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.