growing okra - part i

This morning, I sowed a packet of Yates Clemson Spineless okra seeds in a punnet on my heat pad.  Sometimes, I wonder why I even bother growing okra.  It is more suited to growing in a tropical climate.  Plants can reach over six foot in certain parts of India, Fiji and some of the southern states of the US.  Indeed, this is primarily where okra is eaten.  By contrast, my plants are usually grown in pots (if they make it to that stage, as they can be difficult to get growing in the first instance) and are pitifully short by comparison.  They’re hardly what I would call heavy croppers.  If we’re lucky, we can harvest a handful at one time. 

What is okra?  It’s a green vegetable quite unlike anything else you have eaten.  It doesn’t have a lot of flavour in itself, the real taste comes from the spices you add to it.  Usually, you would wash and cut the ends off before cooking it.  Okra can either be eaten by itself or added to a dish with other ingredients.  You may have come across it in Indian or Chinese dishes.  Indian people refer to it as bindi.  It is also a key ingredient in gumbo, which is a dish eaten in the southern states of the US.  I used to be vegetarian and one of my favourite meals was lentil (dahl), rice, spinach, eggplant and bindi.  We love preparing okra with some onion and a little turmeric.  We cook it in a little pot on the stove.  It doesn’t take very long to cook and tastes delicious!

Here’s why I go to the effort of growing okra every year:

•          To my knowledge, it’s only possible to purchase imported okra, usually found in ethnic grocers and grown in Fiji.  It isn’t always that fresh and the pods can be quite tough.  The okra has also been sprayed, probably quite heavily, both during growing and prior to entering the country.  Sometimes, ethnic grocers also sell frozen okra which isn’t very nice.  If you want fresh, locally grown okra you have to grow it yourself!
•          Okra isn’t easy to grow.  I’m always up for a challenge in the garden!
•          It’s worth growing just for the flowers alone.  They belong to the hibiscus family and are very beautiful

While okra can be a bit tricky, it is nevertheless possible to grow successfully, depending on (i) where you live and (ii) how long and hot your summer turns out to be. Here are a few of my top growing tips.

•          Okra needs very hot weather in order to grow and crop.  Don’t bother if you live in a place with a temperate climate.  If you’re still determined to give it a go, you could try growing okra in a glasshouse
•          I’ve never had much luck growing okra in the ground, so I grow it in pots.  This keeps the soil temperature slightly warmer.  It also means that you can move the plants around so they get maximum sun and bring them undercover when the temperature drops in April.  In saying that, I visited the garden of a couple who live in Otahuhu, a neighbouring suburb of Auckland. Their okra was planted in the ground.  The plants were tall, healthy and cropping well.  I also noticed that they managed to grow their eggplants in the ground successfully, which is something I could never achieve, so I keep them in containers as well.  It might come down to the soil.  Maybe ours is lacking in something for these crops.  Other fruiting crops such as zucchini, cucumbers and tomatoes seem to do fine though
•          This is the first summer that we have a greenhouse, so once my seeds germinate, I’m going to pot up my seedlings into 6-cell punnets.  Once they’re big enough, I’ll move them into 9 litre buckets (just the household type, nothing fancy) and keep them in the greenhouse until it gets really hot, which probably won’t be until the new year if the current weather is anything to go by.  By that time, the greenhouse will be empty and they will be able to stay inside for as long as necessary

​I’ll cover my specific tips for sowing, planting and harvesting okra in my next post.

Today’s photo demonstrates how the garden works in mysterious ways.  I noticed that something has popped up in my chilli plant which is in a 35 litre container.  To me, they look a bit like watermelon seedlings, but I’m not sure how that can be as I used fresh potting mix!  What do others think?  If they are, I’m pretty happy as I find watermelon quite tricky to germinate and don’t have many plants to show for all the packets of seeds I went through!​