be picking up the black plastic and watching evening temperatures very, very closely. The issue I had last year was early planting and it was pitiful... It was my first year planting in Arkansas after being highly successful with okra in Texas for decades. I built raised beds and thoroughly amended the soil, but the reliable dates I used in Texas heat just don't apply up here. I've gone back through this thread, read all of your guidance, and hopefully will have a few nice specimens this year to share photographs of. A summer garden just doesn't look right to me without happy okra!
-Matt
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 12, 2019 16:06:32 GMT -6
Don't be too hard on yourself concerning reliable planting dates. I don't think those even exist anymore in these days of climate change.
Since we moved here in 2004, I've seen snow on peach blossoms in the month of April, twice. I've seen it warm enough in February to plant a successful crop of sweet corn. I've also seen temperatures of 15 below zero and 20" inches of snow in February. For the past two or three years running, we've had light frost in low places up until mid-May. We've had two droughts that lasted for over a year each, and a supposed '100 Year Flood' that occurred twice in three year's time. It has been a crazy 15 years.
It didn't use to be that way. When I was a kid, it seemed to me that we'd have a great garden with little effort other than hoeing out the weeds. Since moving here, I've been wiped out by drought, floods, freezing rain, wildfire, hail, and apocalyptic hordes of grasshoppers, Japanese beetles, squash bugs, striped blister beetles, armyworms, tobacco worms, and deer, so many times that I've lost count.
This year, I even lost an entire crop of purple top turnips to erratic, winter, weather patterns since they were planted in what seemed like perfect conditions in September. I plowed up Fall ground and sowed a pound of turnip seeds, planning on having enough mature turnips to winter my hogs. I'd challenge you to find a dozen survivors today. I've never had that happen before. The 60-degree weather swings in December, and January killed them so thoroughly, that the ground they were growing in, looks like nothing was ever planted there.
Our weather for the past decade, has been absolutely nuts!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 12, 2019 20:39:05 GMT -6
This time of year, I try to keep busy, by adding amendments to my Certified Organic garden. I started back in December, by spreading about 2,500 pounds of chicken litter, 520 pounds of pelletized Lime, a couple of tons of decomposed leafmold from my compost piles and sowing 100 pounds of Austrian Winter Peas and Winter Wheat, as, 'green manure.' It will take all Winter for that to soak in and 'mellow' a bit. Hopefully, by mid-April, I'll be able to find time to till that all into the soil and start raising new beds for my 2019 crops. I spent most of the day, yesterday, tearing out the Plasticulture from my old raised beds. I spent several days before that, pulling old okra stalks and hauling them out of the garden. As you can see by the photos, I have quite a bit of work left to do out there before I'm ready to plant again. I've got old plastic row covers and bits and pieces of irrigation equipment laying everywhere! This looks like a tornado just hit, but it's only the result of a day's hard work, digging the edges from the Plaiculture and pulling it out of our muddy, muddy, garden.
This is just the beginning of a pile consisting mostly of last year's okra stalks.
It will take me a couple more weeks to gather all these old okra stalks and drag them off to the Hugelkulture pile to decompose. After that, if it dries up out there a little, I'll plow and start raising my new beds. (As you can see, this year's cover crop was nearly a complete failure, due to erratic temperature swings and deer predation.)
Hopefully, the end result of all this labor will be more prize-winning okra plants like this one. I harvested 44 tender pods from this plant in a single day. This Heavy Hitter Okra plant had 65 fruit-bearing branches and bore over 250 pods over the length of the 2011 season...
Over the years, several records have been broken, by using these gardening methods and a little careful seed selection. Hopefully, 2019 will be another one of those record-breaking years. If not, then, we'll still have a lot of fun trying to get it done.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 16, 2019 19:58:09 GMT -6
Yesterday, I saw an old photo of Bill Trammel, out in my garden, plowing with his old, red, mule; Earl. The photo was taken in mid-February of 2011, about (8-years-ago). While looking at the photo, I noticed how clean the old fence row was; about 20' feet behind Bill. It really looked nice. But in all the years since then, the fence row has kind of grown up with bramble, blackberry bushes, persimmon sprouts, poke stalks, and wild-rose-bushes, (partly, as a deterrent to my neighbor's cows who like sticking their heads through the barbed wire and nipping off whatever corn stalk or turnip top they can reach) but mainly, because of sloth and poor management. It had crept up on me over the years and I never realized just how bad it looked until I saw how nice and clean it looked in the old photo. After seeing the photo, I thought to myself, "You know, even though the wind is blowing about 30- mph and it's still kind of uncomfortably cool out there; if I pull just one blackberry bush, that will at least be a start." So, me, myself, and I; went for a little walk, to the back side of the old garden, armed with some heavy duty, leather, work gloves and carrying an old, rusty pick-ax. Once there, I assaulted the first thorny bush I came across (which just happened to be a blackberry bush). It has been an unusually wet Winter this year, and to my surprise, the blackberry bush came out with very little resistance... Blackberry bushes grow in a manner, similar to Bermudagrass, along a shallowly rooted Rhizome, so once you get a good, firm, grip on one of them and tug with all your might, it's usually fairly easy to follow that rhizome from one bush to the next bush and so on, until you've got the entire colony uprooted and dangling from one, long, spindly, main root. Well, one thing led to another and before I knew it, I had half a dozen blackberry bushes uprooted. Then, I grabbed onto one, small, wild-rose and pulled it out too. Then, I decided it was high time for the old, dead, peach tree to come out of the corner; and that meant I'd need the tractor. So, I walked home and got the Massey Ferguson, and a long, rusty, log chain... When I came back, I pulled out the dead peach tree. Then, I decided it was time to pull a few persimmon sprouts while I was at it, plus that 8'-foot-tall wild-rose bush that had entwined its long, thorny branches from the other side of one corner post, all the way past the latch on my garden gate. To make a long story even longer, I ended up breaking out the grubbing hoe, a pick, a shovel, the tractor, a log chain, and everything I own, short of a case of dynamite, and before nightfall, there was not a hint of any bramble left along the entire length of that fencerow. Things had grown up back there for so many years, that I had actually forgotten there was an old asparagus patch back there too. So, somewhere in the process of pulling "just one blackberry bush" I accidentally freed up enough freshly broken ground, to dig up, and expand the long-neglected asparagus patch as well. All in all, it was a pretty good day, even though I'm pretty sore from it right now. And all because of Bill Trammel, and his old red mule. Thanks, Bill. Thank you too, Earl. It was a good day.
