Yum, yum, yum! Now it really feels like summer, doesn't it?

Okra is good eating. I think I could live on okra, tomatoes, purplehull pinkeye peas and cornbread all summer long. Oh, and a big glass of sweet tea. What could be more southern than all that?

Hope you enjoy the first meal of your okra, and all the others that will surely follow.

Dawn

Yum, Yum! (remember the old Hee-Haw segments where they asked Grandpa Jones "what's for dinner?"...lol!)

Thanks for letting me know I'm not the only one in the State of Oklahoma that's just now getting okra! We actually have enough for supper tonite! (we've been eating some given us by FIL). We're having porkloin country ribs glazed with Dawn's confettie jelly (on the grill right now!), purple hull peas, fried okra and cornbread!

Dawn....if you hurry there might still be some left when you get here! LOL

Paula

Paula, That sounds delish...

You are not the last one to have okra, since I have only cut 4 pods. I don't have a lot of plants and they are just beginning. I had planned to start more but just didn't get it done.

Carol,
I was just thinking this afternoon while cutting some off the stalk I should take a picture and post of the Cowhorn okra. I had one pod 10" long that was still real tender. Some stalks are close to 5' tall now. I think I'm going to like the Cowhorn variety. Was really the only good news out of the garden today. Will inform you of the other in a few days when I can tell more. Broke out the insect spray today. It was that or forget the tomato plants for this year I felt. Jay

Jay, I haven't had enough okra to cook yet, but I like the plant. I thought I was leaving plenty of room between those plants, but they are getting very big. They aren't crowding each other too bad, but they are sure crowded me because I planted them too close to my pathway. Most of them are in the five foot range and have a good size spread. The only problem I have seen so far was a few leaves dying. They get crispy on the edges, then the leaf wilts and dies. I think it just has to be the heat. I had a lot of blooms today, so I should be picking more soon.

I just made eight more jars of salsa today. I think most of my tomato plants are toast. The leaves have just dried up and died on a lot of plants. The two most resistant to the hot summer conditions are Cherokee Purple and Sioux. My CP is not a big plant, but looks OK and it is in a very exposed location. I didn't have a good cage for the Sioux plant, but planted it anyway and put a short CRW cage around it. Of course, it went to the top, then cascaded back down, then kind of went back up into the air again on it's own. The lower part of the plant has died out a little, but overall the plant is large and healthy looking.

George, I hope you see this! Today, I remembered that the Frank's Thai Hot pepper seed that I got from you was still in the pod when I got it, so then I was sure that was what my plants were. I think I have 5 or 6 plants and each plant has 12-20 peppers in the top of it. I picked the first one today and it didn't hurt my fingers. I smelled of it and it didn't smell hot. I cut the stem off and removed some seeds and cut me a small piece of that little booger, and it lit my fire. Those little things are hot. I am hoping they will reach some mature color and that I can dry them and make hot, hot, chili powder, because I am not sure I can ever eat one. Woo HOT!

My okra is late to produce this year, but I expected that because I didn't plant it until I finished all the broccoli harvest, which I think was in the first half of June. We will be harvesting the first pods today or tomorrow. We should have had them earlier, but the okra has been slow and sluggish this year, and I hate to blame it on heat since okra loves heat. Maybe it is the humidity.

I think I planted Stewart's Zeebest, Cowhorn and Little Lucy. They're all blooming now.

I did plant a lot though...two 20' rows....so we ought to get plenty for fresh eating and some to freeze.

Dawn

"I did plant a lot though...two 20' rows....so we ought to get plenty for fresh eating and some to freeze."

Dawn

Dawn,
Could you please share your recipe for freezing?
Thanks, Keith

here's todays haul added to what i had from previous picking.. ready for the freezer.

it's growing slower than last year and these are the first good looking tomatoes we've had all year. most are ripe on the bottom, green and split on the top.

2nd yr gardening, so we're pleased with the eats

OK, where do all of you find the different varieties of okra? I have only been able to find the Clemson Spineless. I really need one that puts a lot of fruit on one plant as I don't have a large garden.

Keith,

Do you want to freeze it whole, sliced or sliced/breaded/ready to be fried. Let me know which option or options you prefer, and I'll answer right back. I've been chained to the kitchen stove canning today, and finally I am done, done, done........until tomorrow.

