Good morning, it seems of all the warm season crops that I have forced out of season, okra seems to be the only one that is least adaptive to this. I have sown several times to fully stock the beds It does seem to be intolerant of cool soils. Next year I may have to see if I can warm the soil with plastic film before sowing the germinated seeds. Beans, squash, cucumbers and my butternuts seem to be more tolerant of cooler soils.
A few years back when I tried to over winter some eggplants, okra and chilies I was only successful with eggplants. It seems that the other two veggies abhorred soil temps below 50. I feel this may have killed the plants instead of winter freezes. In warmer climes, all three of these veggies are perennial.
The year I had tried to over winter these veggies was a wet winter and there was an abundance of ice and snow. I had not made any preparations to protect these beds from melt water. In normal years, the soil temp down 5 inches does not drop much below 50 degrees. Ice melt chilled the soils much deeper than 5 inches.
Another option would be to use my temporary greenhouse with two layers of 70 over the green house film. When I had made a study of this configuration (with only 1 layer of 70) it was for keeping greens actively growing through the winter. My study had revealed outside temps of 75 degrees warmed the greenhouse into the 90’s and outside temps above 80 pushed the greenhouse to 100 +. It would be interesting to revisit this study for forcing okra. Okra is the only veggie that is tolerant of temps in the upper 90’s and low triple digits. Where okra seems to thrive in these temps all the other veggies are starting to have heat induced dormancy when the temperature is above 95 and complete shutdown at 100.
It is too late this year to experiment with this configuration we will just have to see what next spring’s planting season brings. Sometimes you just have to do these things.
On Wednesday silly me, I thought why not look at what some of the stunted okra roots look like. These plants were not only not thriving but also were being eaten up by flea beetles. The healthier plants did not show any of these traits. Low and behold their shortcomings had nothing to do with climate but everything to do with root knot nematodes. I have been using a new treatment for nematodes that appears to have failed these plants. Well there is a plan “B”. Where each of these infected plants are, I did a 1% neem soil drench. I have some seed soaking and then I will seed them in these spots. This will be interesting to follow. I love solving problems!
This week I harvested chard, kale, lettuce, green onions, carrots, beets, summer squash, cucumbers, and peas. Please email as to availability and quantities.
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