Hello @Meadowlark
All beds are the same and use Mushroom Soil for the soil. All soil purchased from the same nursery but over a one month period of time and all just this Spring of this year. I have not fertilized any of the Okra to date.
ThomasT
Okra not blooming
- Thread starter ThomasT
- Start date
All beds are the same and use Mushroom Soil for the soil. All soil purchased from the same nursery but over a one month period of time and all just this Spring of this year. I have not fertilized any of the Okra to date.
ThomasT
Meadowlark
No N-P-K Required
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2019
- Messages
- 2,901
- Reaction score
- 2,394
- Location
- East Texas
- Hardiness Zone
- old zone 8b/new zone 9a
- Country
So, it wasn't the same "batch" of mushroom soil. The batch in the third bed could have very well had different composition...even possibly herbicide residue. Testing is the only way to be positive.
Hello again @Meadowlark
This Mushroom Soil comes in these big fabric bags ( I think 60-pounds per bag ) and it took 6 bags in the "New Bed". I purchased 8 bags on that trip and used 2 bags for my Squash and it is producing OK.
ThomasT
I grow okra every year and I have not experienced what you are going through.
I have that problem with tomatoes in early July due to the high humidity and lows of 80’s at night. They won’t set blooms which is normal for our area.
Let us know if the phosphate works.
Btw I would have a soil test done by your agriculture university. It will let you know what you might be lacking and it is the most reliable soil ph test.
I have that problem with tomatoes in early July due to the high humidity and lows of 80’s at night. They won’t set blooms which is normal for our area.
Let us know if the phosphate works.
Btw I would have a soil test done by your agriculture university. It will let you know what you might be lacking and it is the most reliable soil ph test.
I've been having the very same results this year, usually Okra does really well here and by now is in full swing. I also planted in intervals, beginning the last week of May, then two weeks later in June. I've done the same for years.
Normally the Okra would be 6ft tall by now and producing so much I end up giving it away.
I also do two plantings, in two gardens, both handled differently. The main garden gets normal treatment, and contains, tomatoes, peppers, and beans as well. There's two 12ft rows of Okra, Clemson Spineless from a mix of saved and new seeds. (One row of each). I've been doing the same thing for years but rotate garden position yearly.
The other garden is a raised bed up near the house, its a mix of top soil off the pile I got a couple of years ago to redo my lawn, and dirt from the main garden displaced by the addition of compost each year. Both have soaker hose systems for irrigation. The raised bed garden plants which are two weeks younger, are close to 6ft tall with huge leaves, the main garden plants are barely 2ft tall and don't seem to be progressing much at all.
Both are fertilized with traditional 10-10-10 as I've done for decades.
The PH in the main garden tests to 6.7, the PH in the raised bed is 6.3.
The main difference is that in the main garden, instead of adding lime as I normally would I used crushed, cooked, egg shells ground to a flour like powder. It did really well last year and offset the addition of the dried tree leaves each year that I use for mulch, which get turned in at the end of the year.
I used regular lime in the raised garden initially but followed up with some crushed shells on the surface as well which further corrected the PH which tested at 5.9 initially. The main garden soil is generally around 6.5-6.8 with minimal work to control it. I moved to the crushed egg shells because they're free, but what I noticed is that when I switched to using the crushed shells, mainly as a source of calcium, I virtually eliminated all the issues I had with tomato diseases mid season. The last two years, since switching, I had tomato production well into Nov. with the tomatoes seemingly getting their second wind as the weather cooled off a bit in Sept and Oct.
Neither set of plants have any blossoms or fruit. The plants in the raised box get less sun as they're against a wall on one side an along the driveway which always has a truck or van parked in that area. The stems themselves are heavier in the raised bad too.
The okra last year didn't attain much height but produced heavily with the same treatment. The last crop of okra was let to mature and dry on the plants to give me this years seeds. I've done this for the past 18 years.