Klo,

One of my favorite sources is Willhite Seed Company as they carry types that grow well here and ship quickly. I've linked them below. For one of the newer dwarf hybrids, you can find 'Baby Bubba' at www.burpee.com and 'Little Lucy' at ww.parkseed.com. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds has the most amazing selection of heirloom okra seeds. Their website is www.rareseeds.com. Another great source for heirloom types that perform well in the south is Southern Exposure Seed Exchange at www.southernexposure.com.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Willhite Seed

Dawn - I wondered where you'd been! Now I know, chained to the kitchen just like I've been (when not at work). Isn't it a mixed blessing?

Personally, the few Cowhorn plants that came up are producing great and they are really tender even if we miss a few days! And the taste is a bit sweeter than Clemson Spineless. I'm saving several pods for seeds.

My BFF just sent me a packet of "Star of David" okra. Has anyone got any experience with that? I need to "google" it.

On the upside, we got some RAIN tonite! Yipee!

Paula

Our okra (Stewart's Zeebest) is almost ready to start blooming. It's looking more lush than usual, which is good. I've seen this one get over 10" long and still be tender, when it's not stressed. The pods are slender and spineless. The plants are heavily branched and, in my garden, have reached about 8' in height.

Carol, glad those Frank's Thai Hots are producing for you. By the time frost comes around, there ought to be so many little peppers on them, that one despairs of picking them all. I simply clip the main stem and hang them in the shed, to pick all winter!

George
Tahlequah, OK

Paula,

I've been canning almost every single day. That's all I do---harvest and can...oh, wait, and I also harvest and freeze, dehydrate and eat fresh!

When I finish today's batch of Apple Pie Jam, I'll have completed 400 jars or so since my 'canning season' started in June. After the Apple Pie jam, I'm switching over to salsa and will make several batches today and tomorrow.

Cherries have been dirt-cheap at our local Wal-Marts lately ($1 a pound) so I've been buying them and making something from them (and, yum yum, eating them fresh too) every week. So far, I've made Cherry Jelly, Cherry-Habanero Jelly, Cherry Preserves, Cherry Jam, and Cherry-Chocolate ice cream topping. I also have Candied Cherries in day #2 of their processing, and intend to start a batch of Maraschino Cherries today.

I've been trying to get a lot of fruit done because August is usually my prime salsa-making and pepper-canning month, so it is doubtful I'll have time to can any fruit in August.

I'm still here though, just enjoying spending my time in the hot and steamy kitchen instead of spending it in the hot and steamy outdoors. We had rain a couple of days ago, only receiving 3/4s of an inch, but 3/4's of an inch is better than nothing. The garden looks pretty good all things considered, but I'm way behind on weeding and on deadheading the flowers, and I need to get with it and plant some seeds for the fall garden.

Right now, what I am harvesting is mostly tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, green beans and okra. Between those and the fruit, I'm staying busy.

I never thought I'd can more stuff in July than I did in June, but I think that when I add up all the stuff I've done in July, it will be slightly more than I canned in June. The freezer is pretty full too, but I still have room for some frozen purplehull peas, green beans and okra in it.

This is the second year in a row that I've had really high amounts of produce to can and preserve in other ways, and I love it. Most of the time, severe drought really restricts our harvest and there is not a great deal to put up for the non-gardening season. Having two good years in a row is spoiling me. Mother Nature will get even with me by sending drought back our way in 2011 or 2012. Two great garden years in a row is rare, and three is more than I dare hope for.

Dawn

Dawn,
Preferably sliced/breaded/ready to fry. We've frozen whole in the past but didn't blanch and after a few weeks it's pretty well useless (black and slimy). Peg buys the Stillwell brand in the winter, it's the closest we've found but just not the same. Would love a way to slice/bread and freeze then fry in the middle of February and taste like fresh! Thanks for your reply.
Keith
PS We had that omelot monday night and I'm now cutting about a dozen pods every other day!

Keith,

I like to oven blanch it first.

TO OVEN BLANCH: Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Wash the okra, remove the caps and bottom ends and slice crosswise into 1/2" thick slices. Lay in a single layer on cookie sheets and blanch for 5 to 10 minutes. I think 5 is fine but sometimes I leave it for a bit longer, not necessarily intentionally, but since I'm usually doing several things simultaneously as I 'put up' the harvest, I sometimes lose track of the time, esp. if I forgot to set the oven timer.

