The annual Mowing of the Okra

On Friday Randy mowed down the okra.  The annual Mowing of the Okra is always a cause for celebration.  As much as we love eating it, by October we are very, very tired of picking it.  But we don’t mow it just for the fun of it.  Mowing down old crops and turning them in is an important part of our pest management program.

Cleanliness is next to …

Leaving dead plants out in the field provides lots of nice homes for insect pests looking for shelter over the winter.  This causes big problems.  Incorporating plant residues (disking in the old okra plants, for example) is an example of good field sanitation.  And just like good sanitation helps keep you from getting bugs, good field sanitation does the same for our vegetable crops.  So we need to make sure we get the okra mowed down early enough to disk in all the plant material before wet fall weather sets in.  And hopefully we have time to plant a winter cover crop to keep weeds in check.

Learning the hard way

This one time, several years ago, we didn’t disk in the okra.  We probably kept harvesting it right up to a frost, and then it was probably too wet to disk it in.  I don’t remember the exact circumstance.  But I do remember that we left it standing over the winter.  The next summer we planted tomatoes next to where the okra had been.  We lost the whole crop of tomatoes to leaf footed bugs – a cousin of the stink bug.  And it was because we provided such a lovely winter habitat for our pests.

So getting the field cleaned up for winter is actually an important task.   Not just to be on top of things in the spring, but as a cornerstone of our pest – and weed and disease – control strategy.  And this year, at least, we are pretty well on top of it.