Okra

My Okra started producing & then stopped. Now they are coming out deformed. What is wrong? I am watering every day, & they are so so slow.

Chances are your foliage is heavy. Take a butcher knife to and give the okra a good hair cut. I have to do that nearly every year to get mine to produce fruit instead of leaves.

Hey Jim.... Could you elaborate some more on this "hair cut" for okra plants..??.. Do you only do that if the plant is NOT producing..??...

It will help the okra produce better if you cut off the excess leaves. Some times if the okra is slow to start putting on pods, cutting the leaves back, triggers it to get started. It doesn't matter how many you cut off as long as you don't cut the terminal bud. I keep mine cut back even when it is producing so I can see the pods better.

I had a problem with mine not producing.. it was pollination! I put some flowers out to attract more bees.. fixed it. :)

I added some more miraclegro & lots & water, so they are blooming now. That seems to have fixed it.

I took Jim's advice and cut some leaves off a few of my okra --> those are the few that started to bloom. The others aren't far behind...but it did seem to nudge those few along faster.

Glad it helped jannz2. I prune a few leaves every time I cut the okra. It will definitly produce better.

I gave my okra a haircut also. It is producing really good now. Thanks Jim41

Mine has decided to take off and be cow horn okra. Now the problem is finding people to take the excess. A good problem to have.

What is cow horn okra? My 4 okra only had 4 fruits!!!

Jim,

Excess?? I only harvested 4 from 4 plants!! Make some pickled okra, they are sooo gooood!!! Belle

Cow Horn is an old type of okra that gets its name from the shape of the pod. They will get 8 or 9 inchs long before they start getting hard. When they get that long they start getting a curve like a cow's horn. You can buy the seed from some of the catalog stores but it is not the same as I have. I have a friend that keeps me supplied. Between he and his deceased father-in-law, they have been saving the seed for over 60 years. I it is not unusual to cut 10 or 12 pods off one stalk late in the season. I also have 25 hills, that makes for the excess.

Bellieg,
How do you make pickled okra?

Holy moly Jim - that's a lot of Okra! I planted 5 plants of Lee Okra from seeds that podster sent me;o) I'm happy to say they are producing well without a haircut. I'm getting 3 or 4 pods per plant at a time! I'll keep your haircut thought in the back of my mind where all my garden tricks are stashed... I fried it - that's the only way I know how to cook it and it's not slimy like I remember - lol.

I always plant to much because when it first starts producing it takes a lot of plants to have enough to eat. Now that it is blowing and going I have enough to share. That is the fun of gardening.

I like okra battered and fried, stir fried, boiled, in gumbo or soup, every way except pickled.

Kelly, what does the muskovitch tomato look like?

From victoryseeds.com...

Moskvich
60 days, indeterminate — An heirloom variety said to have originated in Eastern Siberia. The indeterminate vines produce flavorful, four to six ounce, deep red, smooth, globe-shaped fruits. Tolerant of cooler temperatures and starts producing early.

Picture compliments of Victory Seeds as well...

onyx,
I will give you the recipe next Sunday because we have a medical convention here this week. Belle

I have a tomato that is green with a dark stripes. I thought it was one of the black tomatoes but it just took a yellow cast. One day I felt of one and decided it was ripe. It is really a good tasting tomato but is green inside when you slice it. I guess they mixed my seeds up where I ordered the black tomatoes from. I asked about the muskovich because I had no idea what it looked like.

Onyx,

I only got 4 fruits from my 4 plants but I go to the farmers market to buy .

As promised here is picked okra recipe :

Wash okra well and cut excess stem, drain well
clean canning jars and lids and pack with whole okra,


bring to boil mixture of vinegar, pickling spices, salt, pepper corns, cloves of fresh garlic brown sugar, mustard seed to cover the okra in the jars. Make enough to cover the okra.Seal and refrigerate.
it is best to taste before boiling.
We love it and I can not keep up with the demand. it taste like the ones from the grocery stores.

Let me know how you like it. It has to be refrigerated and best served after few days. i eat them as snacks.

Belle

Thanks Belle,
Sounds good. I will try to make some up soon. Nothing ready to pick here yet. I have harvested 1 1/2 qt zip bags of green beans, and a few hand fulls of cherry tomatoes. My son eats the tomatoes before they get into the house. I figure I will have some in a week or so.