Remove the cookie sheets from the oven and let okra pieces cool. Once cook, pack into freezer bags or plastic freezer containers, seal and label. Do not decide to nibble just one piece after it comes out of the oven, or you'll end up munching on all of it and will have nothing left to go into the freezer. Big fat okra chips are every bit as good as potato chips, esp. if you sprinkle them with salt or your favorite spice mix. [Note: It is not my fault if you consume all your newly-blanched okra in this manner.]

TO BLANCH IN BOILING WATER: If you prefer to blanch in boiling water, use 1 gallon of water for every pound of okra you have to blanch. Divide pods by size into two groups--those 3" or smaller and those larger than 3" and blanch the smaller ones for 3 minutes and the larger ones for 5 minutes. After they cool, you can pack them into bags or containers whole, or can slice them into 1/2" pieces. Seal, label, freeze.

You can freeze it plain and bread it after removing it from the freezer. Just bread it without thawing it, and then cook it immediately.

Or, you can bread it before freezing it.

TO BREAD: After using the blanching method of your choice, you can bread the okra any way you wish, using your favorite breading recipe, and then freeze it in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Once the individual pieces are frozen, remove from cookie sheet and place in freezer bags or containers, label and seal. When you're ready to cook it, remove it from the freezer and allow it to thaw a tiny bit as the oil heat up, then cook as usual.

When breading, you can keep it simple by just dredging it through cornmeal, or flour if you don't use cornmeal, or a combination of flour and cornmeal. You can dip the okra in milk or egg before dipping it into the breading mix....just fix it like you were going to fry it immediately. You can sprinkle it with salt and pepper if you want, or mix in salt and pepper with your breading material.

FREEZE IT: At this point, some people freeze it in single layers as is on the cookie sheets, then move it to containers to place in the freezer.

OR PARTIALLY FRY IT: Some people like to fry it a little bit, just until the breading shows the first hint of golden brown color, then freeze it on a cookie sheet and then place in freezer containers.

You might want to try it both ways and see which you like best.

Also, you don't "have to" freeze it in a single layer on a cookie sheet and put it into the freezer bag/container.

You can dump it loose and unfrozen into a bag or container, but if you do that, then when you remove it from the freezer, you have a big old "hunk-of-okra" and you'll have to let it thaw out before you cook it. That thawing time may leave your breading soggy.

By the way, if you are going to freeze it short term and use it in 30 days or less, you can skip blanching entirely.

Hope this helps.

Dawn

Thanks Dawn,
I saved that post to my clippings!
Keith

Thanks again Dawn for all your help and willingness to help all of us "newbies"!Especially me!

Keith and Klo1,

You're welcome.

I love how all of us here on this forum learn from one another every single day.

We all were newbies once, and we all still are newbies in one sense because we're always trying a new veggie, herb or flower we've never grown before, or we're trying a new technique, or a new method or a new fertilizer or we're facing a new challenge (disease, pest, excess rain, excess heat, etc.) that has us searching for new and better ways to do things.

One of my favorite garden sayings is from Thomas Jefferson, who remarked late in life "Though an old man, I am but a young gardener."

Dawn

Dawn, that is a nice garden saying. I found a small plaque recently which seems to fit my personal experience. It said.... "I tried... it died."

'nuf said.

LOL!! My favorite garden sigh, "Garden of Weeding"! Then there is "Please Pick The Weeds".

Put up my first mess of frozen okra today. I used Dawn's oven blanch method and was really quite eazy and really no mess. Set the oven for preheat and by the time I got it cleaned and cut up the oven was ready to go. I'm cutting about a pound and a half every other day now off of 53 plants. We always have to fry two skillets of okra, one for me and one for Peg! We're a couple of "okra hogs"!

If you have to be a hog of any sort, then there's nothing finer than being an okra hog!

I wish my okra produced that amount. I am picking a "Wal-Mart" bag full every 24 to 36 hours off of about 35 plants or so. I'm not complaining, I just don't have a lot of fun picking it. I'm able to give plenty away to family, so that's nice and I'm still able to freeze way more than we need.

What kind do you all plant. I've got Clemson Spinless 80 out there and am thinking about Emerald next year. I want something that still produces heavy and gives you a little more time before it gets tough. You all have any suggestions? Anyone know if Emerald does well in Oklahoma and how it compares yield wise to the Clemson?

It's too HOT for gardening.

