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Post by glen on Jan 7, 2015 12:10:19 GMT -6
Ron, great that you keep a journal. We are experiencing horrible weather here now in Panama but its normal. We have a steady hot 20 to 25 mph wind coming in from the NE and zero rain. We will have this breese for the next month or 2. Don't expect a single drop of rain until the middle of May. Everything is suffering now. I have chile peppers under shade cloth and have to wáter them twice per day. Its not bothering the sweet potato's with the exception that they are growing very slowly. Its 90 degree's here at my desk inside the house, but its a lot more brutal outside, and its only 1 pm. No gardening fun for awhile. By the way, Panama does not experience hurricanes or tornado's. Rarely do we get earth quakes either, only about one serious quake every 100 years. We are due for a big one though since its been about 100 years since we got a huge earthquake. Not looking forward to it when that comes either. The área I live in in Panama also does not flood. We get the least amount of rain in my province than any other in Panama. Its gardening hell here now, and soon they will be reporting on the news that cattle and horses will start dying. Happens every year.
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 7, 2015 17:42:52 GMT -6
It's 14 degrees here right now, with 20 mph wind from the North. It's supposed to get down to zero tonight. Wish I could send you an icicle (they're great for stirring iced tea). I have to heat water on the wood stove in a tea kettle to melt ice twice per day for the chickens to drink. I just now sent your Heavy Hitter okra seeds off. Be looking for an 8"x 10" manila envelop coming your way soon.
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 7, 2015 21:36:00 GMT -6
This is a link to our Certified Organic Heavy Hitter okra, raised on Dry Creek Farm, where we still work the land by hand, using a team of mules and Haflinger ponies.
pics.davesgarden.com/pics/2012/02/13/fourteenmilecreek/6ef6d1.jpg
Remember: Heavy Hitter is not Zee best, it's "The best!"
To order your Heavy Hitter okra seeds, contact fourteenmilecreek@yahoo.com -- where almost best, is just not good enough.
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Post by glen on Jan 8, 2015 8:16:21 GMT -6
This is my favorite récipe for okra. Roasted okra. Paint some oil on the okra(your favorite flavor), sprinkle some season salt to taste. Spread the okra on a cookie sheet and roast them for about 15 minutes in a hot oven. Or, however long you want to. If they are blackened a Little that is OK. Eat em.
A question. If I plant Zeebest in the yard along with the Heavy Hitter, will they cross pollinate, ruining any seeds I try to save at the end of the growing season?
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 8, 2015 9:25:45 GMT -6
Glen,
I don't know if they'll cross pollinate?
George says he thinks they would, but they are so different, the leaves are different, the pods are different, Heavy Hitter is segmented, Zeebest is smooth. When the pods are dry Zeebest is very fibrous, like hemp, Heavy Hitter is more pithy. But if you think about a horse and a donkey... a cow and a buffalo... Who knows?
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Post by glen on Jan 8, 2015 11:07:44 GMT -6
Ron, I am no expert on cross pollination issues. However, since there is a chance they would cross pollinate I just can't plant the two variety's at the same time. I will share some of the Zeebest sedes with a friend who lives many miles from me I guess. Ruining the seed would be a disaster. I figured you would have already experienced this issue since you have both seed growing on your farm. My plan is to save a lot of seed so I can share and I want to know what I am sharing when the time comes. I will also be freezing sedes. The humidity here is so bad that the first thing that happens to the seed is mildew forms on them within a few months. I truly live in gardening hell. Oh, I have no idea if the public here would accept the smooth skinned or the ridged okra the best. I noticed in photo's of okra in Cuba and Brazil, that the okra grown for their market is a smooth skinned variety. They apparently like okra about 4 inches long. Both country's are crazy about okra. Panama on the other hand, has no okra since the variety's here regressed back to feral years ago, and is no longer even grown. It's going to be trial and error.
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Post by macmex on Jan 8, 2015 11:11:19 GMT -6
They will cross. Okra is okra: same species. In order to maintain purity and grow more than one type of okra within 1/4 mile of another variety one needs to hand pollinate. Hand pollination shouldn't be difficult, though I do not recall what time of day the flowers open and the pollen matures. I bet one would tape the bud shut the evening before the flower opens and hand pollinate at dawn and perhaps as late as 11 AM. But experimentation or research is necessary. Dependence on hand pollination would greatly reduce ones seed production.
This is one of the reasons I only grow Stewarts Zeebest. When I came across the variety is was offered by no commercial source, or any other source that I know of. I adopted it, and it has done well for me. Now I want to apply the techniques Ron has used with Heavy Hitter to continue improving Stewarts. I'd like to see others do the same with other varieties.