Okra is the one thing I've never had issues with here, but this year everything is performing poorly for some reason. between new batches of weeds we didn't have before, the tomatoes matured super late, only recently beginning to produce ripe fruit, and a basic total failure of all the 'Better Boy' plants grown from FM seed. (I grow all my plants from seed). The okra gets direct seeded as soon as temps are staying above 60 degrees at night and the tomatoes get planted around that same time. This year it took far longer to see the okra plants emerge for some reason, but we had a cool spring and a really hot July.
A neighbor, who bought seeds at Lowe's and planted a new garden this year has been having the same results, different seeds, different dirt, etc.
Normally the Okra would be 6ft tall by now and producing so much I end up giving it away.
I also do two plantings, in two gardens, both handled differently. The main garden gets normal treatment, and contains, tomatoes, peppers, and beans as well. There's two 12ft rows of Okra, Clemson Spineless from a mix of saved and new seeds. (One row of each). I've been doing the same thing for years but rotate garden position yearly.
The other garden is a raised bed up near the house, its a mix of top soil off the pile I got a couple of years ago to redo my lawn, and dirt from the main garden displaced by the addition of compost each year. Both have soaker hose systems for irrigation. The raised bed garden plants which are two weeks younger, are close to 6ft tall with huge leaves, the main garden plants are barely 2ft tall and don't seem to be progressing much at all.
Both are fertilized with traditional 10-10-10 as I've done for decades.
The PH in the main garden tests to 6.7, the PH in the raised bed is 6.3.
The main difference is that in the main garden, instead of adding lime as I normally would I used crushed, cooked, egg shells ground to a flour like powder. It did really well last year and offset the addition of the dried tree leaves each year that I use for mulch, which get turned in at the end of the year.
I used regular lime in the raised garden initially but followed up with some crushed shells on the surface as well which further corrected the PH which tested at 5.9 initially. The main garden soil is generally around 6.5-6.8 with minimal work to control it. I moved to the crushed egg shells because they're free, but what I noticed is that when I switched to using the crushed shells, mainly as a source of calcium, I virtually eliminated all the issues I had with tomato diseases mid season. The last two years, since switching, I had tomato production well into Nov. with the tomatoes seemingly getting their second wind as the weather cooled off a bit in Sept and Oct.
Neither set of plants have any blossoms or fruit. The plants in the raised box get less sun as they're against a wall on one side an along the driveway which always has a truck or van parked in that area. The stems themselves are heavier in the raised bad too.
The okra last year didn't attain much height but produced heavily with the same treatment. The last crop of okra was let to mature and dry on the plants to give me this years seeds. I've done this for the past 18 years.
Okra is the one thing I've never had issues with here, but this year everything is performing poorly for some reason. between new batches of weeds we didn't have before, the tomatoes matured super late, only recently beginning to produce ripe fruit, and a basic total failure of all the 'Better Boy' plants grown from FM seed. (I grow all my plants from seed). The okra gets direct seeded as soon as temps are staying above 60 degrees at night and the tomatoes get planted around that same time. This year it took far longer to see the okra plants emerge for some reason, but we had a cool spring and a really hot July.
A neighbor, who bought seeds at Lowe's and planted a new garden this year has been having the same results, different seeds, different dirt, etc.
Hello @yardiron
Like you, I have had Okra in my gardens every year for a very long time and really never spent any extra time or attention to it. Just plant the seeds, it grows like crazy until a heavy frost or freeze,and produces more than I could cook, eat and put up in quarts.
I did receive the Super Phosphate yesterday and applied some to the "New" Okra, so maybe in a couple of weeks I will see some blooms
.Good luck with your crop.
ThomasT
The same here, usually by now I'm forced to prep and freeze bags of it.
What concerns me is that its not just me, a few neighbors are having the same issues and everyone planted different seeds from different sources. My new seeds were from Ferry Morse, the neighbor got theirs from a farm supply, loose in a bag, and a guy across the road who planted about a 20x30 piece of his garden with it is having the same issues.
Stunted plants, pale in color, no blossoms, and no okra.
The best out of all of them appearance wise are the plants in the raised boxes by my driveway. Those look pretty normal but haven't bloomed at all.
