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Post by Deleted on Jul 12, 2015 10:42:20 GMT -6
i did some research last year.in which i came across a home made spray.it's suppose to discurage wildlife like racoons pigs and deer.in which i'll see if i can relocate it.cause who knows.it might help out with the white fly issue...
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Post by Deleted on Jul 12, 2015 10:56:02 GMT -6
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Post by glen on Jul 12, 2015 16:18:12 GMT -6
Jimle, thanx for the great comments on White fly control. We have something here in Panama that I have not tried yet, because by the time I learned about it, the White fly's had just about disappated. We have a tree here called neem. It grows everywhere here. You pick the leaves and soak them in wáter for a week. Pour the liquid thru a collander and then spray on the plants. Neem is supposed to be fairly effective on White fly's. Haven't tried it yet buy I will in the near future. Unfortuneately for stateside folks, neem is a tropical tree so it doesn't grow much in the US. Preparations are sold that use neem extract but it is pretty expensive, so probably not practical for most. For me, it is free and everywhere on the sides of road or in folks yards or in parks etc. I learn about things like this slowly and still have so much to learn. Its coming though.
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Post by glen on Jul 22, 2015 13:02:47 GMT -6
Okra report. Plants are looking great but not putting on pods yet. Plants are over 2 months old now. I have 8 Zeebest plants. I have about 15 heavy hitter plants. I picked one pod this morning that was zeebest. One. Plants are still in the vegetative phase and growing steadily and now putting on branches. Not like Ron describes though, in my case. Okra is growing in a compact habit. Short plants. Zeebest plants have anywhere from 4 to 7 branches. Heavy hitter has 2 to 5 branches. Very few branches are long or well developed yet. All Plants are in similar vegetative stage of development. We are having overcast, but not hardly any rain at all. It has been this way for about 6 weeks which has slowed down the plants development. Very large leaves on both variety's. Only time will tell, but I do believe that eventually there will be good harvest. This is the first time I have grown okra during the rainy season so everything is different. During the dry season, the plants are even smaller, have less branching, and race thru its stages, putting on pods quickly. During the rainy season, everything is happening slower. Much slower. But, I am seeing a lot more branching, bigger, sturdier plants, larger leaves etc. Whether this translates into a bumper crop is still to be seen. Day before yesterday I was on the scooter and broke down, right in front of someone's house that had okra growing near the side of the road. Panamanian style okra. It appeared as if someone had just thrown the seeds in the bushes a while back. The man came out so I asked him about this okra. He said he had heard that it was edible but that he didn't eat it. He said that some folks make coffee out of the seeds. I managed to get a brown pod. I can assure you that these plants were not planted with any care, nor were they ever irrigated or fertilized. Just seed thrown on the grown. We have been in a major drought so I do not know how this okra survived but they have. Plants were tall and upright, probably 5 or 6 feet tall with large erect pods. Not good producers as I could tell that the plants were quite large before they even began to produce pods. No telling how long the plants were there. I forgot to ask. However, some short day variety's of okra take a long time to bloom and make pods. Wild okra. Interesting. I saw it growing in the brush and reeds just like weeds. And, I took photo's.
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Post by glen on Jul 26, 2015 12:54:54 GMT -6
I did a Little research on why my okra does not grow that large here in Panama. There isn't much information on this. However, I did find out that our US developed okra is day length neutral. This just means that okra will pretty much put on blooms in any daylength. Daylength does affect the way okra grows though. Most okra that is grown in the US will grow smaller and put on less branching in a short daylength climate like where I live. This has proven to be true for me. There is nothing I can do to change this fact. Also, in a short daylength climate, okra will put on blooms much faster than in the US if conditions are good. The plants start blooming in only about 40 days here when there is plenty of strong sunlight. Plants will then produce for about 6 weeks and then just give up the ship. Short daylength variety's of okra perform differently. They take much longer to start producing. Some take 3 to 6 months to produce and these plants seem to be much more drought resistant than US derived variety's that I have tried. I will be planting African okra in about 2 months and will give reports on its performance as well. That okra is supposed to grow fairly large but I won't know until the time comes. We have local short day length variety's here that grow similarly. You plant the sedes during the rainy season. It takes 3 or 4 months at least to see the first blooms. The plants get large, then put on pods gradually over a longer season. They need hardly any wáter during the dry season once these plants have a Little size to them. And, the plants live for a long time, sometimes a year or more.
