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Post by pepperhead212 on Jun 11, 2019 12:45:37 GMT -5
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Jun 11, 2019 16:10:20 GMT -5
That's what I do - if one variety blooms earlier than the others, I save the first few pods from it. You couldn't ask for an easier way to save pure seed.
It does mean you have to wait a little longer to taste it, though!
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Post by brownrexx on Jun 11, 2019 17:00:24 GMT -5
pepperhead212, Already? Wow. Mine are still baby plants. When did you plant Little Lucy outside?
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jun 11, 2019 18:44:36 GMT -5
Surprisingly, brownrexx, I didn't get the okra or peppers in early this season, due to those cold nights we kept having in May. They all got in on 5-15, which is the usual date I shoot for, when planting the okra and peppers. I also have some of the peppers that look like they are well ahead of the usual schedule.
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Post by hairymooseknuckles on Jun 11, 2019 19:38:11 GMT -5
What's all that white shtuff?
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jun 11, 2019 20:26:04 GMT -5
What's all that white shtuff? Surround, which is a spray that keeps a lot of insects off plants. The problem I have with okra is black aphids, and this has kept them off since I've started using surround. I have to be sure to spray under the leaves, and keep it up on the new growth.
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Post by brownrexx on Jun 12, 2019 7:39:55 GMT -5
pepperhead212 , I looked at my notes and I didn't write down when I planted my Okra seedlings in the garden but I planted my tomatoes out on May 6 and I think that the okra was about a week later which would be about the same as yours. I just ran outside in my robe and slippers to check on my okra babies (they are close to the house) to make sure that they don't have aphids. No aphids but I do see several small growths at the top of all 3 plants that look like buds. They could be leaf buds but in any case they look like they are ready to take off growing. My plants are only about 6" tall now. I think that it can be as much as 5° warmer where you live and your plants are getting nice irrigation in your EB so that may account for he difference. I have not watered my plants at all.
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Post by hairymooseknuckles on Jun 12, 2019 8:39:34 GMT -5
This is about the time I would normally plant my Okra. I always waited till both day and night temps were warm. I like for daytime temps to be 90+ with night time temps 70+ . In fact the hotter, the better. I tried a couple of times to plant in the fall, but never had much success.
The above is just what I prefer, but as you can see, it's doing great in your climates, so it may not need those temperature extremes.
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Post by brownrexx on Jun 12, 2019 8:43:39 GMT -5
hairymooseknuckles , I know that okra likes it hot and so far it has not been really hot here and the night temps have been a bit cool but it's coming....... I planted a few seeds in the ground a few days ago to see how they do. I have always started them indoors in other years. Why don't you pop a few Little Lucy seeds in the ground of that raised bed of yours? You know that you love okra and those plants seem to care for themselves.
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Post by hairymooseknuckles on Jun 12, 2019 8:50:34 GMT -5
hairymooseknuckles , I know that okra likes it hot and so far it has not been really hot here and the night temps have been a bit cool but it's coming....... I planted a few seeds in the ground a few days ago to see how they do. I have always started them indoors in other years. Why don't you pop a few Little Lucy seeds in the ground of that raised bed of yours? You know that you love okra and those plants seem to care for themselves. I would, I really would, but that raised bed is a mess. The old barn cat used it as a litter box and it has Johnson Grass 4 feet tall. It's a MESS!
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jun 14, 2019 17:51:08 GMT -5
I just found some (a bunch!) of those black aphids, but only on the undersides of the Emerald plants! I had been spraying the undersides, especially well, with the surround, but the undersides looked clean...except for the aphids! Not sure if it washed off with that wind driven rain, or what happened, but not a single Little Lucy had an aphid, even the two in the same container, rubbing against them! So today, I sprayed them with some Safer 3 in 1, plus some aspirin, then dusted them with some DE, and hopefully that will take care of what's there.
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jun 15, 2019 10:40:07 GMT -5
Question for you, hairymooseknuckles, brownrexx, or whoever else has saved okra seeds. How long do you let them grow? I was thinking until they seem to have stopped growing, and get sort of woody. I've left some on by accident before, that got like that, when I was not saving seeds! lol
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Post by mgulfcoastguy on Jun 15, 2019 11:12:36 GMT -5
They are ready to save when the pods start to split open.