You are welcome. Make sure you taste you mixture before boiling. Let me know how you like it. Belle

Jim41 - Thanks for posting that info about pruning.

Last year I grew a 10 foot row of Cajun Delight okra. It didn't have many leaves on it, the stalks were almost bare, but I thought it produced OK. I'd have to save up about 3 days picking to have a frying pan full.

My wife and I both love fried okra so this year I planted enough that I thought I'd get a good batch every day for frying or freezing. I planted 50 feet of okra, but I switched over to Clemson Spineless 80. So far I've been real disappointed with it, and I was thinking of giving that variety a negative review in PlantFiles for being unproductive.

I've never seen okra plants thrive so. I've got 5' tall thick, bushy plants with leaves up to 18" in diameter. But the production of pods has been so poor I'm not getting any more okra this year than I did last year off a 10' row. I pick daily, and I'm getting only ONE pod for each 4 or 5 plants. That's not right.

After reading your post, I just went out and pruned about 2/3 of the leaves off my plants - including all those real big leaves. The plants still look OK, and I bet that's been my problem.

I've never pruned okra before, but I've never had bushy plants like these before either. Thanks, I'm hoping that fixed it.

It always has worked for me Ozark. I learned it from my dad. When his okra got ready to start blooming he started whacking leaves.

EEach time I pick my okra, I whack off some more leaves. My okra is fruiting good now.

I'm glad to here that behillman. Mine is really turning it on in spite of the 105 temps we have been having.

Okra is great roasted in the oven (400 degrees for ten minutes) or on the grill. Just put into a tin pan, mix with olive oil, cayenne pepper flakes and salt. Much better than frying.

i agree about grilling. DH loves it with fresh tomatoes, sweet onions and sea salt. Belle

My okra is going like crazy, even in this 100º+ temp! We have about 6 Emerald Green Velvet okra plants and we get at least 1-2 pods off them daily. We just cut the tops off and toss into a freezer bag in the freezer. When it's full, we eat it. Right now, DH is in the kitchen getting ready to fry some up.

The okra itself is now above the tops of the leaves! Yikes!

Here's the whole plant.

Oh my, your okra looks good. Want to sell me some? LOL!! I just love the pickled okra. DH loves it too so I have to go to the farmers market to buy some more. Belle

Ozark, don't give up on Clemson Spineless yet. That is about the most popular okra grown in NC with many folks not thinking of ever growing a different kind. Remember, okra (like tomatoes, etc) will tend to produce more foliage than flowers if over-fertilized.

Most folks here do as Jim suggested, trim the leaves as the plant grows. This is normally done below the most recent harvest. In other words, pick the pod(s) and the branches below the lowest one picked get whacked off. By the end of the summer you tend to have a naked stalk most of the way up the plant with few leaves/flowers/pods at the top.

As for me, I tend to get tired of picking okra so began taking my weedwhacker to them, cutting the whole plant down by two-thirds. (I have a saw blade on my weed eater.) This gives me a reprieve from having to pick every day. In a few weeks or so there are plenty of new shoots coming on the shortened plants and I can resume picking up until fall.

Stephanie, Emerald Velvet is a good producer here, too. I also recommend Perkins Long Pod to many of my customers as it can get quite long pods and still remain tender so perhaps some of ya'll might like to try it next year.

And pickled okra? Oh Belle, don't get me started! That's one of the few things I can each year, can't get enuff of it!

Happy Gardening!
Shoe

Shie,,
How do you do your pickled okra? DH loves it because it taste better that the store bought which are very pricey. i/ eat them as snacks!!! Love them!!! Belle

Mornin', all!

Belle, although I have several pickled okra recipes in my Recipe Folder that friends have shared with me over the years I have to admit I prefer to "cheat".
I really think you can't go wrong buying "Mrs. Wages" dill pickle mix and that's what I used for okra. I will point out though that Mrs Wages has a "dill pickle" mix and a "Kosher dill pickle" mix...the kosher mix is far superior to the regular dill pickle mix (at least to my taste buds!).

I also like to add a cayenne pepper (or two!) to each jar so some are spicy.

