Okra Loves...Bermuda?

I cut our first okra pods today, many of which were too large and should have been cut days earlier. I'll be checking the plants daily or every other day now so I'll get them at the tender stage.

The reason I'm impressed with the okra is that they've survived a lot of extremes and still flourished. More of our attention went to other areas of the garden and lot. Early on, we had spread 8 inches (yep, 8 inches deep) of manure and woodshavings from a nearby horse barn over that area. At the time, there was little grass, and very very hard sand underneath. There was also drought for months...all spring.

I was really trying to see a green bean patch get a good start, and our limited time focused more on those than on the okra. The okra was planted in rows alternately beside rows of lima beans. The limas succumbed to our neglect not because we didn't water them when small, but because the Bermuda grass was so invasive and our budget didn't stretch to laying down landscaping fabric or rolls of plastic. We had some boxes, but that bermuda grew overnight. It swallowed the limas alive, and covered the okra entirely. Still, we left the okra sections unmowed...in hopes of what, I don't know, but I guess we wanted to see what would happen.

I'm glad we did! What happened was not in the category of Garden Beautiful, but those okra plants, which we had bungled by planting too closely together and in the middle of a drought, and then neglected to thin or weed, and later discontinued watering...kept on holding their own. Pretty soon their tops surpassed the top of the Bermuda. We were curious to see which would ultimately triumph.

Interestingly, some of them survived, and started maturing. I don't advise anyone to duplicate our way of growing it...we'd have a much better return if we'd planned better, tended them better. But one thing we learned was that okra can hold its own even in the midst of thick Bermuda. It LOVES punishing heat. The deer seem to leave it alone. It also survives days of rain. And neglect. The pods were disease-free, and insects of all sorts were among its leaves, but with no damage noted. These two small patches yielded 4 lbs of pods at first picking.

If I were to speculate, a better-tended patch or set of rows would be one of the easiest veggies to grow here.

It's a keeper! Now the question is...does it NEED Bermuda to grow so well?? haha :)

Rain, Rain...Stay!

It was hot, hot today! And then we finally, FINALLY, got some rain. For two hours.
That's two more hours than we've had for most of the year so far, so it's time to celebrate!
Cornbread started out the soul food fare...

Greens picked from the garden fresh today...purple hull leaves and calabaza (pumpkin) leaves cut in a chiffonade (ribbons) and boiled like turnip greens. It was our first time trying them cooked like this, since we usually sauteed them. They tasted great...milder than collards or kale or chard, even. Perfect with the cornbread, mmm. They nestled next to some homecooked red beans and a small slice of tender roast beef.

It all went down goooooood :)
This was for later...Jack works tonight. I miss him even before he has to leave. We take whatever time we have for a date. Today's date was warm homemade berry cobbler with cold milk. And lots of kisses :)
We love the sound of thunder. The plants were still dripping when the brief storm let up.
Liquid gold...
I love how the rain beads on the leaf surfaces. These thirsty guys got a well-deserved drink.
This is part of the snap bean and purple hull patch. It's a sprint to see if we can keep the Bermuda out long enough for them to bear.
Here's more evidence of the chase...layering old straw and hay and wheelbarrows-full of old barn manure, and yet the Bermuda skips merrily along.
Marking off a new calabaza sprout with some stick debris and willow whips, to keep our friendly neighbor from accidentally dumping a load or two of stall cleanings atop the little guy.

I hope you had a great weekend! Ours was wonderful. I was with my best friend/beloved and mix in some outdoor sunshine/sunburn and a surprise thunderstorm, and it's my favorite kind of day. The cornbread, good eats, and cobbler didn't hurt, either :)

How was yours?

First fistful of Roma green beans ready for the picking! These were from the initial ones I tested growing in buckets. We'll be planting all our snap beans in-ground from now on when possible...about a third have not thrived in the buckets.

Baby moringa, grown from seed. So far, we have several of them thriving. This is a fast-growing and very useful tree good for human food and animal fodder. We hope to see it grow at least 8 to 10 feet this year. It'll go into the ground as soon as it's big enough. This is a plant we hope to keep a big patch of in order to harvest the fast-growing limbs for many purposes.

One wayward calabaza seed next to the compost bin sprouts into a glorious riot of variegated leaves and saffron blooms. We saw blooms and were wondering if any of them were being pollinated. It's sited near the swale that's overgrown with cattails. The drought this year means there's no standing water, but still it's slightly moist down there. We think we're getting pollinators from that area, though we've seen no honeybees around.
Hello, beautiful! These blooms can be eaten at a particular stage (we haven't tried that yet), and so can the leaves (cooked for greens). A peek beneath the vines found that many blooms have traded in the ruffled yellow petticoat for fertility's sake. There are a lot of little calabazas plumping up under there!


One such baby. Who will get to eat it first...the rabid bugs and ever-present pests of Florida, or us? Only time will tell! Maybe our stunning technique of "weed therapy" will keep the bad guys occupied? (crazy little laugh...ahem...oh how the Bermuda grass is making my life one big weed-battling duel, sorry!) :) I'm beginning to think that the subtropics down here are in a sense one big stomach, and anything on or in the ground eventually will get digested..and that it's just a matter of time to see if a harvest results, before it all returns to mulch again! ;-)
This week, on Survivor...here is a small shoot emerging from the freeze-killed Mamey Sapote (fruit tree) we were growing from seed last year. Grow, baby, grow!

Out at the cowpea patch, one area is doing great and another area is becoming engulfed with invasive Bermuda grass (what else??). The Bermuda lurks under all the other natural grasses around here, barely ever showing its face...UNTIL...one starts watering a garden. Then it calls all its friends, and in a single evening it begins having the sort of garden party it does no good to call the cops to break up. Ah. Well. My Fordhook limas are so glutted with Bermuda, it would kill them to begin (again) pulling it all up. Same thing with the okra...so it's a dead heat to see which (if any) of these will win by a nose...weeds, or plants? If the okra can get some height soon, maybe it'll stand a chance. The limas? Hmmm. The good news is that all the purple hulls and blue lake snap beans are at present SOMEWHAT under control (from the weeds). But they're there. I just keep smothering them time and again with straw, hay, mulch, stable cleanings. Until this crop has produced, there is no hope of turning the soil since it's simply a very very thick layer of composted stable cleanings. Sure, let's go with calling this "no-till," but "no-till" is looking messier than I like at this point.

Oh, the learning curve.

Hey, we're leaning in to the curve...the ride's fun! :)

How grows your weed patch?