October okra

An okra virgin
I’ve been a southern gardener for nearly 20 years now, but I’ve never grown okra. There’s an unspoken rule in my garden: I only grow veggies I like to eat. And though I’ve sampled fried okra and eaten it in gumbo, I’ve never developed a passion for it. So okra has never graced the hallowed beds of my organic garden.

The odd-shaped vegetable has always intrigued me, though. I take note of the long pointy pods piled high at the state farmers market, My husband, who speaks from childhood experience, swears that the prickly spines will “itch you to death” if you pick them without wearing gloves.

The inside of the pods are beautiful, in their own way. Sliced into half-inch chunks, the pods look something like an edible Murano glass bead, dazzling white seeds arranged symmetrically within a brilliant green shell.

When one of the students at my organic veggie gardening classes asked how to plant okra, I realized I would have to take the okra plunge. I couldn't teach okra from a book; I needed my own okra experience. I figured if I couldn’t force myself to eat it, I would simply give away the bounty of the harvest. There are a LOT of people in the neighborhood who would swoon over my okra.

But as it often happens for me, my seed order exceeded my ability to plant. My 'sunny beds' were planted with my garden favorites: tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers. So I found myself with an unopened packet of “spineless” okra seeds in August ('spineless' refers to a lack of prickles, not the character of the okra, I am told).

By the time I got around to reading the planting directions on the back of the seed package, I had missed my opportunity: “Plant in early summer. In the Deep South, plant a second crop in July. 80 days from planting to harvest.” North Carolina is not in the Deep South: that was Florida and Alabama, Texas. Our average frost date in the Piedmont is October 15. Clearly, I didn’t have enough time to grow okra that could be eaten in abundance. What the heck, I decided. The packed-for-2005 seeds wouldn’t sprout in 2006; I had nothing to lose. At least I’d find out what okra plants look like.

Like an obedient gardener, I followed the advice from my set of dirt-smudged garden bibles (collected over many years) and put the seed package in the freezer for a couple of days (it was more like a week – I forgot about it after a day or two) to help the brittle seed pods sprout more easily. It worked! My bibles told me that the plants would emerge in 14 days; mine came up in 3 days!

A drink of rain?
Then came a drought like none in the history of North Carolina (at least my recollection and history in North Carolina). I watered that okra every day. Those poor plants never experienced a drenching rain until they were nearly six weeks old! They struggled. I watered. And watered some more.

I fought off an invasion of red ants, then aphids. I lost a few seedlings to damping off and heat. When the dying was over, about 25 okra plants stood tentatively in Bed 22. The stalks were so fragile, I was sure they would bend and fall over. Gradually, though, the stalks grew thick and tough. Pretty leaves erupted at the top and sides. My husband, who was not as surprised by this growth spurt as I, warned me that when the okra came in, I needed to cut them when they were small. Big okra is tough okra. I trusted him. He’s from Tennessee, a real Southern state.

When we finally had a soaking downpour, the okra perked up. They LIKED a good drink of water. The plants grew to my eye level (not quite though, since the beds were raised 10 inches). About two weeks ago, side shoots began developing. They looked just like the unfurling leaf buds to me, but my okra-expert husband assured me that these were okra.

He was right (he LOVES being right – it’s one of his best and worst traits). Lush okra blossoms unfolded from the side shoots, pale pink with deep rose centers. The blooms were so moist and tender, it almost broke my heart when they wilted and curled back into brown cocoons. But as the leaf carcasses fell away, tiny green nubs of okra turned their faces to the sun. Okra at last!

Once again, my husband proved his okra expertise: the pods grew quickly, although not as quickly as in the heat of the summer. The angle of the sun is lower in the fall so there were only a few pods visible at a time. Now it was a race against time; would the pods grow large enough before frost cut their prickly lives short? Fortunately for my okra (notice I am now taking possession of this crop?) we had an incredibly warm September and October. Record-breaking heat kept my okra growing and my spirits high.