I do notice a complete lack of bees this year, despite having a buy four doors down who keeps several hives in his back yard. He told me he lost most of his bees over the winter, and the one hive was pushing out dead bees all over the ground all summer.
Every last plant here has been acting very strange this year.
My tomatoes are normal size but not producing many tomatoes and those that I do see are small and ripening half way and falling off the vine.
My massive, 50 year old fig bush put on figs early, then they turned purple not even half way through their cycle, they turned the color of ripe figs but were hard as a rock. they all did that and fell off the plant. In all the years I've been here, its never done that before. It also put off a ton of new shoots all over the yard. Its always been prone to spreading but not 100ft away form the plant, it just gained a few feet every year, which I've always just cut back and dug up the new sections.
This year it went out of control
Twice the whole lawn just turned brown, we had a ton of heat but it died out completely, what came back is not grass. Only one section that's a really fine blue bladed grass recovered.
My forsythia bushes and pussy willow trees also put off shoots all over the place, neither had ever done that before. The one pussy willow sprouted up a whole new tree next to the other one that's suddenly just as large. But neither one bloomed.
Nor did my dogwood trees. They failed to bloom as well.
I think the tomato issues are a lack of pollination I've not seen any bees at all near the garden, only some butterflies recently. The massive number of hornets, yellow jackets, and red wasps this year was a big surprise too but even they acted strange, I never saw a bald faced hornets nest built near the ground, vs high up in a tree. They built one under my flat bed car trailer, and another on the back of my stockade fence about 12" off the ground. It made them easy to destroy but its odd behavior. The yellow jackets, which normally are in ground nests, all built nests under my car and truck bumpers, in the mirrors, and even under the tool box in the bed.
The red wasps which normally build nests under the eaves of the house built their nests out in the open on things like my unused tomato cages, the side of my boat, and one on my snow plow at the end of the driveway, none of their nests were protected from the rain so they quickly got ruined and they were gone.
What concerns me is that its not just me, a few neighbors are having the same issues and everyone planted different seeds from different sources. My new seeds were from Ferry Morse, the neighbor got theirs from a farm supply, loose in a bag, and a guy across the road who planted about a 20x30 piece of his garden with it is having the same issues.
Stunted plants, pale in color, no blossoms, and no okra.
The best out of all of them appearance wise are the plants in the raised boxes by my driveway. Those look pretty normal but haven't bloomed at all.
I do notice a complete lack of bees this year, despite having a buy four doors down who keeps several hives in his back yard. He told me he lost most of his bees over the winter, and the one hive was pushing out dead bees all over the ground all summer.
Every last plant here has been acting very strange this year.
My tomatoes are normal size but not producing many tomatoes and those that I do see are small and ripening half way and falling off the vine.
My massive, 50 year old fig bush put on figs early, then they turned purple not even half way through their cycle, they turned the color of ripe figs but were hard as a rock. they all did that and fell off the plant. In all the years I've been here, its never done that before. It also put off a ton of new shoots all over the yard. Its always been prone to spreading but not 100ft away form the plant, it just gained a few feet every year, which I've always just cut back and dug up the new sections.
This year it went out of control
Twice the whole lawn just turned brown, we had a ton of heat but it died out completely, what came back is not grass. Only one section that's a really fine blue bladed grass recovered.
My forsythia bushes and pussy willow trees also put off shoots all over the place, neither had ever done that before. The one pussy willow sprouted up a whole new tree next to the other one that's suddenly just as large. But neither one bloomed.
Nor did my dogwood trees. They failed to bloom as well.
I think the tomato issues are a lack of pollination I've not seen any bees at all near the garden, only some butterflies recently. The massive number of hornets, yellow jackets, and red wasps this year was a big surprise too but even they acted strange, I never saw a bald faced hornets nest built near the ground, vs high up in a tree. They built one under my flat bed car trailer, and another on the back of my stockade fence about 12" off the ground. It made them easy to destroy but its odd behavior. The yellow jackets, which normally are in ground nests, all built nests under my car and truck bumpers, in the mirrors, and even under the tool box in the bed.