Also, a cross between the two would be quite an opportunity for someone interested in plant breeding. The F1 generation would be a stable hybrid (possible commercial value?). Starting with F2 and F3 generations there would probably be a tremendous re-shuffling of genes, which could provide some good material for selection of a whole new variety(ies). It's just be a lot of work, and one would, quickly to settle on a target, toward which to breed.
Ron, I was reading your posts on our weather to my wife and commented, 1) "Now I know why we moved here!" (tongue in cheek) and 2) "Let's hope Ron never gets on the Tahlequah Chamber of Commerce!" Seriously, though, our wild weather conditions are a good reason for existence for Green Country Seed Savers. What manages to grow here, and grow well, has a good possibility of doing well in other places which have abbreviated growing seasons and/or extreme heat and fluctuating levels of precipitation.
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Post by snickeringbear on Jan 8, 2015 11:30:56 GMT -6
I have first hand experience with crossing rates in okra. A few years ago, I grew Texas Long Horn okra in my garden and on the other side of my greenhouse about 150 feet away, I grew a red okra. The next year when I grew the Texas Long Horn for seed, I got 5 plants out of about 300 that were distinctly red stemmed. Note that red is dominant in okra so I can state with certainty that the crossing rate is about 1 percent at 150 feet separation with a greenhouse in between. I am also a beekeeper with several colonies so pollinator presence was very high.
Okra is an amphidiploid which is a big word that means it is the stabilized offspring from two species crossing in a specific way that retained both entire sets of chromosomes. So while Ron's cow crossed with a buffalo analogy is not quite on target for the two varieties mentioned, he is dead on for okra being an example of a cow that mated with a buffalo. Can you imagine the look on her face?
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 8, 2015 13:44:17 GMT -6
I've been looking for new uses for okra, and okra by-products for several years... Did you know that okra seeds produce so much oil that there is research being done to convert it to bio-diesel? It is also used to make cooking oil. It's second in oil production only to sunflower seeds.
I crack out so much okra seed from dried pods each year, that I mulch my fruit trees heavily with the spent pods. They are so fibrous that they retain several times their weight in water.
The last time I worked my beehive, I used spent pod fiber to fuel my bee smoker. It produced such a heavy cloud of smoke that it looked like a coal fired freight train taking off under a load. I usually just cap my smoker with a wet corn cob to smother the embers, but about 30 minutes after the job was done, I looked out to the truck bed tool box where I store my beekeeping supplies, and could hardly see the box for all the smoke billowing out of it! I ran down there as fast as I could, expecting my wax frames had caught fire, only to find the smoker puffing away despite the wet corn cob! No damage was done, but what a smoke bomb!
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Post by glen on Jan 8, 2015 16:09:01 GMT -6
To Macmex and Snickering bear. Very interesting idea about plant breeding. I would be very interested in the results of someones experimentation where they crossed Zeebest with Heavy hitter. But, why would you do this? Both variety's are good producers. At any rate, that is also very good information about how the plants interbreed with each other in the garden. Where I live, we do have a few feral okra plants if you look very hard for them. Onesy's and two'sys. I haven't seen any closer than a couple miles from my house so it doesn't sound like I have anything to worry about. I can grow one variety in the yard, and without any fuss, save seed that is true to the original seed. I will just save seed from the heaviest bearing and branchiest plants. For me to be happy with heavy hitter seeds I just need to see a harvest that is higher than 30 pods per bush, I need to see branching, I need to see heat and humidity and drought tolerance. And, I need to be able to save seed that is true to the original. That would be an incredible survival edible to add to my garden. And yes, I am super excited about getting this seed into the ground.
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 8, 2015 23:02:19 GMT -6
Glen,
That is exactly how I developed Heavy Hitter okra. I started with 'run of the mill' Clemson Spineless okra seeds in a 20' foot by 20' foot garden, with very poor, hard packed, clay soil.
Nothing but okra and sweet potatoes would prosper in that poor soil, so that's all I grew there.
I was hard pressed to find enough okra in that small garden space to make a good mess for frying, or pickling, and would have to set okra aside, and combine two day's worth of okra to make a meal. (I had 4 kids at the time).
One season I noticed a stalk (with no branches) that was stronger than the others; at the time, none of my okra had any branches. That one plant had put on nearly 50 pods over the course of the Summer while the others had only put on 15 or 20 pods... Once I noticed the heavier than usual production of the strong one, I stopped picking it and saved it for seed. Among its offspring the next season, I found a stalk with three branches; so I saved only that one plant for seed.
The following year I got one with seven branches, then, I moved my garden to a better spot and made it bigger. That year I got twelve branches, then a year after that, I got thirty, and so on, until I had lots of plants with 30 or 40 branches. It's hard to say how many pods they produced each, as I was too busy picking and selling 100 pounds of okra every other day to take note of those kinds of things (I had 1,500 okra plants that year). It was a waving sea of green okra leaves, and pods.
