Summertime Super Crop

Along about this time the garden is baking in the summer sun.  Cowpeas like purple hulls, black-eyes and Ozark Razorback peas are growing and the sweet potato vines are taking over, but most everything else is hot and tired - like me.  Except, of course, the okra.  Okra laughs at the heat.  "Bring it on," it says.  It continues to grow and bear new pods every day and will continue to do so until around December.

We have one row of okra planted right past the sweet potato jungle.  On that row, I have three different varieties of okra planted.  First, we have the old standby - Clemson Spineless.  You can see pods of different sizes on the stalk.  It doesn't talk long to go from a yellow flower to a tender, four-inch pod ready for picking.

Next we have the Burgundy Okra variety.  This variety is burgundy, like its name suggests.  While Clemson Spineless has ridges on the pods, Burgundy is pretty much smooth.  The color is attractive in the garden as both the pods and the stalks are burgundy, but once the pods are cooked, they lose their striking color and turns green like the others

Finally, we have another variety, Beck's Big Okra.  This is an interesting okra with numerous ridges.  It is a fat okra.

I would rank the productive yield as follows: # 1 (by far) Clemson Spineless Okra, #2 Beck's Big Okra, and #3 Burgundy Okra..  Every single day, we go out with a bucket and pick a 'mess' of okra.  You have to be careful as fire ants love to climb up the stalks and eat (I guess) on the okra.  They'll bite you.

We like to cut the okra in half and roast them in the oven with olive oil and salt and pepper.  Also, we cook down sliced okra with tomatoes and onions.  We make a curried okra dish that is very flavorful.  Finally, we oven fry sliced okra with Panko bread crumbs.  We eat a lot of okra.  At some point, we'll start freezing some to get ready for okra to add to gumbos during the winter months.  Winter months.  It is nice to look forward to cooler weather, isn't it?