Houston Lawn & Garden

It’s been an ‘interesting’ gardening season to say the least.  We’ve had moderate production from most of the things planted this year.  It has been hot and dry for the most part, but with occasional rain and regular watering we’ve managed to get a good crop of Early Girl tomatoes, some late cucumbers and a few peppers.  The thing we’ve noticed the most about this season is that the plant growth has been good, but the fruit production has been very slow…that is for everything except our Purple Okra.  These things are just going crazy and we’ve been picking one every other day since our first one here on July 22nd.  At the rate that these are producing, we’ll have enough to feed an army by the time the cool weather start rolling in.

I’m sure a lot has to do with the fact that these guys are treated much differently than the other items we’ve planted in the garden.  First off, there is no incubation required…you jut plant the seed directly into the ground and let then do their thing.  Because they get so large, we chose a plot away from the main vegetable garden that gets less direct sunlight.  We also had some hardwood mulch that we used in this area to help retain moisture and minimize weed growth.  I’m sure that the combination of mulch and extra shade has helped the okra during this extra hot summer.  There seed were planted on May 23rd and here is what they looked like on July 1st, just about 5-weeks later.  The delicate stalks are a deep purple color and the leaves are very broad.

Here they are on August 3rd at about 3 feet tall an growing.  The top layer of leaves have taken a different shape than the broad lower leaves.  They are a lot narrower in shape which allows more sunlight to reach the lower layer of leaves.  They seem to be very efficient a collecting sunlight.  We will see the leaves dip in the evening and then perk up in the morning…it’s quite a sight!  If you zoom in on this picture to can see one of the pods growing in the center.  The pods are all producing off of the main stalk right at the junction on one of the leaf arms.  The rule of thumb is to pick them when they are about finger length.  If you don’t they will continue to grow and become too leathery to eat.

Here is a not-so-good picture of one of the flowers that it produces.  If you blink you will miss it because they don’t last but a few hours before they wilt away and fall off leaving the beginning of a new pod behind.  They are not the prettiest flowers I’ve ever seen, but they are still fun to watch because you can almost stand there and watch them go through the full cycle.

This is the first time we’ve grown them and we are having fun with them.  They are easy to grow and fun to harvest.  The next big step is to chop, batter, fry, salt, and enjoy as a side dish for some grilled catfish.  I also found a recipe online for Purple Okra that I want to try which calls for cutting the pods length-wise and saute them with some bacon, onions, bell peppers and a splash of balsamic vinegar. After all of that, if we have enough left (which I’m sure we will at this rate) we’ll be scaring up a monster batch of GUMBO this winter that will make yo’ mama jump back and slap herself!