I was picking every day by then alternating between crops of tomatoes, okra, potatoes, corn, cucumbers, turnips, beets, slicing onions, cabbage, green beans, peas, Summer squash, dill, basil, sage, rosemary, and watermelons. I would pick from 6:00 am until 11:00 am, then drive to town and sell all my produce before the heat got a chance to set into my harvest. I was Certified Organic, and promised same day delivery, so I got top prices, and lots of customers. When we picked okra, it was by the wheel barrow full... That's where 4 kids come in really handy! 2010 was a great year!!!
2011, on the other hand, SUCKED!!! It was during that year... one of the worst drought years on record, that I noticed I had picked 8 pods from one plant in one day; the next picking I got twelve pods from that plant... About half a dozen more plants were starting to put on multiple pods per picking too, but the temperature that year had swung from -15 to 115 degrees between February and August. The 130 degree temperature swing in 6 months time had taken a toll on my farm income, so I had to pick almost every pod for selling at the market to put my Wife through her 2nd year of Law School. We had to eat most of the rest.
On the day that I picked 44 tender pods from that one plant in one day, I started saving the rest for seed. (That plant was the one I photographed inside the hoop house, it had 65 branches)...but it was almost too late in the year for any of them to mature to seed saving quality. To make things worse, my garden was the only thing for miles that still had green foliage, due to irrigation. This made my garden a DEER, JAPANESE BEETLE, & GRASSHOPPER MAGNET!!! They stripped every leaf they could get their mouths on, killing all but 6 of my 50 fruit trees. I almost lost all my years of effort in the course of that one Summer!
The next year was not much better; but by then I was only saving seeds from plants with more than 30 branches, and more than 50 pods per season. I had developed a better system for seed saving too. Every year after 2011, I farmed seeds out to friends all over the State, for seed production at several sites that were hundreds of miles apart. In 2012 I harvested 26 pounds of Heavy Hitter okra seed from the combination of all those sites. That was about 5 acres of okra planted out among friends. I donated several pounds of that seed to people in 3rd World Countries, as God had given it to me, so I gave it to others.
Now, when I come across a plant that meets the 30 branch criteria, I flag it with hot pink survey tape. Then I photograph it and save each plant's seed in a separate bag with the photo attached. I assign numbers and letters to each plant i.e., A-1, A-2, A-3, etc., and use that number to mark each corresponding seed bag. That way I know from year to year which plant had what parent.
Last year, I got really sick with asthma in the Fall, I got the flu twice last Winter, and ended up with pneumonia by Spring. Because of that, and a severe seizure disorder, I was unable to get much done in 2014. Now, I've got a very limited amount of seed left, and very high demand. A man in Africa ordered several kilos of seed, but I have no way to supply them.
Ron
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Post by glen on Jan 9, 2015 11:33:21 GMT -6
Great story Ron. Except for this health issues. At any rate we have many potential problems here as well. Our neighborhoods are filled with free range chickens and lot of dogs. And, sometimes cattle are loose in the Hood as well. All these animals bother my garden. Cattle absolutely loves sweet potato's and they eat palm leaves and anything else they get curious enough to try. So, I will have my potential problems as well. I am planning to plant some okra along the Street in front of my fence for example. That stands a good chance of being eaten by my neighbors animals. Some will survive, some won't. Once they find out something is good to eat, its game on. I used to get real upset about it but it is fruitless here to get too mad about things like that. No one cares except me anyway. The dogs here don't get enough to eat so they eat the free range chickens. Its a war zone here. Oh, we also have the damn igauna's. They are like vacuum cleaners when they get into the garden, eating just as fast as they can, gobbling up anything Green they can find. Chickens topple over your potted plants, dig up seedlings, eat all your tomato's, dig for sweet potato's etc. I don't have any decent solutions that wouldn't cost me more money than I can afford to spend, or that would be cost effective since my garden is not large.
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Jan 9, 2015 12:48:39 GMT -6
Hog wire stops the chickens pretty good here, cow dogs, and solar powered electric fence stops the cows, Winchester .30-30 stops the deer. So far, we've eaten four deer shot while eating my garden. I shot the last one from inside the outhouse. It was a fluke, just happened to look up as I was opening the door. Many were the day, that I've used okra plants to prop up my rifle, while picking baskets of produce to take into town.
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Post by luckyduck on Jan 10, 2015 17:07:26 GMT -6
I've been reading some great posts on here.
Does anyone know good pickled okra recipe?
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Post by glen on Jan 10, 2015 18:29:09 GMT -6
This fórum has some real gardening experts. I bet they have some super okra récipes as well.
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