The red wasps which normally build nests under the eaves of the house built their nests out in the open on things like my unused tomato cages, the side of my boat, and one on my snow plow at the end of the driveway, none of their nests were protected from the rain so they quickly got ruined and they were gone.
I noticed this morning that all of my first planting of okra suddenly has blossoms on it, both rows have bright yellow flowers despite the okra being only about 26" tall. The second and third plantings, which are larger, have none yet.
I did notice that the plants that are more toward the shaded side of the garden are taller and fuller looking than those in full sun. Since all get the same water via a soaker tube, it seems they prefer a bit of shade?
Another thing to note is that the plants in the raised bed are highly susceptible to wilting over if not watered heavily daily. Miss one morning and they wilt as soon as the sun comes out. They've been far more thirsty than those planted in the level ground. The raise bed is made of terracotta shingles buried 1/2 way into the ground to form a raised bed, and each type of plant is planted in buried, bottomless poly tubs about 24" x 24".
What it tells me is that none of the roots are reaching downward to the actual ground and only relying on the moisture available in the raised part of the garden which is about 20" high or so.
I did notice that the plants that are more toward the shaded side of the garden are taller and fuller looking than those in full sun. Since all get the same water via a soaker tube, it seems they prefer a bit of shade?
Another thing to note is that the plants in the raised bed are highly susceptible to wilting over if not watered heavily daily. Miss one morning and they wilt as soon as the sun comes out. They've been far more thirsty than those planted in the level ground. The raise bed is made of terracotta shingles buried 1/2 way into the ground to form a raised bed, and each type of plant is planted in buried, bottomless poly tubs about 24" x 24".
What it tells me is that none of the roots are reaching downward to the actual ground and only relying on the moisture available in the raised part of the garden which is about 20" high or so.
Hello @yardiron
All of my beds are raised and of course drain very well with the Mushroom soil. I use a Drip Irrigation system with a manual timer and I learned early on that the plants need watering first thing in the morning. That is no problem, when I go out to harvest the veggies I turn the water on and set the timer.
ThomasT
For me, the raised beds up near the house are more or less a control test each year, mainly for new seeds or anything I didn't plant in the past, and the extra space gets any left over plant that either matured late or I didn't have room for in the main garden.
It gets only clean, compost, and mostly new potting soil, often a good bit of the potting soil used each spring to sprout the seeds. I use the same fertilizer, and same water method but I take control of the water myself in the raised beds since they're right near the house. The garden outback is cycled with at timer daily around 7am for one hour.
Everything in the big garden has been done the same, using the same soil and same fertilizer for the past 10 years or so. I have about 12 yds of mushroom soil piled up under a roof outback that I've been drawing off of for years, its tarped and covered on a concrete pad. Its along side of a huge compost pile as well.
The only change made in recent years was to switch from dolomite lime in bags to pulverized egg shells which gave me fantastic results over the last couple years.
I was warned about over doing the egg shells in that they can put calcium into the soil faster than lime can, and therefore somehow possibly prevent the plants from being able to absorb nutrients which I accounted for the first year's late maturing of the plants. So I cut back on the amount of egg shells and increased the fertilizer and organics in the soil.
Since switching to egg shells I've not had any disease issues, no wilts, no spotting, just clean tomatoes and the plants, although later to mature, have lasted well into the late fall.
Although its hard to tell if its a weather issue or a soil issue that's made them change because I made the change mainly due to not being able to find lime during the pandemic, and egg shells were free. It just so happened that 2020, and subsequent years have all had cool spring temps that didn't seem to warm above 60 degrees at night to almost June.
We had been getting warmer a lot earlier in the year over the prior 10 years here. Prior to 2020, the only late start season we had was in 2009, from 2009 to 2019, I had planted in the last week in April, not May or early June. This year was the earliest I was able to plant since 2019 having the entire first planting in the ground the Third week in May. Even then the plants took weeks to show signs of activity, but none were lost.
For the second day, I picked a several pounds of okra and if the others get going hopefully it'll produce long enough to put enough away till its ready again next year. I'm just a bit concerned though that the plants are nearly a month's growth behind last years plants at the same date and they lack color.