I have a quick okra seed saving question.

Do you leave the pods attached to the plant until the entire plant has dried and then harvest the seeds? Or do you remove the pods from the plant (when it reaches harvest size) and then let it dry completely before harvesting the seeds.

Thanks!

Mine is Clemson Spineless also, I've been saving seed from it for several years now. George talked about Stewart's Zeebest earlier in this thread, supposed to get up to 10" long and still be tender. I wonder if the Stewart's Zeebest seed will grow true if saved? Maybe George or Dawn will come back in here and give us a lesson...

Stewart's Zeebest is an open-pollinated, heirloom variety so it grows true from saved seed, assuming it didn't cross-pollinate with another okra.

Okra plants are inbreeding plants. They have perfect flowers and are self-pollinating. However, those big beautiful flowers are quite attractive to bees which means that cross-pollination caused by bees and other pollinators can occur. Technically, you have to grow an okra variety in isolation from other okra varieties in order to 'guarantee' the seed you saved was not cross-pollinated, and the recommended isolation distance is one mile. Or, you can bag the flowers before they open.

Lots of people save okra seed without that mile distance for isolation, but there's no guarantee crossing won't occur. You can plant tall plants between rows of different okra varieties to help distract the bees from doing directly from one variety to another....like using tall, bushy type sunflowers or a similar plant for something like that.

To save seed, you can let the pods dry down and turn brown on the plant or you can harvest the pods green but fully mature and let them dry somewhere out of direct sunlight until the pods are dry enough that they split open.

You can thresh the pods to remove the seeds by putting them in a burlap bag or pillow case and tying it closed. (A large zip tie or rubber band makes this pretty easy....or garden twine.) Then walk lightly or jog in place on top of it (NO stomping, please) to break open the pods. You can use a small fan or hairdryer to blow away the waste portions and make it easy to pick up the seeds. Dry them completely before putting them away in storage.

Stewart's Zeebest was selected and save by the late George and Mary Stewart, who lived in Houston, Texas. In the May 2009 issue of TEXAS GARDENER magazine, the Stewarts and their okra were discussed in a sidebar that accompanied an article about okra. (I love this magazine and recommend it highly.) The author of the okra article and the sidebar article about the Stewarts is Patty Glenn Leander. She attempted to piece together as much as she could about the history of Stewart's Zeebest. The Stewart's daughter, Molly, told the author that her parents selected Stewart's Zeebest out of some 'Louisiana Green Velvet' they'd received from Joe Zeigler, who was a friend of the family.

In the Stewart's vegetable garden, Mr. Stewart noticed the 'Louisiana Green Velvet' had a strong, branching pattern and begin to refer to the plants as 'Stewart's Zeebest Bushy Okra'. Eventually, the name was shortened to Stewart's Zeebest. The Stewarts, when saving seed, relentlessly selected for heavy-bearing, bushy plants that produced tender pods. Many people find the pods are tender enough to eat even when they reach 8" or more in length.

In Mary Stewart's garden notes, she wrote down that the parent plant of the seed they had produced 28 branches and 243 pods on one plant. At the time she wrote those particular garden notes, they'd been selecting for the qualities they wanted and saving seed for 9 years.

It is a fascinating history, isn't it? It is my understanding that the Stewarts shared seed with many, many people over the years. I am assuming it was dispersed via Seed Savers Exchange (because I simply cannot imagine it was not, but I didn't pull the old yearbooks to see how far back it was listed in them) and now it also is available commercially via Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange as well as other places.

Dawn

Maybe this is the variety I should plant next year. Dawn, I'm assuming you've planted Clemson before. Does the Stewart's compare in yield? My garden gets full sun all day. I believe that's why my okra goes crazy. Of course, I know it likes the heat, but I produced a ton of it last year as well and late July and August was quite a bit cooler here last year.

I like the idea of longer pods staying tender.

I'm growing several varieties this year. Cowhorn is the only one I've picked so far. Really like it. The pods can be 10-12 inches long and still tender. I eat many of the pods in the garden raw. I will try the Stewart's Zeebest next year if I find seeds for it. I will post my results with the other varieties after I start picking and eating them. Jay

Quailhunter, Stewart's Zeebest outyields every okra I've ever planted, including Clemson Spineless and Clemson Spineless 80 and Cowhorn. All my okra varieties are producing very well this summer though. I guess they're happy with the same weather that's driving us humans nuts.

