Okra

I learned today that I made several mistakes when planting and growing the okra. I bought the plant when it was a good 6 inches tall, from Lowes. Here is a resource I should have checked first. It had several vertical stems, and I assumed it was a single plant. In reality, it was several plants, and I should have separated them to a foot apart or thinned to just one before planting. Also, Okra should have a very large tap root (up to 5 feet!). This just isn't possible in our raised bed, because it is about a foot deep, and protected underneath by chicken wire (for the burrowing creatures) and a weed block cloth.

We did get one large pod out of the plant. Bettie said that if I had harvested it when it was young and small, it would have done well to thicken a good soup. Instead, I let it grow large, and thus inedible. Well we live and we learn. The one pod can be let to dry, and we can preserve the seeds for planting somewhere suitable next season. They apparently grow better from seed than by transplant anyhow.