Okra shines in the garden.

You’ve probably seen pictures of Hawaiian girls with large
hibiscus blossoms tucked
behind their ears. Well, okra blossoms aren’t quite as showy as
those, but they’re in the
hibiscus family.

They’re among the most beautiful blooms in the vegetable
garden, too. They’re ivory to
creamy yellow with deep reddish-purple throats.

They bloom for only a day. By sundown, okra flowers are
wilted, whether or not they’ve
been pollinated.

If it’s sunny and good bee-buzzing weather, you’ll see tiny
okra pods underneath the
wilted flowers. Not all will be pollinated, but since okra will
blossom for a long time,
you should get a sizeable harvest.

Asia — central to southern, to the best of my research —
gave us okra. It grows wild
in the upper Nile region, too, and was used in northern Africa
for centuries. In fact,
okra is an African word.

Trading ships brought okra to this country, and it quickly
found favor as a crop and an
ingredient in French and Creole cooking in Louisiana.

Okra is a tasty, important ingredient in many foods,
especially Creole dishes.

I would never think of making shrimp gumbo without adding
okra about 30 minutes before
serving. Gumbo, from the word "gombo," means okra, a
natural thickener for soups
and stews.

Okra is often stewed with tomatoes, deep-fried, pickled,
boiled or steamed and served
with butter, as well as eaten raw, fresh from the garden.

Some folks don’t like the gummy quality okra has when it’s
boiled or steamed. It seems
more popular when combined with other vegetables, fried or
pickled.

I’ve made coffee out of okra seeds. Just let some pods ripen
on the plant, collect the
seeds when the pod ribs have opened, and roast and grind the
seeds.

Perk this "coffee," using more of the ground okra
than you would regular
coffee. Although I’ll never see "Okra Java" at a
trendy coffee house, who
knows….

For history buffs, okra coffee was used during the Late
Unpleasantness with the North
when blockades were in place and coffee wasn’t available. W.N.
White, in Gardening for
the South (1858), said, "I think it is not very likely
to supersede."

Still other people take advantage of the versatile okra by
grinding the dried seeds and
mixing them with cornmeal to make bread.

Because okra grows best in hot climates, it’s one of those
vegetables considered a
"Southern" crop. It is true that the southern parts of
our country have the
long, hot growing seasons okra needs to bear really well, but
you can grow it anywhere.

Because okra can’t tolerate frost and doesn’t like cool
weather, north Georgia yields
may not be as high as from plants grown farther south. But you
can make up for that by
simply growing a few extra plants.

Some gardeners prefer to either buy transplants or start
their own indoors to plant
outside when the weather and ground have warmed enough.

Okra has a reputation for being hard to transplant. It has a
very long tap root, and
when it’s broken, the plant doesn’t recover.

Most gardeners sow their okra seeds right in the ground at
the proper time. The proper
time is after the soil is warm. Really warm. Okra will just sit
there and may rot in cold
soils. Remember — it is tropical.

But if you want to, and are willing to take a little extra
care of the long tap, you
can successfully transplant okra.

All your efforts can be ruined by "damping off," a
fungus disease that
attacks emerging seedlings, if you don’t take steps to prevent
it.

To prevent damping off, treat seeds with a fungicide you can
buy at a garden supply
store. Follow the directions on the package.