I have all my okra in full sun too and, in fact, strategically place the okra so it shades the pepper plants in the afternoon.

Jay, I got my Stewart's Zeebest either from Southern Exposure or Baker Creek and I like it but it was a little slower to germinate than the other varieties I grew.

Dawn

Thank you, Dawn. I think that answers my question. See, the way I have it now, I have two rows that I thought I spaced far enough apart (about 17 plants in each). They are almost 4 feet apart. They have grown together, so I hardly get production on the inside of the two rows. I'm wanting to cut it down to one row next year. I absolutely cannot complain about the production of Clemson Spineless or Clemson Spineless 80. Both have produced tremendous amounts of okra for me. I'm wanting something that produces a little more and stays tender a little longer so I can go down to one row and not have to pick it so often.

I bet that I will get nearly as much okra from one row as I do from two right now because I will get branching and production on another side if I go with one row. I've got an okra jungle right now. I could deer hunt in my okra this fall or cut if for firewood. I have okra trees. Anyway, I think I'll plant the Stewart's next spring.

BTW, have any of you planted Emerald here in OK and if so, how does it do?

My wife is ready for me to start back to work (I'm a teacher) this week. I think she's tired of hearing about next year's garden. Bad case of cabin fever due to the heat.

Quailhunter,

You're welcome.

In that article that I mentioned which appeared in Texas Gardener magazine, they said that Mr. Stewart recommended people space Stewart's Zeebest six feet apart!

Also, if you intend to save your own seed, Dr. Bob Randall, the retired co-founder of Urban Harvest in Houston and a friend of Mary and George Stewart, offers the following advice regarding Stewart's Zeebest. He believes that non-branching is dominant, so you must carefully rogue out any plants that display this characteristic so you will be perpetuating only those that are strongly branching. He said that it will revert to the unbranched variety if not vigorously rogued. Obviously, you'd want to do that if saving seed. He also advises saving seeds from as many plants as possible (50 was what he recommends) so you maintain generic diversity.

Emerald grows just fine here and has great flavor and texture, remaining tender at larger sizes than some others. Honestly, unless a person has soil issues, and esp. nematodes, any okra you plant will do well here. We have exactly the weather okra loves and I've never been disappointed in any okra I've grown. If an okra has done poorly here, it is because I planted it in a poor location or we had nonstop rain for months.

I understand the cabin fever issue. I feel like I'm allergic to the great outdoors....at least until the sun goes down. It will be so much nicer when fall arrives.

The wonderful thing about 'next year' is that it is "perfect" so far because it isn't here yet so Oklahoma's climate and weather hasn't shredded our 2011 garden dreams the way it so cruelly has in 2010.

I can't believe school is about to start! When I was a kid in Texas it didn't start until Labor Day, but then schools were not air conditioned back then!

Dawn

Dawn,
Thanks for the "lesson", however I'm now somewhat confused and have more questions. I guess I've never paid much attention to okra branching. I plant my okra in a double row 12" apart, then when seedlings are about a foot tall I thin the plants to 6-8" apart. I'm getting good production by my way of thinking, 2-3 pods per plant at any given time. After reading your follow up reply to quailhunter, I went to take a closer look and did find what I think is branching on some of the more mature plants. Do these branches grow from the "V" of a leaf branch and the main trunk just as a sucker does on a tomato plant? Are these branches the result of a flower that doesn't get pollinated? Am I robbing myself of much stronger production by planting too close together? The most mature plant has pod production now on both the main trunk and the branch. Does this branching begin only after the plant begins to flower or would it start earlier if I spaced my plants further apart?

Can you please go into further detail on "bagging the flower before it opens"? Can you staple or tape a sandwich baggie over a flower the night before leaving the baggie full enough so the flower has room to open fully the next day and will the flower pollinate itself inside the baggie?

I've always done as George suggested and let pods grow to full maturity in the late fall and even leave them on the plant till turning dry and brown before harvesting them to save seed. I'm very interested in the Stewart's Zeebest for next year but also will save seed from my Clemson Spineless this fall for next year. With 2 varieties next year, I'll need to bag flowers next fall from both species to collect true seed?

I want to thank you again for sharing your garden knowledge, I think I've learned more here a GW in 2 months than I've learned from gardening books in 30 years!

