Another tough farewell, I pulled the okra stalks, once lush, tall, proud bearers of pounds of okra, now frost bitten, dried shells of their former glory. I hated to say good bye, but I couldn’t bear to see them like that. The surprisingly huge stalks, some over an inch wide, are lying in my front yard. That final letting go: so hard!
On July 26: Late but vigorous
I didn’t procrastinate too much this year garden-wise except with okra. I started the seeds late, choosing to plant them in cells under lights even in mid-April when the last frost day was near. I like the control you have under lights: water, temperature, light I can bend to my will, unlike outside where I have little control over the sun, the wind, the rain. Though last year’s seeds, they germinated like gangbusters, almost 100% peeking out from the soil saying, “Here we are, ready or not.” And it seems I wasn’t quite ready. They grew well under lights and continued to grow well transplanted into pots and set outside. And when I finally set them in the ground in and around the Lorelei, they shot up like Jack’s beanstalk, maybe not to the clouds but fast and green and lush.
August 20: Gorgeous, lush, but scant fruit
I never saw such okra plants. The leaves were full and wide, easily 14 inches across and from stem to stern. Like my tomatoes, they quickly became a rainforest of vegetation, a healthy, happy, vigorous jungle. I was thrilled with their growth, their progress except for one thing: they were not bearing fruit. Hardly a flower appeared, though some of the stalks were nearing a half inch thick or more on plants quickly overtaking three feet in height. I knew that soil with too much nitrogen will produce a lot of greens but not many flowers, but that couldn’t have been my problem. Most of the okra, the healthiest, actually, I had planted in new garden space I had enriched only with rotted leaves, good for making soil lighter and healthier, but not particularly a source of nitrogen.
September 2: Blossoms and young okra glore
By the time mid-August arrived, I wondered if I would get any okra before cooler weather would discourage flowers and fruit from forming. I didn’t need to wonder long. It seemed to me, completely suddenly, the plants were filled with blossoms, beautiful flowers that resemble hibiscus because, in fact, the two plants are first cousins. Soon, we were picking a mess of okra every three or four days. Once the fruit has set and the blossom falls, okra grows fast. A few times, we picked even more than we could use in one meal, one of my favorite signs of small-garden success. And the stalks had grown so tall, I had to stand on my toes or else bend the plant down to pick the fruit off it. Picking okra is another fun hide-and-seek game because it blends in so well with the stalks and stems around it. Several times we found an eight or ten inch okra (okra is optimal at three to four inches) because we had missed one the last picking.
October 9: Photo snapped holding the camera at my eye level. I am 5'9", so many of the plants are well over six feet tall
Last year almost like flipping a switch, cooler fall weather seemed to shut down the okra plants. Not the producing machines I grew this year: we enjoyed it throughout October, eating a mess of the stuff as late as the 27th. Though blossoms remained on those towering bushes, many of which were nearly seven feet tall by now, a 33 degree night on October 29 finally stopped those mighty plants.
A single harvest, enough for two meals.
We ate the okra in some stews or cooked with tomatoes, but mostly we ate it fried, (naughty us) and gosh was it good, even only rolled in a little corn meal and tossed in the hot olive oil. It will be a long, lonely winter, spring, and part of summer before we get to enjoy what has become one of our favorite garden products.