"Cut them!"
Yesterday, I invited my husband down to the okra bed for his opinion. “Cut them!” he ordered. “These are getting too big and tough!” So I donned my garden gloves, took the sharp knife in hand and hacked off my handful of okra pods. There were only a few. But they are my first okra. October okra.

They look so tempting, lounging there in the harvest basket. I hate to eat them. But I must. The experiment must go on to its full conclusion. And now that I am not an okra virgin any longer, I plan to freeze the seeds and plant in “early summer” next year.

Post script: When I returned home from a trip to Dallas Saturday night, my husband had a fresh garden dinner prepared for me: the last of my Juliet tomatoes, some late green beans, the first of my autumn broccoli...and a scant handful of fried okra.

It was a breathtakingly sweet gesture from my husband. And I still don't like okra.

Homegrown 'maters

My tomato beds have taken on a subversive tone. Among the aromatic green leaves of the fat grape Juliets and sassy red Celebrities, there is a whisper of rebellion: I have planted not a single Better Boy tomato plant.

Before you gasp and clutch your heart, know this: I have planted Better Boy tomatoes faithfully since my very first vegetable garden, somewhere back in the mid '70s. Better Boys were touted as having superior genetics: a hybrid of the hearty ancestor, Big Boy mixed with some upgraded resistence to tomatoe-y diseases.

There are a slew of tomato ills: wilts (Vertiicillium and Fusarium), blight, nematodes, blossom end rot, septoria, leaf rolle, catfacing, viruses, bugs and worms. Any relief from those attackers is welcome news. When Better Boy flounced into the plant markets, Big Boy got nudged to the back of the seed racks. Up with Better, down with Big!

Funny thing, though. Better Boy is considered a universally "good" tomato. Grow it anywhere- north, south, east, west. It'll put on tomatoes that pucker your mouth and slice just fine for bacon, tomato and lettuce sandwiches. So why did I have so much trouble with them? Every July, I'd fight septoria - an ugly yellow spotted blight that turns the bottom leaves brown and crackly. And even in the springs that I wrangled early-early-early plants into the ground, the Better Boys were always fashionably late, hanging on to their green fruits intermidably before ripening. I finally realized that perhaps Southern gardens required Southern tomatoes. Enter: Park's Whopper.

Park's Seed Company is located just over the border in South Carolina. Close enough to be in the same growing zone (7, for those you who might be interested). About the same number of above 90-degree days, hurricanes and thunderstorms. So I planted myself a couple of Park's Whopper just to see what would happen.

I'll be darned if they didn't grown faster, bear fruit sooner and taste just as good as those "better" Midwestern tomatoes I'd grown up with. I branched out a little more. After sampling the new grape tomatoes, I planted "Juliet," which turned out to be a lot bigger than a grape, but a lot smaller than a Roma, too. Yummy sliced on salads or pizza. Another winner!

But I always had my fall-back bed of Better Boys. At least a dozen plants that would save me, should all these experimental tomatoes fail.

Not this year. I flaunted tradition, walked past the glowing green plants marked "Better Boy" and moved right on to quivering little sprouts named "Yellow Boy" and "Champion." I even planted a few German Johnsons, which my husband loves (as do the bugs).

My fall-back bed? A dozen Park's Whopper plants.

I've crossed some kind of gardening line, I think. There's no going back to Better Boy after I've seen the Southern Light. I may have to relinquish my midwest farmer's daughter title and face facts. I'm a Southern Gardener these days. You'd Better believe it.

Ah, the pressure of it all!

After the white blossoms wither, the greens beans come in hard and fast. I go over the bean beds every day or two, always finding slim green seed pods ripe for picking.

The first rush of beans are always the easiest to pick; they perch at the top of the plants, flaunting their little bean selves in the sun. "Look at me!" they shout. "I'm a full grown green bean!" And then I end their beany pride with a single snap of the stem.

