Last year I noted in my Okra Pollination Problems post that our okra had serious pollination problems—that the flowers were simply drying and falling off. What a difference a year makes! This year we moved the okra completely away from the tomatoes. Suddenly, there are all kinds of ants on the plants and the flowers are opening up as they should. In fact, we’ve already picked quite a bit of okra, which is one of the few bright spots in our drought impacted garden this year.
After talking with quite a few people about the issue, I’m becoming convinced that the okra flowers must have some sort of wax on them, much as other flowers such as peonies do. The ants are necessary to eat the wax off and help open the flowers. In addition, the ants must act as the pollinators. I haven’t seen much in the way of bee or other flying insect activity around these flowers to date and I’ve spent quite a bit of time watching. If someone else has an opinion about pollinators for okra, please contact me at [email protected].
The okra plants also seem to be responding well to heat. We’ve had to water them, but the plants are growing normally despite the heat (as contrasted to our tomatoes that don’t appear to want to grow much at all). I’d be interested in hearing other experiences with okra when it comes to summer heat. Given that this has been a hotter than normal summer (breaking all sorts of records), it’s a good test of what will happen when climate change starts to take a fuller effect. Okra seems to be on our list of items to maintain despite the heat.
The one thing we have noticed is that we’re having to be a little more diligent than normal in monitoring the okra. The individual spears are growing faster than normal and it’s possible to see a smallish okra one day that turns into something a bit too large the next. When okra get too large, they also get woody. You don’t want to pick them too small, but too large definitely presents problems. We normally pick the okra when it reaches 2 inches in length. That size seems to provide a good tradeoff between getting enough value for the time invested and not having a woody result.
How is your okra growing this year? For that matter, how is your garden doing as a whole? Let me know at [email protected].