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Post by brownrexx on Jun 15, 2019 11:39:59 GMT -5
Yes I saved them at the end of last season when the pods were hard and brown
I am at my cabin this weekend and I have some little lucy seeds with me that I think I will direct seed here. I wonder if deer eat okra?
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Post by hairymooseknuckles on Jun 15, 2019 14:07:49 GMT -5
pepperhead212, I do just like mgulfcoastguy, does. Typically, I let a few go to seed at the end of the season. If you let it go to seed now, it's always been my belief it will signal the plant to stop producing. I could be wrong though.
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jun 15, 2019 17:27:47 GMT -5
I was afraid of that, too, hairymooseknuckles, but I think if I just leave the first one one a few of the plants to totally dry up, but keep picking the rest on those plants, it should keep those producing...I'll find out. I just don't want any crossing, and this was the best way, I figured. And the I noticed the Emerald is ready to flower now, as well. I put a twist tie on those first okra of the earliest plants, so I'll leave those for seeds. That first one seems to have stopped growing, at about 7".
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Post by bestofour on Jun 15, 2019 20:38:13 GMT -5
brownrexx, found this online " Deer will usually stay away from okra"
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Jun 17, 2019 13:16:58 GMT -5
I harvest pods for seed once the pods develop cracks. I'm sure the seeds are mature then. They are usually pretty dry, too, so they need little additional drying before storage. A couple of times I have waited until the last few weeks of the season and stopped picking pods from all the plants to let the last pods mature for seed. But I think this is risky because an early cold snap could kill the plants entirely before the seeds are mature enough. Plus there's no okra to eat during the last weeks of the season! When letting pods mature earlier in the season, I expect an okra plant to slow down or stop production if I let several pods mature on the same plant. Once I harvest the mature pod(s), if the weather is still hot the plant will usually start producing again. But I have seen some okra plants die just as the seeds mature - I have never been quite sure if the plant was just dying because it had matured seed, or if it died for some other reason. Maybe this varies per variety? When I let just one pod mature per plant, my results have been inconsistent. Sometimes the plants kept producing, other times they slowed down or stopped. Since I don't know what to expect, and I don't want to risk losing some or all production from multiple of plants, I don't do this any more. So, I pick one nice strong plant per variety and let it mature a few pods. (To get enough seeds for me and to share with a few friends, a few pods is all I need.) That way if the plant I'm using for seed saving stops producing or even dies, I can still get a harvest from the other plants. Lots of people say to store okra seeds in an airtight jar in the refrigerator. Okra seeds don't need stratification and they have a hard seed coat that protects them well. In an air-conditioned house, dry okra seeds store just fine at room temperature. I've used jars, paper seed baggies, and ziploc baggies and the seeds keep fine in all of them. So if your refrigerator space is limited, you can save it for other kinds of seeds.
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Post by brownrexx on Jun 17, 2019 13:37:13 GMT -5
The Little Lucy Okra seeds that I sent to everyone were harvested at the end of the 2018 season and they were stored in an open bowl in my pantry which is inside my air conditioned house. I got almost 100% germination and I have heard good reports from others on germination in their gardens.
I direct seeded some in my garden for the first time and I see that they just germinated yesterday. It will be interesting to see how they compare to the ones I started indoors in last March.
