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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 3, 2019 1:13:16 GMT -6
I officially ran out of any more weeds to pull from my garden this evening at about 8:00 pm.
Just in time, too. I start harvesting veggies for the Tahlequah Farmers' Market tomorrow morning. Rows #1 and #2 Tomatoes. All my rows are set on 11' foot centers, so I can drive my truck down the middles on harvest days, to stack tomato boxes on the tailgate. Rows #2 and #3 tomatoes. I have No weeds in my tomato patch. These tomatoes are all 5' feet tall and have the first ripe tomatoes at the bottom of the cages already. I'll be harvesting for the Tahlequah Farmers' Market first thing in the morning. Rows #4 and #5, no weeds. These are okra rows. Rows #6, and #7, no weeds here either. Now, finally, I have some spare time to install my irrigation lines. I had a lot of help from my friends! These guys are great! Time for a water break, to wash down all these weeds ... These little Cotton Patch Geese can probably eat their weight in weeds each day. They don't bother my tomatoes or my okra and are great for weeding between sweet potato vines.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 3, 2019 20:54:18 GMT -6
Since I ran out of weeds to pick, I've started walking my rows, looking for bugs on my plants. I had a pretty bad Colorado Potato Beetle problem early on, in May, then pouring rain and high winds eradicated them, drowning both the adults and the larvae. I've been expecting them to return all this time since, but they never have. I've not found more than a dozen or so in all the weeks since. Now, my potato vines are so near their terminus, before harvest, that the bugs wouldn't have much to eat if they did decide to return.
I have been finding quite a few Japanese Beetles on my okra plants though ... I walked both sides of all my rows last evening and squished about a hundred mating pairs of Japanese Beetles ... I guess I did some good, because this evening, I only found about 50 or so of them in the entire garden.
My okra plants are branching and growing by leaps and bounds since it turned off hot and sunny the way they like things to be. I picked about 75 pounds of tomatoes this morning, so I didn't have time to pick any okra. I stopped by to look at some pods tonight ... I'll need to pick okra again tomorrow morning for sure.
The garden is finally hitting high gear. There will be no rest for the weary after all that rain and sunshine kicks in.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 6, 2019 18:53:18 GMT -6
Man! Today's weather has been all over the place!
It was 62 degrees here at 6:15 am this morning, with dew so heavy that it looked like rain. It was 90 by noon, then topped out at 95, by 2:00 pm. It is currently 70 degrees and raining steadily. I wish I had known the rain was coming, I needed to pick okra before the garden became a muddy mess.
Days like this make it tough to garden or to grow anything, but my geese and I worked "Border Patrol" this morning, regardless of the weather. Shortly after this photo was taken, it got too hot to standing out there looking for okra or weeds to pull, so we went back home. Since we ran out of weeds to pull inside the garden, they are now forced to look elsewhere. These little geese are just as happy to patrol the garden borders, looking for any grass that may be about to cross inside, as they are looking for weeds encroaching on my rows. Now, that the rows are all cleaned out, they have found new territory to devour.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 7, 2019 15:56:02 GMT -6
Bon,
It has been so cloudy and wet this year, that I've still not hooked my irrigation header to my well yet. I've got black plastic down and figured this week, it would have baked dry underneath.
Friday, or Saturday, I was working on tying the ends of the drip lines off and discovered the black plastic is still moist underneath.
I've got everything in place now, but still need to attach valves to my header line, leading to each drip line. What a crazy, wet year, though. In a normal season, my plastic would have baked dry long ago ... Hopefully, I'll get everything up and running Monday morning. (If it isn't raining).
I just mowed Friday afternoon and the grass is ready to mow again. I'll have to wear better protective gear next time ... I have severe asthma and woke up at 5:00 am, after mowing, with an Oxygen saturation of 87%. I couldn't hold my breath long enough to swallow a single gulp of water. Mowing kills me. Or else all the mown grass lingering in the air afterwards. That's a heck of an affliction to have, for a guy who enjoys grounds-keeping.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 8, 2019 18:33:17 GMT -6
Compost is like that. It doesn't stink if you have the right moisture content but it stinks to high Heaven if it gets too wet. This year, we are at the mercy of the elements. In most years, we can add water as needed. This year, it just won't stop raining.
