Okra 2024

[JRinPA]

The dogs loved the pressure canned stuff. I liked it okay, but they are dead soft. Pickling, I have seen it for sale, maybe in the fridge, but never tried it.

Wasn't there a recipe for okra kimchi on one of the forums?

I think my small patch of 10 transplants under the vented plastic is loving that heat, but man is it dry. Need some rain, I'm tired of feeding drip tape.

[JRinPA]

Progress June 12th

double row under vented plastic, I guess the camera was pointed off target. I stuck it under and clicked.

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The three in pots with bottoms cut out and under agribon

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The garlic row okra

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[karstopography]

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The okra are bouncing back from the battering Beryl delivered. I picked enough okra since the storm to have two nice side dishes of roasted okra last night. It’s rained over five inches since the ten inches we got in the hurricane and okra love all that water. The raised bed okra are just getting to the flowering stage. We should be covered up in okra in a week or two.

[JRinPA]

Rabbits, a baby rabbit a few weeks back - ate off about 1/4 of the okra planted between the garlic. The remainder is very skinny in comparison to the few on in the other row that were same age/time transplants, but were under plastic and had more sun. I would say it was better than nothing, but we'll have to see how much okra come from it. Because if there isn't much then it just wasted space. I could stick corn seed in there right now, and I'm tempted to do just that. It is mid July and they are at most a foot high and skinny. And that one looks like twins, which I thought I thinned weeks back.

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[Ken4230]

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The okra are bouncing back from the battering Beryl delivered. I picked enough okra since the storm to have two nice side dishes of roasted okra last night. It’s rained over five inches since the ten inches we got in the hurricane and okra love all that water. The raised bed okra are just getting to the flowering stage. We should be covered up in okra in a week or two.

I wondered how Beryl treated your garden. It's been more than 30 years since I grew any Okra. We grew it in ground for my older sister, she loved Okra and Tomatoes, boiled. I get about half queasy thinking about that slimy stuff. I do like it deep fried. Best friends mom made a snack out of deep fried okra for our Friday night card games. Somehow she made it about the size of a silver dollar, crunchy like popcorn. I seem to remember soaking the seeds in peroxide for some amount of time. I think my mom actually filed her okra seed.

Roasted okra would probably be nice, one of my favorite dishes is well seasoned roasted new potatoes. I usually keep 5-6 containers of potatoes going all summer so I can have a steady supply of new potatoes.

[karstopography]

@Ken4230 roasted okra isn’t slimy at all. Almost too easy to make, but really good and doesn’t carry the baggage of fried food.

Our growing season is so long here I don’t do anything special to get okra going. All Direct seeded, no pre soaking or with any other manipulation or treatment of the seed and I don’t get in a rush to seed. The soil is plenty warm by April to sprout okra. April 1st is about the earliest I might seed, but I generally wait another week or two. My last seeding was mid-late May. Roughly eight or ten plants per seeding, three waves, spread across six weeks or so. Goal is to have a steady supply starting in July and continuing into the fall. Something that we will eat at least once or twice a week during the season. Fills a belly, is healthy and thankfully we all love the flavor. Price is right.

[Ken4230]

@Ken4230 roasted okra isn’t slimy at all. Almost too easy to make, but really good and doesn’t carry the baggage of fried food.

Our growing season is so long here I don’t do anything special to get okra going. All Direct seeded, no pre soaking or with any other manipulation or treatment of the seed and I don’t get in a rush to seed. The soil is plenty warm by April to sprout okra. April 1st is about the earliest I might seed, but I generally wait another week or two. My last seeding was mid-late May. Roughly eight or ten plants per seeding, three waves, spread across six weeks or so. Goal is to have a steady supply starting in July and continuing into the fall. Something that we will eat at least once or twice a week during the season. Fills a belly, is healthy and thankfully we all love the flavor. Price is right.

I'll have some in the ground tomorrow. If it doesn't work, I'll just buy some from a couple at church that run a farmers market type place. They sell plants and produce, a lot of it grown on site. They are good people and that kind is hard to find nowadays. My last frost date is Oct. 17. If it works, good for me, if not I'll at least have had some practice.

[JRinPA]

I dug up some of those transplants and moved them back to fill in holes in the rows...So I just kept the last 10 feet of okra. They dug up way too easily, no taproot for all that time. Gave them some fertilizer. I'll probably put the fall cole crops in the front end of the row. Some of the okra in the back got a little bigger, so I'm leaving them but it was too much space to waste at the front 2/3 for a few spindly plants. Somehow they got left in twins, and that is terrible for okra, IMO. The back okra was thinned properly and look bigger.

