The Ornamental Vegetable Garden: okra

Showing posts with label okra. Show all posts

September 25, 2022 at 12:38 PM 0 comments By: m

Photo dump

Words to live by in custom made bricks from my dear friend Rich.

'Supersweet 100' cherry tomatoes ready for roasting

'Omero' purple cabbage

'Supersweet 100' cherry tomatoes

'Carmine Splendor' okra going to seed

At the beginning of the season, I needed a cucumber trellis, so I built one meant to last just the one season...

It looked good for a while.

But some volunteer cantaloupe got heavy on it late in the season, and...

Still, it served its purpose, since the cucumbers are all gone.

'Shazam!' the prettiest it's looked all year

'South Africa' - always the most prolific and healthy rose in the garden

Yellow 'South Africa', light pink 'Mother of Pearl',

and dark pink 'Acropolis'

August 27, 2022 at 6:38 PM 0 comments By: m

The good stuff in the vegetable world is in full swing: tomatoes, cucumbers and melons. By some greatly appreciated miracle, the raccoons have not been into the garden this summer. Rabbits got to a couple melons that were touching the ground, but, unlike raccoons, they didn't pull the melons off the vines and destroy them completely. They just ate out the bottoms, so I cut off the damage and ate the rest myself.

These French Charentais type melons are so delicious, and the flesh stays firm, never mushy.

'Savor'

The long sweet peppers I grew from seeds of grocery store peppers have done okay, but of course they are not grown under the artificial conditions marketers use, so not as large or fleshy.

Rhubarb, onions and garlic, 'Carmine Splendor' okra, 'Marketmore' cucumber,

'Savor' French Charentais melon, and 'German Johnson' tomatoes

'Supersweet 100' cherry tomatoes, 'Primo Vantage' cabbage, sweet long pepper,

and ripe jalapeño peppers

'Primo Vantage' cabbage

'Carmine Splendor' okra, 'Omero' cabbages,

and celery gone to seed

'Carmine Splendor' okra

'Omero' cabbages

'Marketmore' cucumber and 'Savor' melon

'Supersweet 100' cherry tomatoes

My fall peas, collected from early spring peas, are doing well, considering they're competing with so many weeds. Due to several factors, including extreme heat in July and long Covid, I haven't kept my garden tended well as in previous years.

I've done a better job in the rose garden. But the aphids showed up this week, and I'm having quite a battle with them.

Lavender 'Poseidon' and yellow 'South Africa'

'South Africa'

'Razzle Dazzle'

Till next time.

July 26, 2022 at 10:11 AM 0 comments By: m

A break in the heat

Thankfully, it's much cooler this week so far. I've actually been able to go outside and do some much needed garden tending.

'Luna' hibiscus, dainty white gaura flowers, red gomphrena, and purple verbena

After a several weeks with too little (if any) rain, and with bright sun and high winds a few days recently, the ground is drying up. The field adjacent to my garden looks like this:

I've never seen it like this before. Luckily, I have access to water for the garden.

The weatherman said we should get .7" rain yesterday. We got .3" and this morning .25". It needs to pick up.

I've been getting 3 or 4 okra pods for several days now.

'Carmine Splendor' okra

Also, I'm getting a handful of 'Supersweet 100' cherry tomatoes every day.

If the weather doesn't go back to temperatures in the 90s too soon, I might actually get some ripe slicing tomatoes. Or at least this one. Fingers crossed.

'German Johnson'

'Omero' cabbages are kind of just sitting there. I probably shouldn't have planted them as early as I did. On the other hand, they took so long last year for even one of them to produce a head. Maybe, just maybe, I might actually get something to harvest this year.

The 'Marketmore' cucumbers and 'Savor' melons growing together on my makeshift trellis have reached the top.

I can now tell the difference by looking at the vines: the dark green leaves with a rounded tip are the melons, and the lighter green, flatter leaves with pointed tips are the cucumbers. The darker veins in the cucumber leaves make me think the melons are soaking up all the nitrogen in the soil. But the few cucumbers I'm seeing look healthy, so I probably won't try to fertilize.

Fortunately, as mentioned above, I have the ability to water the garden when there's too little rain, so it actually looks pretty good.

Rows left to right: 'German Johnson' tomatoes, 'Carmine Splendor' okra,

and 'Omero' cabbage

'Stuttgarter white onions

Meanwhile, over in the rose bed:

Left: 'Shazam!', Right: 'South Africa'

The following picture of 'Grande Amore' is actually pretty good. Must be the new phone's camera, because I have never been able to get a picture of this particular rose where you can see the separate petals. The light reflection seems to be essentially the same from every part of the petal, so they normally blend into a bright red blob.