Okra. To be or not to be: The Garden Chronicles, Chapter 31.
Mother’s Day brought lots of rain to our nape of the neck.
And with that rain, the garden did grow.
That meant I needed to play God again with the okra.
I love okra.
Well, I love fried okra and so do my children. So when my transplants from the store dried up and blew away, I dropped a row of okra seeds into the dirt.
Up those seeds sprung.
And now comes a task every farmer must do.
Thin out the seedlings.
Shhhh.
Yes, it was time.
I don’t know why this causes me angst. Which one should I pull. There are dozens and dozens.
I need to pull at least 10 seedlings for every one kept.
I can’t help thinking…is this how God does things? Get in there and pull up a few.
It’s so arbitrary.
So I came at it from a different angle.
Rather than thinking of individual okra, I thought of the OKRA.
As in my crop.
For the good of the entire crop all but a few must be weeded out.
Yes, I did my job and now the remaining plants have room to grow.
I’ll probably have to weed out a few more in a week or so.
I’m really too emotional to be a farmer.
But my love of fried okra prevailed and I made the tough calls.
Actually it got easier as I went along. A lot easier.
How is your garden growing this 15th of May?
Ha! LOVED your doctored photos! So funny!
Thanks Caryn. I kept thinking of the old SNL Mr. Bill skits. “oh noooo.”
Wow, I never knew you had to weed out some of the sproutlings. Hm, explains a lot. LOL.
I keep telling myself that I’m going to try my hand at a garden every spring. And yet, every year I’m too chicken to try. This year however, my daughters really want to try to plant some things. I’m leaning towards flowers/plants. Any suggestions?
Okra is one of the few things I never learned to eat, though I’ve never had fried Okra before. My parents always used to prepare it in ethnic dishes that had them boiled and mushy. If you’ve got a recipe, I’d love to try it!
Well Cyn, I would start with tomatoes. You just need a lot of sunshine and there are so many, many varieties now that you can grow in pots. Patio tomatoes. Your daughter would love it. You can watch the plant get bigger, then see the yellow blooms and watch them turn into the fruit. I love the grape varieties. The bush gets full and I go out into the garden and pop them into my mouth like candy. Nothing better than a warm, sweet, salty, juicy tomato. The okra plant needs a little more space. I’ll think of you went we fry our first batch of okra and show you the scoop.