It's all right, though. I rarely mourn for guillotined beans. They taste too good. Especially the first "mess" of the year. Cooked to tender perfection in the pressure cooker. A pressure cooker? Hey, it worked for my mother, it works for me.

Pressure cookers have fallen out of favor these days. Their claim to fame – cooking food faster – has been quashed by microwave efficiency. My friends shudder at the thought of pressure cookers blowing their emergency valves, spewing hot food up to the ceiling. I just smile. They don't know what they're missing.

My old aluminum Mirro twins- a four quart for small loads and a six quart that would handle canning jars – have been my heavy artillery since I was a young bride back in the early '70s. I'd load up my Mirros, put in the rubber gasket to ensure a tight fit, plop the weight on top of the pointy pressure valve and wait for the unmistakeable jiggle that let me know when the steam was working its magic on whatever was sealed inside the pan.

The pressure cooker could put a pot roast on fast forward so dinner would be on time, even if I forgot to thaw. It was an ace at veggies: corn on the cob, fresh beets, green beans (with a little bacon grease for extra flavor).

Last summer, I replaced the Mirros with an upscale stainless steel cooker made in Switzerland. The new model has no weights or steamy jiggle. Instead, a small black knob rises sedately to reveal two red marks. The red marks indicate that the food inside is cooking and the timing can begin. Six minutes for green beans.

It was an odd adjustment; I found myself listening for the jiggle to reassure me that something was happening underneath the lid. But the black valve is silent. Almost stealthy.

Which is exactly the reason I burned an entire batch of beans last week. For 30 years, I have depended on the weight jiggling to alert me. Danger. Beans are cooking. Get in here and turn down the heat.

I'm a quick study. I set the timer for the next mess of beans. They are too precious to waste, either by leaving them in the garden to turn big and bumpy or to burn them in the "improved" pressure cooker. I miss my Mirro. But I still love my pressre cooked green beans.

Time to plant another succession crop. Gotta have 'em all summer long!

Wilting

A dozen sweet potato vines cower from the impending noontime sun, limp and wilted in their new bed. It's not their fault. Yesterday, I ripped them from their happy, crowded existence in Bed #2, pulled them apart and replanted them in Bed #14. It's for their own good. But they don't realize it yet.

When the vines arrived from the mail order nursery, in late May, I thought they were dead. I registered a complaint with the Customer Service Department. The Customer Service Associate assured me that people often mistakenly believed the vines were DOA (dead on arrival) but that they would perk up after I planted them. She even went so far as to suggest that I prune the dead leaves off and plant only the stubs of the plants.

I didn't prune and there was no time for intensive care for my sad sweet potato slips. So I did some triage: dug a small hole in Bed 2, stuck the dying roots in the ground and patted soil around them. It's calling "heeling in," a temporary solution used to care for plants until I can get them in their proper place.

A month later, half the plants had taken root, started spreading vines along the top of the soil and were anchoring new rootlets. Heck, if they were interested in growing, I might as well given them some room to do so. Bed #14 beckoned.

Now, the plants are tender and vulnerable. I'll have to water twice a day for a week or so, making it easy for their tattered roots to take up moisture. Eventually, the roots will gingerly anchor themselves in this strange new soil and begin to move forward.

The plants would have grown in Bed #2, too. But their growth would have been limited; they would have fought for space and nutrients. They never would have lived up to their full potential.

I emphathize with those wilty vines. I've been there, floundering in unfamiliar territory, certain that I'd made a mistake. And then, I'd discover that the discomfort transformed into greater joy than I'd ever experienced in my safe secure nest. There really IS a bigger picture, usually invisible to me. So I can trust that things will turn out just the way they are supposed to. Perfectly, in fact. Discomfort or no.

Next time I bump into the messy chaos of my own confusion and fear, I'll take a tip from my sweet potato vines. Give them some extra water for a while, let them regroup and they'll grow wild and wonderful. So will I.

