Okra - Cultivation And Recipes

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Try to grow okra - an interesting and healthy vegetable crop

• Application of okra
• Features of culture
• How to grow okra
• Harvesting okra
• Okra recipes

For the inhabitants of the middle zone, okra is an almost exotic culture. And for southerners, this is already a familiar and favorite vegetable, from which many delicious dishes can be prepared. Although it appeared in Russia relatively recently. Although it is known that Anton Pavlovich Chekhov successfully cultivated okra in his Melikhovo estate near Moscow.

Okra (it is also called gombo, okra) is grown in the countries of Asia, Africa, America. On the territory of the former Soviet Union, this crop is successfully cultivated in Georgia, Armenia, Central Asia, Ukraine, Moldavia, in Russia - in the Kuban and in the Central zone.

Application of okra

Okra is used exclusively for culinary purposes. The fruits of okra are used for food in the form of unopened pods. Young pods appear on the plant every 3-4 days from mid-summer until frost. In addition to pods, you can also eat young okra leaves.

Its fruit tastes like asparagus and eggplant, so it should come as no surprise that it is cooked similarly to these vegetables. Okra is used raw, boiled, stewed, fried. It is added to salads, soups, vegetable stews, used as a side dish for meat, poultry and fish.

Features of culture

Okra belongs to the Malvov family. An annual plant. Taproot, weakly branching, penetrating into the ground to a depth of more than 1.5 meters. The stalk is thick, forming at the bottom of the stepson. Stem height up to 2 meters or up to 40-50 cm in low-growing forms. The leaves are large, on long petioles, the flowers are single, large, beautiful, yellow-cream in color, gramophone form. They are located in the leaf axils.

The fruit is a polyspermous capsule, as a rule, pentahedral cone-shaped, with ripe seeds 20-25 cm long in one species and 10-18 in another. Seeds are round, dark green, olive or dark gray, 5-6 mm in diameter. The plant is self-pollinating, in a humid climate, cross-pollination is possible, which leads to cross-pollination between varieties and a change in varietal qualities when these seeds are sown next year.

Okra begins to bear fruit 60-65 days after sowing the seeds. Fruiting continues until frost. Productivity is high, especially in two types of tall plants - how many leaves grow, so many fruits will be.

With good care, there are 30-40 boxes on one plant. Okra is a heat-loving, moisture-loving, sun-loving plant. They eat 3-4 day old fruit ovaries - in salads, soups, side dishes for main courses, in sauces and gravies, as well as boiled, fried, harvested for future use in dried, frozen and canned form.

From unripe fruits, taken before freezing, you can prepare "green peas" - remove unripe seeds from the boxes and preserve for future use. Ripe seeds are used to prepare “Coffee gombo” - the seeds are fried in a pan without oil until a coffee aroma appears, then cooled and ground on a coffee grinder, a powder is obtained for making a coffee-chocolate drink that does not contain caffeine and is especially useful for children and the elderly. This drink can be drunk in the evening and at night. Everyone chooses the degree of overcooking of okra seeds for himself.

How to grow okra

Okra is easy to grow and does not require much personal care. You can sow both with seeds in the ground and with seedlings - sow the seeds in separate cups and transplant with a lump of earth into open ground or into a greenhouse, since it does not tolerate root breakage.

Okra fruits contain (as a percentage of raw matter): dry matter 12.7-32.3%, sugar 2.2-6.1%, crude protein 1.5-2%. 100 g of raw okra contains ascorbic acid (vitamin C) 14-35 mg, carotene (provitamin A) 2-3.5 mg. The fruits of okra also contain B vitamins, as well as a large amount of mucous substances, which makes it a valuable product for patients with peptic ulcer and gastritis. The mucus covers the damaged parts of the gastrointestinal tract from acids and alkalis. In such conditions, the process of formation of new tissues is faster. Mature okra seeds contain up to 20% olive oil.

I sow okra with dry seeds after May 9-10, when the probability of spring frosts is low, the ground has warmed up, and at night the temperature is at least 12-15 degrees. Gardeners in more northern regions can also try outdoor okra in sunny, sheltered areas. If not, then grow in greenhouses through seedlings.