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jun 17, 2019 15:25:12 GMT -5
Laura_in_FL I may have to change my plan, if you have had an okra stop producing after just one pod matured. So I snipped off that one that stopped growing, and it was 6", plus the stem, and it was definitely fibrous, so LL has to be picked earlier - probably 4". And I took the seeds out, and put some aside to dry, and some in a sprouter, to see if they will sprout this early, without drying out in the pod. Pepper seeds, FI, are viable as soon as the peppers begin ripening, so who knows? I'll probably just wait until the end, and isolate some flowers, like I was originally thinking about doing. Those other 5 "1st pods" I tagged on the other plants, as well as the later pods, are growing slower than okra usually does, as I usually have to snip them quickly. But it is still cooler than usual, which is probably slowing them.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Jun 18, 2019 9:42:43 GMT -5
pepperhead212, having okra stop production when I let it mature one pod per plant was unusual, but it did happen to me, so I thought I should mention it. Were the seeds from your partly-mature pod still white, or had they started to turn gray or brown? That might give some idea whether they were mature. But I guess that doesn't matter, since your sprouter will let you know for sure. Do you have a practical way to provide extra heat to your okra? Like an agricultural fabric that holds in heat but lets most of the light through? Or are you forecast to get hot weather soon? brownrexx, my Little Lucy are starting to come up. The ones that have come up are a lovely deep green color, so they seem happy so far. The Charles Wright's Big Fat okra seedlings look pretty good. Oddly, my Burmese okra seedlings seem to be struggling a little, as if they are having trouble in the heat. That would be weird for okra! Maybe something else is going on in that bed, though. It is drier than the bed the Charles Wright okra is in, so I bumped up the watering. Maybe that will help. Of course all of my seedlings are tiny still since I planted them so late. Even if all goes well, it will be at least two months before I get any okra. But that still leaves at least 2-3 months to harvest okra.
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jun 18, 2019 11:09:59 GMT -5
It will get hotter, so that's what I figure is the reason for the slow early growth. Only up to 80° today and tomorrow, but the humidity is 85%! Sound familiar? I just checked the okras this morning, and those black aphids are back! Especially on the base of the new flowers, because they are new growth, I assume. I'll have to do something else about this. And still, not a hint of one on Little Lucy plants.
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Post by brownrexx on Jun 18, 2019 17:49:46 GMT -5
pepperhead212, I am only growing Little Lucy Okra this year since we liked it best last year when I grew 3 different varieties. I just looked them over very carefully and didn't see any aphids. I hope that it stays that way.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Jun 19, 2019 15:15:17 GMT -5
85% humidity sounds very familiar! Ugh.
If I don't have aphids on my Little Lucy okra I will be impressed. Okra has always attracted aphids for me in the past.
However, they don't usually do major harm so I leave them for the ladybugs to eat.
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Post by carolyn on Jun 19, 2019 16:13:47 GMT -5
I Just hope to find a few plants somewhere in the flowerbed. the rain deluged over the gutters and left running river washes throughout the bed.
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Post by carolyn on Jun 23, 2019 10:55:21 GMT -5
Hip hip hooray. I see little cotelydens popping through. Mostly in a row too. Now that's shocking.
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Post by mgulfcoastguy on Jun 23, 2019 12:32:32 GMT -5
I picked 2 Little Lucy a few minutes ago.
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jul 15, 2019 16:32:02 GMT -5
I'm up to 7 or 8 okra per day now (from 4 emerald and 8 little lucy plants), and today I saw the first branched out stem from a Little Lucy plant, which is a good sign. I took a photo of it, but it's not really that visible. Still no more aphids, KOW, and still never saw one on little lucy. I'll be using some tonight, in a Thai curry.
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Post by hairymooseknuckles on Jul 15, 2019 17:18:33 GMT -5
I have 10 plants about 2" high in peat cups. I got it in a trade long time ago. Letter said it was probably an old version of spineless. I also found my Little Lucy seeds, I'm down to about a teaspoon of seeds, so next year I've got to grow it out to replenish my seeds. I wanted to give the old variety a look see. I'm sure it's not going to be as attractive as little Lucy though.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Jul 16, 2019 12:42:27 GMT -5
I haven't gotten any okra here yet due to my late start. The largest of the Charles Wright plants is about 2' tall and looks like it will bloom soon, so likely it will be first to bear.
All of the okra is doing better since the aphid population has abruptly dropped. I didn't treat the plants, but the ladybugs seem to have found them. Between the okra and the long beans (these are the biggest aphid magnets in my summer garden) there should be plenty of food to keep the ladybugs and their young happy!
The two Little Lucy that I transplanted are struggling still, but I think they will make it. The two I didn't transplant look great, and I think they will start to bloom soon after the Charles Wright. Burmese looks to be the last one to get started, but the plants look good now.
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