Goldfish and green water

We've had a two-foot deep hole in the front yard for several years now. It was originally conceived as a "water feature" with aquatic plants, an array of fish, and phlox growing among the rocks along the edge. It was quite nice. And high maintenance.

The water turned cloudy; we added a UV light to kill bacteria. The water hyacinths failed to bloom; we replaced them with a lily more suited for semi shade. We fed special tablets to the water every week. In the fall, we even covered the water with netting: leaf mold prevention. And there was the floating heater in the winter to keep the surface clear of ice so the fish would have enough oxygen.

Last summer, the curvy plastic liner sprang a small leak, so I asked the landscape guys to dig us another, larger pond near the rock wall (what? am I crazy?). The new kidney-shaped pond was beautiful. Our energetic little goldfish scampered around in the clear water, darting in and out of the floating parrot feather. Our grande dame water lily pushed out fabulous blooms every morning.

But gradually the water turned murky. The larger pond required a larger pump, but we had no idea what to buy. So we bought...nothing. Our polite fish pond morphed into a farm pond. Assertive bullfrogs took control of the property, harrumphing loudly. The plants floundered; the goldfish disappeared. We assumed raccoons or transient birds had feasted on the tender fishlings.

Thursday, the pond people came in to set things right. They put in a new skimmer, powerful pump, fresh water and fertilizer for the plants. They even found the goldfish, who apparently had been hiding in the dark, doing a lot of reproducing! It was great to see the pond restored to its former glory!

I went over to admire it this afternoon. The goldfish looked a little fuzzy. I couldn't see the bottom of the pond. The water looked a little ...green. Here we go again. Bring on the UV light and water conditioner tablets. I've got to keep my goldfish happy.

The Zen of weeding

Sea of weeds
Originally uploaded by PassionatePossibility.

I'm not sure, but I think this may be the weediest year ever for my garden, flower beds, shrubs and other leafy environs within the forested enclave I call "home." Seas of delicate grasses wave politely in the humid breeze, not seeming to mind that they are choking out the sweat-and-tears-planted Shasta daisies and ferns (although the ferns take it all in stride, I've noticed).

When I get a few minutes away from the computer and the dog and the appointments and the phone, I try to get out there and take a swipe at a section of them. They really aren't rooted deeply. They give up without much of a fight. After 15 minutes and a three foot cleared swath, I wonder why I don't stick to it and really weed the WHOLE property. Another 15 minutes of mindless weeding reminds me: this is really boring.

There is limited challenge to making sure I pull up the entire root system instead of snapping off the stems (which will promptly and quickly shoot back to knee height again). A coach of mine once recommended that I spend my mindless gardening time thinking about solutions to issues I faced in my marketing company. She just didn't get it: gardening is SUPPOSED to be mindless.

When I am weeding, or staking tomatoes or watering the onions or planting petunias, I am focused on one thing and one thing ONLY: the task at hand. It's living in the moment to the highest exponent. That's why I love gardening, I guess. Non-gardeners thing it's "work" -- all that sweat and digging. I know better. It's vegetative mediation---"Vegiation" perhaps?

Perhaps, then "boring" is too strong a word for my weeding chagrin. "Calming." "Zen-like repetition." "Weed-like." Now that's more like it.

When good broccoli goes bad

There's no one to blame but me. That's part of maturity, right? Taking full responsibility for your actions. Or in this case, inaction.

Two loamy beds of broccoli, in their early days protected against the bulls-eye beaks of hungry crows. Watered and fertilized and weeded with diligence and care. A few tight green heads harvested in the late spring and enjoyed with gusto. And now. Disaster.

Tall spikes of broccoli flowers tower over the broad leaves, which are riddled to lace by insects and slugs. Little broccoli flowerettes are brown with fatigue and thirst. Even the cabbage butterflies have abandoned hope and moved their egg-laying operation to more worthy plant life.