So okra between garlic, probably a total no-go, just not enough sun/space, but may have been okay with the pots and earlier starts or fertilizer.

I only have the three lonely starts from early May, in the three pots with bottom cut out. THOSE look great, and I picked the first okra from one of them, today. Not Slimey, eaten raw. So 7/14/24, first finished pod.

[karstopography]

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I guess there is no limit to how much rain okra can take and still appear to thrive. Hurricane proof, flood proof, heat proof, any vegetable originating from Africa must be tough to survive.

Once the sun comes out I believe I’m going to get hammered with okra pods coming inside. The constant cloud cover and rain these past couple of weeks has slowed down the blooming a bit.

[JRinPA]

I have always thought, pushing 10 years of growing it here, the more rain the better for okra. Cannot be overwatered, it thrives on flooding and heat.

[pepperhead212]

Today I pulled all the seeds out of those first 4 okra pods I let grow out - something I sometimes do with those Little Lucy pods, because they are always first to flower, so they can't be crossed.
This year's saved Little Lucy okra pods, 2024 by pepperhead212, on Flickr

All of the seeds from the 4 saved Little Lucy okra pods. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

About 2 tsp Little Lucy okra seeds, from 2024. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

I've only been picking a few each morning, but the flowers are starting to become more numerous.

[karstopography]

My mid late May bed isn’t as productive as I thought it might be. I think I had too much nitrogen in there. Plants look vigorous but not a lot of blooms. Lots of ants, aggressive fire ants, working on the pods and buds, too. They end up scarring the pods and damaging the flowers enough to have pods not form.

I had enough surplus plants this year in the other beds to keep us in okra, but there’s yet to be a surplus harvest. I’m blasting the ants off with the hose. Seems to discourage them enough to allow the okra to stay ahead of the ants. I think all the rain and clouds was overall a negative for the okra. Didn’t kill it, the plants grew, but the ants got the upper hand.

[pepperhead212]

Though the ants only showed up briefly on my okra, in the past, they were on almost every plant, and I had to get rid of them! Once I got rid of them, with a pyrethrin spray, I brushed some tanglefoot on the lower 2 or 3 inches of the stalks, and the stakes, and made sure there was nothing they could climb on, to get back on the plants, and I never had a problem with the ants again.

[GoDawgs]

I have six plants in a bed and for whatever reason they just did not want to thrive this year. Three Cajun Jewel and three Jing Orange. They were started May 7 and right now the plants range in size from about 2.5' to 12". I'm getting one pod here and there and the first one of those was several weeks ago. I heavily suspect nematodes at work but won't know until I pull out the okra. The plants themselves look healthy though. Meanwhile I'll just save and freeze whatever few pods I get.

[karstopography]

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My daughter brought us a box of her grown in New Waverly TX mix of okra. I forgot to ask her how many plants she has. I might have to pickle some.

[worth1]

I grew over a hundred plants one year and saved pounds of seeds.
Someone on the the old forum years ago wanted seeds.
I think I sent her like 2 pounds worth of something.
It was Louisiana green velvet I think.

[karstopography]

I grew over a hundred plants one year and saved pounds of seeds.
Someone on the the old forum years ago wanted seeds.
I think I sent her like 2 pounds worth of something.
It was Louisiana green velvet I think.

The okra seed oil is supposed to a healthy and quality oil.

https://oliverfarm.com/store/okra-seed-oil

[JRinPA]

Those winds on Friday...three or four of the okra that were tall but sort of exposed to the wind got really rough looking by Saturday night. Lots of wilty looking stems and leaves at the top. Didn't check it today. The entired stem/vascular system just seemed to be...beat up?...by the high winds.

At home, I lost 2 of 3 cages that weren't staked. The cages I staked that morning stayed upright. Two cages have Amish Paste which is a very short stubby indeterminate, and those I did not stake and they did not blow over. Still under 5 ft tall, those cages, 3 plants in each. But 2 of the 3 tall indeterminate in 7 ft cages tipped over.

But the okra made me cry a little, seeing that. I didn't look closely at the roots, as it was getting dark, maybe they are pulled up some and broken some. It seemed to be the top, so I figured it was just from whipping around.

[GoDawgs]

But the okra made me cry a little, seeing that. I didn't look closely at the roots, as it was getting dark, maybe they are pulled up some and broken some. It seemed to be the top, so I figured it was just from whipping around.

I'll be interested to see if that "whipped around" okra comes back better than ever!

[JRinPA]

I took the whipping mentioned before to be the hard stalk/trunk. But yeah, I'm hoping. I should be able to get over there today, I have so much processing to do this time of year, though.