The okra picked so far has been fantastic taste wise. They're more tender than what I got last year and seem faster growing as I picked nearly everything just one day ago, and 27 hours later picked double that amount.
But the much larger, greener plants in the raised beds show no sign of blooming yet despite looking like small trees at the bottom already. The second plantings are all far darker green then the first planting, all from the same seeds, some in the same soil one row over.
The second planting is growing twice as fast and now seems to be progressing even faster than the first batch already being almost double in size. The growth rate of the second batch is more like what I'm used to seeing growth wise but even its still later than usual.
It gets only clean, compost, and mostly new potting soil, often a good bit of the potting soil used each spring to sprout the seeds. I use the same fertilizer, and same water method but I take control of the water myself in the raised beds since they're right near the house. The garden outback is cycled with at timer daily around 7am for one hour.
Everything in the big garden has been done the same, using the same soil and same fertilizer for the past 10 years or so. I have about 12 yds of mushroom soil piled up under a roof outback that I've been drawing off of for years, its tarped and covered on a concrete pad. Its along side of a huge compost pile as well.
The only change made in recent years was to switch from dolomite lime in bags to pulverized egg shells which gave me fantastic results over the last couple years.
I was warned about over doing the egg shells in that they can put calcium into the soil faster than lime can, and therefore somehow possibly prevent the plants from being able to absorb nutrients which I accounted for the first year's late maturing of the plants. So I cut back on the amount of egg shells and increased the fertilizer and organics in the soil.
Since switching to egg shells I've not had any disease issues, no wilts, no spotting, just clean tomatoes and the plants, although later to mature, have lasted well into the late fall.
Although its hard to tell if its a weather issue or a soil issue that's made them change because I made the change mainly due to not being able to find lime during the pandemic, and egg shells were free. It just so happened that 2020, and subsequent years have all had cool spring temps that didn't seem to warm above 60 degrees at night to almost June.
We had been getting warmer a lot earlier in the year over the prior 10 years here. Prior to 2020, the only late start season we had was in 2009, from 2009 to 2019, I had planted in the last week in April, not May or early June. This year was the earliest I was able to plant since 2019 having the entire first planting in the ground the Third week in May. Even then the plants took weeks to show signs of activity, but none were lost.
For the second day, I picked a several pounds of okra and if the others get going hopefully it'll produce long enough to put enough away till its ready again next year. I'm just a bit concerned though that the plants are nearly a month's growth behind last years plants at the same date and they lack color.
The okra picked so far has been fantastic taste wise. They're more tender than what I got last year and seem faster growing as I picked nearly everything just one day ago, and 27 hours later picked double that amount.
But the much larger, greener plants in the raised beds show no sign of blooming yet despite looking like small trees at the bottom already. The second plantings are all far darker green then the first planting, all from the same seeds, some in the same soil one row over.
The second planting is growing twice as fast and now seems to be progressing even faster than the first batch already being almost double in size. The growth rate of the second batch is more like what I'm used to seeing growth wise but even its still later than usual.
Hello everyone,
OK I have one bloom on the "new okra" today and looks like several more will bloom real soon. I cannot say for sure if the phosphate has actually gone to work this soon or not. If I do get a lot more in the next couple of days, then I will give credit to the phosphate.
I might have to hire a helicopter to harvest the Okra with the plants now right at 7-feet tall
Thanks to those folks that have taken the time to offer help.
ThomasT
OK I have one bloom on the "new okra" today and looks like several more will bloom real soon. I cannot say for sure if the phosphate has actually gone to work this soon or not. If I do get a lot more in the next couple of days, then I will give credit to the phosphate.
I might have to hire a helicopter to harvest the Okra with the plants now right at 7-feet tall
Thanks to those folks that have taken the time to offer help.
ThomasT
Good news. Well now you know the "days" from seeding to harvest in your climate and what the okra plant should look like. You will get okra sparingly to start with, then it really takes off later on. You will eventually have to bend the plant over to pick it. Ever tried a raw piece of okra?