I pulled another wheelbarrow load of weeds from the fence rows this morning, because I ran out of weeds to pull in my garden. My arms are still stinging from all the grass cuts. Next time, I need long sleeves and some gloves if I'm pulling 3 month old weeds from the fence row. They make good compost but it takes them longer to break down than, tender, young weeds from the garden.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 9, 2019 14:45:01 GMT -6
I've got compost piles going on in four different locations. Man, does that take a lot of weed pulling to keep them all fed!
I'm running out things to put in there ... This is only the top layer of straw that covers several layers of green grass, topsoil, and carbon. The straw helps preserve moisture for better decomposition on these 92 degree days. It also keeps some of the radiant heat down. Dark green piles of weeds get so hot they stress my plants These are just some, wild, volunteer tomato plants. Who knows what variety? They just popped up like weeds, along the edges of this compost pile, so I left them un-cared for. I had a couple volunteer okra and a sunflower come up on this row end. They'll benefit from this compost pile until I plow it under this Autumn. After these piles have worked down and have been killed by frost, I'll spread them out and till them into the soil for next year's crops to grow better. This is one of the Elderberry bushes that deer have been browsing heavily. I thought I'd give it a helping hand by dumping a couple wheelbarrow loads of compost around the base. I won't know until next year, how much this has helped. I figure, it certainly can't hurt. Composting is a lot of extra work, but it sure makes for some happy, healthy plants. The peppers on these little guys are almost as big as they are. I'll need to take a few minutes to harvest these peppers and make myself a garden pizza.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 11, 2019 20:58:23 GMT -6
Side Branches Worth Noting
This evening, July, 11, 2019, I found that the side branches of my Heavy Hitter Okra plants are already producing tender pods; ready to harvest.
The main stem of these plants had pods ready to harvest on June 23rd, when they were only 61 days old.
I found at least 5 plants producing pods large enough to harvest, on the side branches at dusk, tonight. A few minutes later, it became too dark to see if there were any more, but considering the planting date was April 23rd, for those first 50 plants, that means they are now, 79 days old.
(I don't think I ever recorded the days to maturity for the side branches before).
Some of my plants are producing three okra pods per harvest already. I was the only person selling okra at the Farmers' Market in Tahlequah last night, so I'm guessing no one else planted as early as I did?
I harvested 5 pounds of okra again, this evening, before it got too dark to see what I was doing.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 14, 2019 13:31:12 GMT -6
Bon,
Early, late, it doesn't matter ... fried okra is addictious!
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Post by macmex on Jul 14, 2019 16:52:37 GMT -6
I planted Stewarts Zeebest and African X, both quite late. They're up and growing now. At least they're growing rapidly! Come oooon .... okra!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 14, 2019 17:08:49 GMT -6
Someday, soon, I'll be covered up in okra, (I hope). Right now, I've got customers coming to my house to pick all the okra I have on hand. I have two couples saying they want all I can produce all summer long ... We'll see.
Later in the season, when OKRA becomes a 'four-letter' word, probably no one will want it anymore and I'll have to sneak and leave it on people's lawns and front stoops, with overgrown zucchini and big-pink-plastic-flamingos.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 15, 2019 12:33:09 GMT -6
At Glen's request, I finally took the time to take some photos of the Heavy Hitter Okra's branching habit this morning, after I picked another gallon of blueberries. I've picked 3 gallons of blueberries off of that one bush so far. Finally, it looks like it might be on its last berry-producing leg, metaphorically speaking. It will be a sad day when I walk by it and can no longer pick berries for my breakfast.
