Your Garden's Best Friend

The compost pile

 

It's hard to imagine having a greater ally in the world of vegetable gardening than a compost pile. For those of us who enjoy watching nature work, composting is hard to beat. Not only can we get rid of all sorts of yard/barn/garden waste, the final product is nothing short of nature's perfect fertilizer for your garden. The pile in this picture is one I built this weekend as a hot compost, meaning the pile was built all at one time in order to "cook" to perfection. Using this method a mixture of greens (think fresh grass clippings, vegetable scraps, etc.) and browns (think dried manure, leaves, wheat straw, etc) is required. Forget about getting exact with your "ingredients." Use what's available. This pile is from materials I got from a friend who has cattle. I shoveled a mixture of cow manure and straw, probably 70% straw, mixed it all together, dampened it all as I went, and within hours had a hot, steaming pile. This will only take a few weeks to complete the hot composting process, stirring it every 3 or 4 days. I like to work and I need the exercise! Use whatever materials you have. Access to a farm is not necessary! My favorite hot compost mixture is fresh grass clippings with chopped leaves. In other words, find some grass to cut where leaves have fallen in it. When piled and moistened, you're well on your way. Much more on this later.

 

 

9/29 Update:

 

After baking for about a week, I turned this hot pile for the first time. Someone commented the above picture had a "face" in it! Compost ghost, maybe? But I digress... pile still looks about the same after first stirring but it's very hot and shrinking slightly.



Okra By The Numbers

Height, Spacing, and Quantity

 

Some questions potential and eager okra planters often ask:

1) How tall do okra plants get? 


As stated before, my variety of choice is Clemson Spineless. They can get really tall, maybe up to 10 feet in height. Once they get this tall, you'll need a ladder to reach them or simply, but gently, bend them down to cut the fresh pods off the top. Okra is the gift that keeps on giving!

This one is just about 8' tall and still growing in early fall.

2) When planting, how much space should be between each plant?

 





I've seen a lot of different suggestions on how much space should be between okra plants. While okra does grow to be pretty large in diameter with large, reaching leaves, it is not necessary to space the plants any more than 6 inches apart. I plant mine in 2 rows in a 16' long raised bed, spaced about 5 inches apart, as you can see below. The key to the plants not overcrowding is to snap (prune) the branches off once that branch's okra pod has been harvested. Instead of letting the giant leaves grow and grow, just simply pop them off with your hands and leave them lying in the raised bed for a mulch/ground cover. Some people won't grow this beautiful plant because they think it takes up too much room. Later, I'll show you my raised bed trench method that makes okra growing easy!

3) How many plants do I need to feed my family?

Admittedly, Okra can be frustrating to grow. It grows from a tiny seed and seems to take forever to really get its feet under it. When planting in the spring, patience is imperative! As the weather gets warmer, okra really thrives. In fact, mine doesn't really take off until temperatures are consistently in the 90's during the day. I should have planted more than I did this year. Most of the summer, I have harvested okra every morning and it has taken me about 3-4 days to get enough for a good sized skillet full for an okra loving family of 4. Next spring I'll probably have closer to 50 plants. This year I've had about 25. If you grow more than you can use, it's a treat to give to your neighbors or family. Everybody gives away tomatoes, squash, and watermelons. Not too many give away okra. And, it's always better to grow more than you need. 

Okra Pods "fused" together

Okra Plant Gone Mad

My okra has done well this year and had produced quite a crop. When I count the pods I've cut from each plant so far, most of them are around 40-50 pods per plant, and counting. That said, one plant in particular has been a superstar. My variety of choice is Clemson Spineless and it commonly forks off into multiple branches. But this plant is an absolute beast! I've got well over 100 pods from this single plant, with no end in sight. One problem though... the top of the plant, and all the pods it would have produced, have grown together, or "fused" into what you see in the picture above. This is the main stem of the plant. All the other growth is doing great, but this glob of okra has confounded me. Have you seen anything like this before?  The anthers from many pods sticking out the top of this thing are clearly visible. I've just left it alone, not wanting to damage the main stem of this great producing plant. Also visible are the brown stubs from where earlier pods were cut.



Purple Hulls in Bloom

Pink-Eye Purple Hulls Peas

Purple Hulls. You gotta love 'em. Where I live, these are just called "peas." No need to make a distinction. My wife loves them. My little girls love them. I love them. They get eaten a lot at my house! And of course, we never eat fried okra without them. That, my friends, is heaven on a plate. These things do great in the heat of the summer and even thrive in dry weather. I'm working on a fall crop this year. They've began blooming and the first pickin should come about 2 weeks after the first blooms are visible. 


Update, 9/29:

The purple hulls have done Ok the last couple of weeks, but with the days getting short in fast order, they've simply ran out of hours of sun. we did to manage a few freezer bags and a few meals off them, but they've just given up the goat at this point. I'll call this late crop a minor success, but next fall I'll know to plant them in a place where the shade won't get to them in late summer/early fall.

A basket of purple hulls

A Sad, shaded bed of purple hulls (cowpeas). Need more sunlight! 

 

 

 

RACING AGAINST TIME

Rattlesnake Pole Beans in Bloom

Among my favorite things to grow in the garden are green beans, or pole beans. I prefer pole beans to bush beans. They are much easier to pick, take up much less space, and tend to yield more per plant as each vine grows to 12+ feet. My preferred variety is rattlesnake beans. They are green in color, streaked with purple. Simply put, the blooms and beans are beautiful! I grew up with these, and really, that's probably why I prefer them. Can nostalgia actually make beans better?! These are blooming in early-mid September in my Northwest TN garden. I'm trying them for the first time in a fall garden and so far they look spectacular and are COVERED with purple blooms. In the spring garden, the green beans race against the summer heat. In the fall, they'll race against frost. If our first frost holds off until mid October, looks like a great crop. If it comes early (October 1st or so), well, they'll still be some. Stay tuned...

UPDATE!! 9/22/15
The Pole beans are doing great! The weather has been gorgeous for bean growing with highs in the 70's and 80's with lots of sunshine. Check out the beans on the vines...

And, here are a few headed inside for snapping...

Purple hull (cowpeas) peas in foreground; rattlesnake green beans in the background. A wonderful fall harvest!

9/29 Update: These beans are really overachieving. Unlike my PURPLE HULLS these beans have really surprised me. The key this time of year is keeping them well watered (it's been really dry here in West Tennessee) and planting them in a place where the long shadows of early fall aren't going to keep the sun off them for too many hours each day. Best pole beans ever!

 FRIED "OKRIE"

Had I grown up in a more northern climate, perhaps the allure of spring would have felt different for me. Maybe I would have looked forward to snow melting away. Or maybe I would have anxiously awaited soccer season, which was an unknown game to me as a child. But growing up in central Alabama with a grandfather who loved to garden, I spent a lot of early spring days thinking about what we'd be planting, hoeing, and picking in the weeks to come. And there was one plant that towered above the others as far as I was concerned... okra! Some of the old timers I knew called it "okrie." So fried okrie and peas, purple hull peas, have always been among my favorite meals. Now, I garden with raised beds and I grow what we like to eat. No frills, just vegetables.  So, I decided to write about it. Enjoy the blog. Sweat. Get your hands dirty, and let's go grow something!