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Post by glen on Jul 26, 2015 12:58:19 GMT -6
Today, we harvested our peanuts. We didn't plant that much. Got probably 5 lbs of Green peanuts out of the deal. I can smell them cooking now in the pressure cooker. I saved about 60 of the best pods and am allowing them to dry to plant later. They will go in the freezer. I had never previously grown peanuts until I moved to Panama. I started out with just a few pods that someone gave to me. Been growing them for the last 8 or 9 months continuously. Peanuts do well here with no big problems. I am going to experiment by giving them a Little extra spacing and also applying more compost to the growing área next time. Maybe I can increase yeild?
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Post by glen on Jul 26, 2015 13:00:22 GMT -6
I just checked the sweet potato's. They have been in the ground for at least 4 months. No spuds. Not even any small spuds. I don't now what is the problema except that I suspect that it is lack of sufficient sunlight. I don't know whether I should just leave them in the ground, or just cut em put and start growing something else. Vines have been growing vigorously. But, nothing. I always have had plenty of success growing sweet potato's so I am at a loss here.
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Post by glen on Jul 27, 2015 14:45:24 GMT -6
Okra check. Zeebest plants are fuller and more branchy than the heavy hitter plants. But, still not putting on pods. Heavyhitter is putting on pods. Both variety's are the same height and width. Growing noticeably everyday. Its possible that I could end up with fairly large bushy plants. Maybe as tall as I am. That would be very big plants considering that these are compact, bushy as hell variety's. No pest issues. Huge leaves. Plants look very happy.
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Post by glen on Jul 27, 2015 21:25:47 GMT -6
Next project. I found some dry season okra the other day in front of someone's house. I picked a dried pod. This variety of okra is nameless, or, feral. Its a local variety that no one cares about. You start these plants during the rainy season. They don't put on pods quickly. Maybe 3 or 4 months or more. Once we are in the dry season these tough guys won't need hardly any love at all. Almost zero irrigation etc. They will put on pods, slower than my other domestic variety's, over a much longer season. And, they will do this in the dry terrible heat that visits this coming Dec(zero rain and 95 degree heat every day for 6 months). I also expect the African okra to perform like this as well(probably better). I will recieve the African okra seed to trial that in a month or so. Anyway, in few days I plan to plant some of this feral okra. I expect it to grow as an erect plant, kind of tall with few branches. Pods are ridged just like Clemson spineless but I it has dinner plate style leaves which are different than Clemson okra, which has distinct jagged lobed leaves. This variety is tough as nails and has regressed back to some primitive state, probably cave man style. Production is slow but steady over a period of many many months.
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Post by glen on Aug 2, 2015 14:45:40 GMT -6
Finally, today I was able to put together my first mess of okra for this planting. Mostly heavyhitter okra but there was a few zeebest pods. Took me 3 days to save enough. Pods are of the finest qaulity. I stir fried them cut up with onions in a big frying pan. Cooked them as Little as I could get away with and they stayed bright Green and slightly crunchy. Absolutely fantastic. I also use okra in soups and stews, especially with beef. I like to bake them in the oven also. Quality Green veggy's are very hard to come by where I live. Okra can be a life saver. I expect pod production to increase in the future with some patience. Plants are behaving very lazy now and still growing, getting wider, taller, branchier. But, not putting on many pods.
