Sea Island Red

[Tucson Grower]

My 2 plants of Sea Islnd Red okra are just in front of my 4 sunflower plants. The smaller one is just a stick that is barely alive, while the other one (only a foot tall) just bloomed its first flower of the year. It was a pretty dark pink with even darker pink veins. I don't know if a fruit will form under these conditions, we'll see. I have neglected the 2 AfricanX plants, but at 4-6 inches high,they are still, both hanging in there.

[chrysanthemum]

Sounds pretty. Are you due for a cold snap in coming days? At least there’s the possibility of protecting a foot-high okra plant with a simple pot or something, but only against so much cold.

[Tucson Grower]

Well, our forecasts say we're expecting a low of 31F tonight and Friday night, but most every other day the lows are expected to be in the high 30'sF or even higher, so since the outside temp is 34F right now, at about 9:30 p.m., I'd best go put those pots on. Hopefully that will do it.

Okay, I just placed gallon sized plastic pots over my surviving okra plants. The pots are black on the inside and dark purple on the outside. One plant is my Sea Island Red and the other is an AfricanX. Only one of each are still surviving, right now.

[Tucson Grower]

First and final update: That first night when I placed the plastic pots over my Sea Island Red and AfricanX okra plants, it got down to 30F with considerable frost and ice forming in jugs of water. The plastic pots kept the okra plants perfectly fine. The very next night, which was forecast to be 34F for the low, got it wrong and it went down to 26F, even colder than the cold night before it. The plastic pots could not protect them from that. Those two frosty nights also took out the Chia, Basil, Beans, and native Datura. But they did not harm the Bok Choy, Daikon radishes, lettuce, or sunflowers. As has often been the case, weather forecasts are educated guesses.

[woodeye]

Sure sorry to read this, Tucson Grower. Yes, weather forecasts are educated guesses, with "guesses" being the key word...

[heavyhitterokra]

Tucson Grower,

Very sorry to hear about your plants. That was very surprising that the sunflowers made it. That's valuable information. I didn't know they could take frost at all.

[Tucson Grower]

This season, late spring 2023, the SIR plants are progressing much better than they did when started in early autumn 2022. I even ate my first okra of the season - it was a SIR.

[heavyhitterokra]

Tucson,

I don't know how I missed this post for so many days. It never will cease to amaze me how different our climates are. The day you were eating your first okra pods of the season, I was still planting my first few rows of okra seeds for the season, and groaning at the 50° nighttime temperatures that were causing my previously planted seedlings to stall out.

Today is June 6th, and I still have 100 empty spaces left to plant. It's possible that I might actually finish planting my last seeds of the season tomorrow morning. I won't see my first pods of the season until sometime around July 4th, if I'm lucky.

[Tucson Grower]

I think you're correct about the temp being a most critical factor. I have several dinky 3 inch tall plants, of several varieties, all having fruits they were struggling to grow, until I cut them off, first to eat them, second to take the burden from the plants, so they can grow larger. For a while now my nights have been in the 60'sF.

[heavyhitterokra]

I've had okra planted in June outrun okra planted in early May, because of the cold nighttime temperatures stunting the earliest plants.  I might not be right about that, but to the best of my knowledge that's what causes it anyway.

[Tucson Grower]

Here is a pic of a 9 inch long pod, containing, 'SIR" x 'HH" seed -->
SIR seem to have pods that are more slender than HH, but a little bit longer, though, by now these are much too tough to eat.