How did this happen? I know the rules: broccoli needs to be covered to keep away those pesty butterflies. Actually I like the butterflies flitting around, but not their inevitable children who appear in the form of skinny green worms that are impossible to distinguish from broccoli stems untl they fall off in the pan, cooked through and through. Appetizing, eh?

I used floating row cover (it's just plain old non-woven interfacing used in the garden instead of the sewing room), dusted with Dipel -- non toxic to people and mammals, but lethal to the digestive tracts of worms and their ilk. I just didn't dust soon enough, often enough, heavily enough????

Then there was the HEAT. Broccoli is "cool weather crop." It's been 95 degrees and hotter in central North Carolina, after a fairly moderate spring. I have no sway with weather, so couldn't fend off the smothering temperature spikes. That's no excuse for broccoli-ocide.

The real truth is that I have paid only lip service to my veggie garden for several weeks. Benign neglect is strictly forbidden inside the garden gate. Vegetables demand constant attention or they pout and wilt and/or flower and try to set seed. I can tell when yellow flowers twinkle merrily on top of the broccoli heads that I have lost control. My once-good broccoli has gone bad. No longer edible, no longer pretty. This broccoli is unsalvageable.

The only thing to do is rip it out of the ground and replant. No more broccoli: June is far too warm. I need crops that can stand the heat AND get into my kitchen. Perhaps I can dig up the beds, re-fertilize (with organic fertilizer, of course) and plant my favorite crop: green beans.

Beans have those fat seeds that respond so well to garden soil. Within a few days they pop up out of the ground, already erect and five inches tall with two baby bean leaves. Wow. Semi-instant gratification. Within a month, I'll be munching on pots of tender green beans, cooked just right in the pressure cooker.

Unless I fall off the garden wagon again and forget to pick beans every day. A horror that rivals bad broccoli threatens me if I do not: BUMPY BEANS! Those bulging pods with mealy bean seeds inside are the stuff of nightmares for me. I can't fathom some people who plant beans that act like that on purpose!

Green beans are supposed to be haricot verts--slim and tender. So I'm clearing my calendar in late July for bean picking. I take 100 percent responsibility.

Prophylactic harvesting

Thin, tender, first squash
Originally uploaded by PassionatePossibility.

The zucchini have arrived!

Yesterday I picked the first five slender fruits from gigantic plants that are overflowing their five-foot wide raised beds. Three yellow straight-neck squash tried to hide under the shade of their mother plants but I knew they were ready. I wrenched the thick vines hard to twist them loose--separation anxiety apparently runs rampant in the squash family.

This morning the eight rest placidly on my kitchen counter, shiny, beautiful. And tender. The ideal size for slicing, dicing, sauteeing and even frying (if I throw diet caution to the wind).

They are the calm before the storm, or more aptly, the torrent.

Soon (usually via sneak attack overnight) those tempting, slim fruits will balloon to flabby, dismal creatures that barely resemble zucchini. Tough and aggressive, the dull skins of the mammoth zucchini are stretched almost to breaking by the zoom-zoom growth spurt. I giggle at the thought of zucchini stretch marks, should they actually be able to shrink back down to normal size again.

Of course, they never reduce their size. They keep growing and growing and growing, a Green Giant version of the Energizer Bunny. And as all good gardeners know, leaving the big guys on the vine is an invitation for all the others to stop growing altogether. The mother plant throws all her energy into poking that big baby into the world, hoping for seeds and progeny.

To keep the harvest flowing, I pick every day. Prophylactic harvest, I call it: zucchini contraception of a sort. I lift the deep green scratchy leaves to peek at the emerging squash, choosing only the few that are in immediate danger of developing runaway chubbiness.

For now, I get high marks for zucchini management. Check with me again next week. If I'm hunting down the zucchini pancake recipe, you'll know I've lost control.