The NWS is forcasting cooler temps with a chance of rain for this weekend into next week. Fall is only 44 days away!

Keith

I'll chime in again. My plants are about 18" apart. I'm starting to think this is too close. What kind of spacing do all of you okra experts employ out there? I'm thinking fewer plants and bigger spacing will get you more okra in the long run.

Quailhunter, I have tried for abour 18" spacing in the past. This year because of the unstable weather at planting time I planted 3 or 4 seeds about 3 or 4 inches apart, skip about 18" and do the same thing. I did this expecting poor germination. I planted 50 seeds, most of which came up. Then some kind of critter got into the row and dug a lot of it up killing some of my plants. I transplanted to try to fill in the gap. I wound up with 32 plants in a 24 foot row. I just did not have the heart to pull up healthy plants.

I have watered the Okra very little, no fertilizer other than compost and have the best Okra I have ever had. I have to pick it like it was a double row. It may be that the plants that are close together had to lean different directions to get the light needed. I have never planted like this before, but it makes me think I may try it again.
In the past my plants would get very tall and hard to harvest. My plants now are at best 6'tall and producing like crazy.

I am growing Clemson spinless. The only one that I have liked better ( I have only grown about 6 different types) was some kind of Cajun Okra a frind gave me. It bushed out a lot and did not get but about 6 or 7 feet tall, but because of it having so many limbs it was harder to find the pods.

Larry

Keith,

Most okras branch somewhat, but the amount of branching varies with spacing. To get really good branching, you have to plant the okra plants really far apart. Plants that are close together branch significantly less.

I don't know that I've ever looked specifically at the branching structure, though, to see if okra branches like tomatoes with branches that we call suckers coming out of the V crotches. I think they do, but I haven't necessarily observed the plants closely enough to say if that is true.

To tell you the truth, I give okra plants virtually no attention between planting and harvesting time. I plant them and they grow. Once they have a little height, I mulch them with 4 to 6" of straw or grass clippings and then I completely ignore them until they bloom and I start harvesting pods. I haven't studied their growth the way I've studied some other veggies.

Okra plants that are planted closely to one another definitely grow more vertically and produce a decent yield. Okra plants given further spacing branch out a lot more, still get about as tall, and produce more pods per plant because all the side branches produce pods well as long as they aren't too shaded by adjacent plants. It is the shading from adjacent plants that keeps closely-planted plants from producing as well on the branches.

When okra plants get tall enough that I need a stepladder to harvest from the plants' upper portion (at 5'3", I am height-challenged), I sometimes cut them back to about 2' in height at mid-summer. They respond by putting out a much more bushy type of growth. For me, they're easier to harvest when shorter, but the bushy growth is very dense so you really, really have to search harder for the pods or you don't find them among the dense foliage.

I think that when I plant them 2' to 3' apart (or, actually, thin them to that distance after the seeds sprout and the plants are about 6 to 8" tall), they do branch earlier. Still, it seems to me that most okra varieties grow strongly vertically at first and then branch a lot more as the season goes on, provided they have adequate space to spread out.

I can't tell you if a row of plants spaced 3' to 6' apart from early in their season would provide a better harvest than the identical variety spaced at 12" or 15" or 18", but I think it would. To test that theory, you'd have to have two rows, side by side, using the same variety grown at the same time so you could actually record your harvest over the course of the summer and see if you got more okra from the widely spaced row of fewer plants or the more densely spaced row containing more plants.

The kinds of bags used when bagging blooms are not baggies. They tend to be an air-permeable material like nylon (picture the material sheer curtain panels are made from), organza, very lightweight cotton, or even bags made from Reemay or Agribon floating row cover type material which is a spun polyester cloth. You don't want to use plastic baggies that would hold in moisture. You could use small paper bags I think, but I've never tried it. I think corn shoot bags are paper. Plastic or glassine bags would hold in too much moisure and also would get the greenhouse effect and would roast your blossoms.