If you want to store the pickled okra thru the winter, rather than keep in fridge, have your jars nice and hot, fill with okra, pour boiling hot juice over them, remove air pockets, put on the hot lids, and they'll normally seal without water bathing. (If you choose to do it this way I'd boil your jars ten minutes to sterilize them, just for safety's sake.) I've often waterbathed them but it tends to make the okra a bit soft.

And now, off to transplant some of my okra plants, dang deer keep eating them down to nubs so will move them to a safer place.

Happy Gardening!
Shoe

"Ozark, don't give up on Clemson Spineless yet."
-------------------------

Thanks, Shoe - I'm not giving up on Clemson Spineless. That's the okra variety I grew for years, and I had good results with it. But it's mostly Clemson Spineless 80 I've got this year, and I'm not happy with it.

I mail ordered a pack of Millionaire okra in the spring, and I didn't buy enough seed. I forgot that I wanted to plant a bunch more okra this time, and the Millionaire pack only planted about 12' of row. I picked up three packs of Clemson Spineless 80 at Lowe's and used those to plant the remaining 38'.

Clemson Spineless 80 sounded like a good variety from the description on the pack - it's supposed to be an "improved" version of Clemson Spineless. Not in my opinion, it isn't.

Now when I pick, I get one or two pods off every Millionaire okra plant. I get one pod off about every fourth Clemson Spineless 80 plant - the difference in production is about six to one! You can see the difference from clear across the garden, and I may take a picture for PlantFiles. In the mornings, every Millionaire plant has a bloom or two, and the rest of the row shows a bloom about every four feet. That ain't right.

Since these two kinds of okra were planted at the same time, have the same conditions, and I've trimmed leaves off both of them - I can only blame the poor production on that Clemson Spineless 80 variety. Needless to say, I won't be planting it again.

We grew Clemson last year and had good success with it. This year, I was looking for something that would also be good if it grew a little long since it's hard to get out every day and night to harvest with the hot temps. I've been very satisfied with the Emerald Green Velvet. It also stays a bit firm when you fry it, which is a good thing. I'm not a fan of soggy fried okra!

Today, the husband declared the okra "almost" too tall to harvest from today. Told him he was gonna have to get the ladder!

Anyone tried red burgandy?

Ozark, thanks for that input. I'd go so far as to call in valuable input. C.Spineless "80" is new to me and it certainly doesn't sound like something I want to try now. Did your plants top out around 4-5 ft as they say it would?

I hope you post in Plant Files your pics, and give feed back, too.

As for the Millionaire, I see it is a hybrid. Would you buy it again (since you can't save seeds) or are you planning on going back to Clemson Spineless OP?

In one of my seed-saving gardens I took a great shot of "Betty's White Okra" (no relation to Betty White the actress!). Pretty, eh?

Shoe

Good golly, Shoe - the pods you show on that one plant are about what I get in a day's picking from my whole 50 feet of okra! I understand that you're letting them get overgrown to save seeds, but that's still a lot of okra on one plant.

Yes, I like Millionaire okra and I'd grow it again. It's only about 5' tall and not too itchy, and production is pretty good. Last year I grew Cajun Delight and I liked it real well except it itched me to death. I'm talking big welts on my hands and arms every time I picked it.

I might grow Clemson Spineless again, but certainly not Clemson Spineless 80. The C.S. 80 does top out at about 5 to 6 feet, but that doesn't help much if there's no okra to pick off it! Most likely I'll try Emerald Green Velvet next time, as I've never grown it and I've read some good reports. I may try the old-fashioned Cowhorn okra, too.

Yes, I've grown Red Burgundy okra before. I wasn't too impressed with it, except the color is unique.

Shoe, what's your recommendation for a variety that'll give us a WHOLE bunch of tender okra in a 50' row - to really fill up the freezer and the frying pan?

Edited to add this PS - Thanks, sawpalm, for that post about roasting okra in the oven with olive oil, salt, and cayenne pepper. My wife fixed the last batch that way and we really like it!

This message was edited Aug 10, 2010 2:09 PM

Shoe,
I also use the pickling mix. I like it crispy so i just leave them refrigerated. You are making my mouth water!! LOL!!! Just love pickled okra. Belle

Holy cow, Shoe! That's some prolific okra ya got there! Pretty looking pods, too!