I've got a customer coming over this evening to pick okra. I had a customer come over last evening and pick 144 pounds of tomatoes. I've harvested 315 pounds of tomatoes just since last Wednesday morning.I've been getting heavy branching like crazy this year, even though the plants were somewhat stunted by cold weather, cloudy days, and too much rain. Some of them are starting to resemble small trees. This one already has a base diameter of 2" inches and it still has from now until October to grow bigger. These are just some examples of okra pods that are ready to harvest, growing among the branches. Soon, there will be calyces forming along the secondary branches as well. (Secondary branches form as a result of the primary branches, producing side shoots that turn into more branches). More pods among the primary branches. Just a photo showing the proportions of these branches to the main stalk. These are not 'wimpy pseudo branches' like some varieties exhibit. These are strong, beefy, branches that bear as much okra as the main stem bears. Each branch will bear 10 pods on average, meaning 10 branches equal a harvest of 100 pods. As you can see from these photos, some plants are exhibiting more than 10 branches.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 16, 2019 16:53:24 GMT -6
I was done with my picking by 6:30 this morning. It sure was pretty out there, so I stopped to take a few photos of my favorite time of the day. This Coreopsis was in the garden fence row, facing away from the cow pasture. I'm glad the cows don't like to eat these. I don't know the name of this sunflower, but I like it. The leaves are pointed and have jagged edges. I have a lot of this growing wild, out in the woods on the way to my garden. This is where I hang my hammock to take a breather from picking every day. God's genius design ... Every morning, dew collects on the wide open okra leaves. They are all tipped upward at dawn, causing them to empty their dew out the back of the leaf, which trickles downward along the stems and ends up at the base of each plant as the sun rises. You can see this as a water puddle at the base of the plants each morning. Morning fog in the tomato patch at 6:00 am. What a magnificently, beautiful place, God has created for us here. I am thankful to be able to enjoy it so much. Fifteen years ago, this spot was an illegal dump. We hauled away several thousand pounds of scrap metal, just to be able to plow this ground. All the while, it was a paradise, hidden in plain sight, it had just been abused by so many people who could not see it for what it really was.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 16, 2019 17:40:53 GMT -6
I finally finished the irrigation lines, from the well at the house, to the garden, 500' feet away. I turned the water on this morning to check for leaks. (Not too bad) I think I can live with that. I ran the underground about 10 years ago ... I just have to redo the header and valves each year. The blue lay flat in the foreground is my main header. I run a 1" inch PVC pipe from the house, to the garden, underground, at 50 psi, then choke it down to 15 psi with a pressure regulator and back flow preventer. The blue hose runs at 15 psi and I puncture it with a nail, to add a barbed valve fitting at every row juncture. This is one of the valves that I installed along the blue lay flat. The drip tape has a pinhole every 8" inches that emits about one cup of water every minute. This is what it looks like from the front end of each row. I have to hand weed around this line or else I remove it to use the tractor to till. The drip tape runs under the Black Plasticulture, the full length of each row, along the center. I plant my vegetables along each side of the drip tape, in a zig-zag pattern, every 12" to 18" inches, like this: \/\/\/\/\. My dog, Buddy, hears air escaping from the pinholes when I turn the water on for the first time each season and thinks there is a rat under there. He's sitting where I told him to, "Stay" so he wouldn't dig up my irrigation lines looking for the source of the noise. You can tell by the look on his face; he knows that noise is a rat and I'm just too dumb to dig under there to see it for myself. I call this look, "THE STINK EYE."
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 17, 2019 12:08:40 GMT -6
This morning, for breakfast, I had freshly picked blueberries, and black cherry tomatoes, from the garden, with freshly baked French Bread, slathered in hot butter and roasted garlic. I had a cup of Roselle tea and some ice cold goat's milk Kefir, then; I was off to take my geese for their daily walk to the garden.
Today was okra leaf pruning day. My okra has grown so leafy, that I can't see through it anymore, so I got busy, pruning thousands of leaves, which unfortunately, took about 3 hours of my harvest time.
I've picked 19.1 pounds of okra so far today and still have two rows left to go. I haven't even had time to think about looking at my larger variety tomatoes this morning. I probably have more than 50 pounds of ripe tomatoes still on the vines.
This afternoon at 4:00 pm, is the Wednesday Farmers' Market in Tahlequah and I haven't even loaded my truck yet ... I just had to come inside to take a water break and get a 30 minute breathing treatment. (I was starting to wheeze) even though I always wear a good, double-banded dust mask in the garden, it still gets me, nearly every time.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 19, 2019 13:26:14 GMT -6
My Heavy Hitter Okra is just now coming on about three pods per harvest, per plant average, with some plants putting on as many as 8 pods per harvest. I'm picking every day, right now, trying to keep up. I have really heavy branching this year. Really heavy production too. Here's a look at the 30" inch spacing. They are planted a little too close together to really stretch their wings and fly, but they are doing well, despite this. I had to set my walkways past 5' feet wide to avoid overlapping of branches between rows. These plants are not even half grown yet. They'll continue growing taller and wider until late August.
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