The depth of sowing seeds is 2.5-3 cm, I throw 2 seeds per hole. I make holes in a row every 30 cm, leave 70 cm between rows. I immediately water the holes regardless of soil moisture, and after 10 days I water again. After the emergence of seedlings, after 2-3 weeks I cut off (but do not pull out) a weak sprout, leaving one plant in the hole. I weed when weeds appear, water it not often, but so that the ground is moistened to a depth of 30-40 cm. I cut off my stepchildren - they have a small harvest, and the shading and difficulties in caring for the plants are significant.

Harvesting okra

I cut or break out the green boxes of okra in 3-4 days. If you delay harvesting, then after 5-6 days the fruits begin to coarse, become fibrous and tasteless. The stem of the okra is pubescent, which can cause itching in some people when it comes into contact with unprotected skin, so it is best to wear gloves and a long-sleeved shirt when grooming.

On one okra plant, there are simultaneously green and overripe fruits, as well as fruits in the stage of seed ripening in them, new flowers and buds.

Plants grow in height and form new leaves. You should not leave overripe fruits on okra, as the yield of green fruits sharply decreases. I select 2-4 plants to get seeds. And to get the seeds that go to the preparation of a coffee drink, I also leave the required number of plants from which I do not cut green fruits. In a mature box of okra seeds, there are 40-60 seeds; when the box overripe, it bursts and the seeds crumble.

Okra grows well on fertile, light in chemical composition soils, does not tolerate swampy, with a close location of groundwater. If necessary, the soil must be fertilized, preferably with humus, moderately complete mineral fertilizer, but keep in mind that you yourself will eat this okra.

Okra recipes

For cooking okra, choose elastic, bright green, not wrinkled and have not changed color anywhere, young boxes 5-10 cm long; when bent, the fruit should break easily. Unripe fruits are boiled in salted water for 8 minutes, allowed to drain, each fruit is dried with a towel, and then fried in a large amount of fat until tender. In Eastern Europe, okra is added to soups and stews; in India, it is added to curry sauce. In the southern United States, a stew made from chicken, ham, tomatoes, onions, hot paprika, and okra is called gumbo.

And here's another recipe - okra with an egg: boil the okra fruits, peeled from the stalks, in salted and acidified water with vinegar. Drain the water, on a greased baking sheet, put half of the fruits, on them - fried onions, the last layer - the remaining pods. Pour over eggs, beaten with milk and bake in the oven until golden brown. For 750 g of vegetable, you need 3 eggs and 1.5 glasses of milk.

Stewed okra is very tasty. Peel the pods and soak them in salted and vinegar-acidified water. Fry finely chopped onions in vegetable oil. Put okra and onions in a saucepan, add red pepper, put slices of tomato or lemon on top and simmer over low heat without adding water or stirring. Sprinkle with parsley before removing from heat. For 500 g of okra you need 2-3 tomatoes or 0.5 lemons, parsley, 2 onions, 5 tbsp. tablespoons of vegetable oil, 1 teaspoon of ground red pepper.

For the future, you can prepare okra in tomato juice. Arrange young pods up to 8 cm long in glass jars, pour fresh tomato juice salted to taste, pasteurize for 40 minutes, then seal.

For everyone who wants to grow this interesting and healthy vegetable crop, I can offer two types of okra seeds: tall ones - with pyramidal and long capsules, as well as seeds of rare varieties of eggplants, tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, cucumbers, pumpkins, giant sunflowers, rare watermelons and melons, celery, carrots and beets, onions and various garlic, lagenaria, angurias, potato seeds, interesting radish and daikon, radish and turnip, giant vegetables of the "Russian size" series, cabbage of all kinds, rutabagas, medicinal and gingerbread herbs, perennial onions, winter onions "Ellan", wild garlic, asparagus, cowpea beans, different varieties of peas, sorghum of three types, chumiza, forage and lawn grasses, flower crops. I am sending you a catalog with a detailed description of each variety on 57 pages. Send in a large envelope with o / a and stamp. It is possible to send seeds by cash on delivery.