The bags are used to prevent cross-pollination from occurring on plants that are self-pollinating and are placed around the flowers before they open. The bags keep both wind-blown and insect-carried pollen from contaminating the flowers and causing cross-pollination. For a home gardener wishing to save only a small amount of seed for their own use or to share with friends and neighbors, bagging is effective and efficient. For dedicated seedsavers who are saving large amounts of seeds to help perpetuate an open-pollinated variety and who hope to disperse the seeds via their memebership in seed saving organizations, it is sometimes more efficient to cage the plants using isolation cages built of wood and window screen type material. In an isolation cage, every flower is protected versus only individual blooms protected by bagging. When you bag blossoms, hou have to make sure the bag is very secure around the stem of each blossom so small insects cannot make their way inside. You might use a twist tie or zip tie for example, or even place a couple of cotton balls between the stem and the bag at the place where you 'close' the bag around the stem. The cotton balls keep pests from infiltrating.

Bagging works on most plants, but not on plants with teeny-tiny grains of pollen like some greens have. Those grains can pass through the weave of muslin and nylon bags. Paper bags can be used for corn and some other crops but not if you are in an area with lots of rain during the bagging process.

With okra specifically, you'd bag the blossom before it opens. To do this, check the okra plants in late afternoon or evening hours for big, fat blossoms that clearly are poised to open the next day. They will be at the fat stage (younger flowers two days from bloom are thinner), will have slight green striping and may be showing a tiny bit of flower color. Use large bags for them, probably those that are 4" x 6". Some of the muslin or organza ones you buy even have drawstrings to help close them securely. Place one bag over each closed blossom. Secure using a drawstring, zip-tie, twisty-tie, garden string, a rubber band or whatever. You have to be sure tiny pollinator insects can not squeeze in betwen the stem and the bag.

The next day, pollination generally occurs shortly after the blossoms open in the morning, but you need to leave the bags on for the rest of that day and then for the entire next day because pollen can stay viable for many hours. After you remove the bags, tie a piece of a BRIGHTLY COLORED yard or fabric (surveyor's tape comes in many bright colors and can be used for this) to the blossoms that were bagged so you'll remember to harvest those for seed, not for eating.

You can reuse the same bags over and over, but if moving them between different varieties, wait 2 days before reusing a bag as pollen can remain viable for at least 24 hours and perhaps as long as 48 hours in cooler weather. (Hotter weather denatures pollen more quickly.)

I usually buy little organza bags on the wedding supply aisle at craft stores, but you can buy special seed bags from various companies. I think both Seed Savers Exchange and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange sell seed-saving and seed-storage supplies.

Yes, if growing multiple varieties of the same type of veggie, always bag the blossoms to prevent cross-pollination.

I think George sometimes wraps floating row cover around an entire plant at one time, but you have to be very careful to ensure bugs cannot get inside when you do that.

I saved seeds often after we moved here and I had a smaller and more manageable garden. After the garden quadrupled in size, I pretty much gave up seedsaving because harvesting/putting up the harvest takes up all my time. I usually fill up three freezers, can several hundred jars of goodies (now approaching 500 jars for this year), and fill up a root cellar. This has been a hard year, so I've only got one freezer 75% full although if I have a good fall I still think I'll fill two freezers, and I've canned plenty. The root cellar may have only potatoes, onions and sweet potatoes this year since I didn't have space for a lot of winter squash and pumpkins.

Quailhunter, I get the best harvest from okra plants spaced 2' to 3' feet apart, but it kills me to put them that far apart. I get pretty wonderful production from plants 18" apart. In years when the garden was smaller, I put them 8-12" apart and thought I had fine production. In those days, though, I was content with enough okra to eat fresh. Nowadays, I want lots to eat fresh but lots to freeze as well.

Larry, It is hard for me to thin plants as well, so I usually transplant them elsewhere even though okra doesn't especially like being transplanted. This year I 'snuck in' a row of dwarf okra plants right alongside the bean plants growing on the bean trellis and they've done really well. However, when harvesting the beans this fall, I'm going to have to be careful and avoid stepping all over the okra plants since I planted them in the area where I usually walk while harvesting pole beans.

Dawn

Thanks Dawn, saved to my clippings!

Keith :)

Keith, You're welcome.

Dawn

Last night we had the first mess of frozen okra I put up on August 9th using the oven blanch method that Dawn suggested. I was very pleased with the taste, just like fresh but it fried up a little different than fresh or even the Stillwell frozen. I always fry okra very hot and did so last night but it seemed to be just soaking up the cooking oil. When it finally got crispy looking it was actually extra crispy, not burned but extra crispy. I've got 5 more bags to last me until the end of next July.

Keith

Bumping this thread back up as it is now Okra Time again and this thread has such a wealth of information from all of Oklahoma Experts!

Keith