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Post by macmex on Mar 17, 2019 4:09:09 GMT -6
It's nice to do that kind of upkeep! Isn't it amazing how we get used to the changes, without even noticing that they are occurring?
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 17, 2019 4:21:36 GMT -6
That's a good analogy for the way sin creeps into our lives, little, by little, each day. (Hardly noticeable) until the garden within, eventually becomes choked with it.
Without a good scheduled, Sunday morning maintenance routine, a man might eventually become entangled by the burden of it all and 'go to seed' that way.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 17, 2019 22:16:34 GMT -6
Bon,
3" inches ought to be plenty big enough if the seeds are centered in each hole. They make hole saw bits up to at least 5" inches, but they take quite a bit of torque to spin under a load of that many teeth biting at the same time. The torque required for a 5" inch hole saw might burn up your drill unless it's a commercial drill. Or, you can use a jigsaw and cut any size hole your heart desires.
You can also cut a 'cluster'of overlapping holes in the shape of a three-leaf clover, using a smaller diameter hole saw, if you need a larger hole, but don't have a drill large enough to do the task.
Hope this helps, Ron
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 20, 2019 10:23:38 GMT -6
Great news, Bon.
We'd enjoy seeing any photos you have when you're all done with your 2019 garden project. Good luck with the hole saw and drilling that you are doing.
It's too cold and rainy here to do anything in the garden. Just as well though, I had to work on an electrical problem at a neighbor's house all day yesterday and my lungs and sinuses are paying for it today. I woke up with a sore throat from all the dust and mildew I stirred up while cutting holes in the laundry room walls and floor. We got everthing up and running again though. So, it all turned out for the good.
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Post by macmex on Mar 25, 2019 10:22:55 GMT -6
Bon, you're likely to come up with completely unique information, as what works in other places, often doesn't work here. I cringe when I read noobies extolling lasagna beds for eliminating Bermuda in Oklahoma. I always know that they haven't really done it when they write about it. A viable no dig approach would be AWESOME!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 28, 2019 11:39:45 GMT -6
I read once, that Bermuda grass could spread as much as 80' feet under a sheet of plastic, to find a source of light. I don't know if that is true but I do know that Bermuda grass spreads so aggressively that it can punch through just about any pinhole in my plasticulture.
Bermuda grass used to be in the Guinness Book of World Records as the World's worst weed. If only I could get it to stop growing in my garden and get it to start growing in my yard!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Apr 3, 2019 22:17:33 GMT -6
The Tahlequah Farmers' Market opens this Saturday, April 6th, for anyone interested. For those of you, who grow vegetables for sale, have seeds for sale, or have eggs, honey, or farm-raised meats for sale, or make farm craft items such as quilts or woodwork, 2019 Tahlequah Farmers Market Membership Applications are available on their website: www.tahlequahfarmersmarket.org/
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Apr 8, 2019 4:51:29 GMT -6
I broke my garden last week, then it rained and it is now too wet and muddy to enter. I planted 50 pounds of Russet Potatoes in March, but it hasn't been warm enough for them to sprout above ground.
From the looks of the forecast, I think we might be in for a light freeze Friday morning, April 12th.
My pear tree, peach trees, and pawpaw trees are in bloom, but my apples haven't bloomed yet, which is unusual for them. They usually bloom so early they get frozen off every year. I haven't had apples a single year since I planted them in 2008. They are getting to be good size trees now, but frost has gotten them every year they've bloomed for the past decade.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Apr 13, 2019 12:58:27 GMT -6
Rain and cold, again, today, but God spared us any frost damage that I can discern and I'm very thankful for that.
I got my garden broke again, but it was too wet to raise an ideal bed or to lay any Plasticulture. When the ground finally dried out enough to work, it was too windy. Now, it's raining again.
At least I was able to work on my Goose House during the 45 mph winds this past week. It would have been a disaster to try to lay plastic in those conditions and tilling was out of the question due to topsoil drifting.
I trust everything will 'come out in the wash' if I just keep making an effort.
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Post by macmex on Apr 14, 2019 4:54:03 GMT -6
Here, just a few miles from you, Ron, I believe we had a light frost on the 12th. We seem to live in a "frost pocket." I'm just glad it didn't get cold enough to frost last night! I put out a dozen tomato plants yesterday and had to cover them.
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