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Post by glen on Aug 7, 2015 14:46:31 GMT -6
I just checked the sweet potato's again. There are actually 2 variety's in the garden, planted at different times. I failed to write down the date of the planting. Maybe its in this thread somewhere. At any rate, I walked into the patch and tried to find sweet potato's. There are still none. This is the first time I have failed this miserably with sweet potato's. The slips are at least 4 or 5 months old from when I sunk them in the ground. I couldn't even find one sweet potato anywhere, not even a small sweet potato. Nothing. This has to be a lack of sun. It is hot and humid, no rain to speak of, and plenty of overcast. Its been this way for months. And, months. No wonder my okra harvest is slow as well! Bittermelon and bean production has also stopped. This is the weirdest weather I have ever seen. Constant overcast, high humidity and temps, never any rain. Ever. If I was a subsistance farmer I would be in huge trouble right now.
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Post by macmex on Aug 8, 2015 5:25:58 GMT -6
Hopefully the conditions will soon change. I'd leave the sweet potatoes in place. If they are still growing I suspect they will yet produce. Up here in Oklahoma it has been a strange year too. My tomatoes have not prospered. We've had, mostly, lower temperatures and much more rain. But presently it is HOT and VERY HUMID!
George
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Post by glen on Aug 8, 2015 9:20:03 GMT -6
Strange is an understatement. Its not talked about much in the news but Panama has been in a long term drought for years. This year, has been the worst I have ever seen. I tried to google it online and there is just nothing really in the news about it in English. I also know there is drought in the US. Its actually pretty devastating. Ron tells me that OK has been getting much more rain than normal. My sweet potato's are still growing. My patience with them is growing thin though. I will be recieving some seed in about 3 weeks. I am going to be very tempted to pull out some of the sweet potato's and replace them with a new planting of African okra once I get the seed. Space is limited in my garden right now. I will have to make some tough choices. We did have some rain last night while I was sleeping. First rain in weeks. Today we are back into overcast conditions. As far as the African okra goes. I need to get some of that in the ground while I am still in the rainy season in order to give the Young plants time to develop a strong root system before I enter the dry season. Once the plants are about 3 feet tall they should be pretty drought resistant. At least, that is what I hope.
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Post by fourteenmilecreek on Aug 8, 2015 13:27:36 GMT -6
Glen,
I just read your entire thread from beginning to end, very interesting stuff. You should write a book on managing okra.
I'm going to go with George on the sweet potato hypothesis, I think that as long as the vines are alive they might stand a chance of production. However, I did have quite a few un-named varieties of sweet potatoes last year that made tiny potatoes (like cigar size tiny). I never had potatoes so bad, but had never tried those varieties before.
This year, I've got nearly all Beauregard variety sweet potatoes, as I've had a lot of good luck with them in the past.
I have a few of the Purple sweet potatoes too, but nobody will eat them here; they are too flaky and dry. People here prefer a more creamy texture when baked.
A few of my sweet potatoes are Evangeline? I think that's what the guy told me? The slips came from huge potatoes, but I have no idea if there are any spuds under all those vines?
My sweet potatoes have vines that are expansive this year, due to all the rains. When that happens to Irish potatoes, they go to leaf and make hardly any spuds. One year I had 3' foot tall Irish potato vines, but nothing bigger than a golf ball below. I think the soil was too rich, and conditions too good, so they went to vine.
My Great Uncle, born in 1886 said, "A plant will not produce any crop if it doesn't feel threatened. It only produces offspring if it thinks the end is coming soon.
He would drive a railroad spike in the trunk of any pecan tree that wouldn't produce. He said it stressed the tree and forced it to put on blooms come next Spring.
I don't know if he was right, or if the young trees just finally matured and started putting on pecans; but it has always been at the back of my mind.
Kind of like pruning grape vines, or fruit trees. I don't know how it helps them, but people swear by it.
I know that okra will not bear if it goes to leaf in rich soil. I combat that every year, by chopping away excessive vegetation. Several hours at my farm, each year, go to chopping okra leaves to force pod production. I don't know if it works, or if it is just coincidence, but I seem to always get good results... It may just be dumb luck?
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Post by macmex on Aug 9, 2015 4:50:45 GMT -6
By the way, I read something about using sweet potato foliage as a vegetable. Last week I tried it, cutting pieces of vine tips and leaves into a soup I made. It was good!, so there's something else to try with all that growth.
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