hello everyone
in today's episode we'll look at growing okra in containers so we are starting
our okra seeds indoors
this is the nombo giant okra and since it's just January when I'm starting the
seeds they should be ready in about four to six weeks which is around about the
end of the frost seasons in my area
now if you're starting okra directly outdoors
you need to wait till the temperatures beach about 65 to 70 fahrenheit and
that's when you should be starting your okra
if you're starting indoors start about six weeks before your last frost date
so you can see here that then around March the plants have grown to about
four inches or so and this is a good time to transplant your seedlings into a
larger container
we're using a whiskey barrel container here a lot of you have asked me where
we get these containers and how large they are so they're about 22 inches in
diameter and you can buy them at your local garden stores like Lowe's or Home
Depot
they are also available in costco at a very good price
so if you're a costco member this is a good container to buy from costco
so what we're doing here is we are just transplanting seedlings the soil mix
that we have used is a standard soil mix a standard potting mix of thirty
percent peat moss
thirty percent perlite thirty percent compost and about ten percent of worm
castings
now this is enough nutrition for the seedlings to grow for a few weeks but i
highly recommend that you do add a liquid fertilizer like seaweed and fish
emulsion mix so when you're watering your plants are just mix it into the
water and water your plants very well
just drench the foliage as well as the ground as well as the soil beneath it and you
want your soil to be well draining now when you set up your container for the
first time it might happen that your soil doesn't drain too well because it's
trying to absorb all the moisture for the first time but eventually your soil
should be well draining that's the number one reason why a lot of gardeners are
not able to grow more vegetables is because the soil is not when draining so
you need to have soil that drains very quickly and you will shortly see that
the soil that we have is actually very fast draining
now we had an unusually cool March April and May
in our area so okra needs very warm temperatures here you can see
that even in april and may the plant has shown a little bit of growth but not
really a lot of growth that is because for okra plants to grow well the daytime
temperatures have to be in the seventies and the nighttime temperatures
temperatures also have to be at least around 60 to 70 degrees
that's when the okra will start growing and you can see here that by June is
when the plant actually shows a lot of bigger and it's showing that one okra
that's grown and till June it was a very slow ride but we're going to go ahead
and harvest our first okra
this is in june but once the warm weather kicks in and you have hard days and
warm nights
the okra plants are going to grow very quickly as you can see here this okra is
a pretty good-looking okra and quite big in size compared to the regular okra
and you can see here that as soon as June
the plant is flowering like crazy and producing a lot of pods
so June and July are the harvest season
if you start your okra plants early you can see here the pod
it's quite big and that's why it's the giant okra or the nombo giant variety of okra
and okra is one plant that keeps producing more once you start harvesting
you can see beautiful looking okra and i will provide a link to the seed
source in my video description so you can buy these seeds and start planting
these in your garden
so as you can see here the plant looks pretty sturdy quite big and the pods
are quite long so as the plant flowers and grows
just make sure that you're feeding your plant well with a good fertilizer
liquid fertilizer every three weeks or so and if you're using a slow release
fertilizer
if you use it at the time of planting this is a good time to reapply your
fertilizer
so as you can see here these plants have produced very nice-looking pods and this
is our first harvest of a few okra here and once the plant starts growing you
can actually start harvesting a lot of okra and for the rest of the months of
june and july you can keep harvesting your okra
they will produce a lot of okra as long as the temperatures are warm or hot
okra even loves hot temperatures
and since the temperatures are hot you need to make sure that you are watering
your okra plants well now containers drain very fast and it depends on the
kind of potting mix you use if you use a lot of compost your potting mix will
retain a lot of moisture but if you use a standard potting mix like I described
with thirty percent peat moss thirty percent compost and thirty percent
perlite with some worm castings
you will need to water your containers almost every day during the hot days
if it's not too hot if you're getting cloudy days or not enough sun
it's ok to water them every two to three days but says okra thrives in hot
weather
it usually grows very well when you have sunny days and very hot temperatures so
during this time it's very important that you don't let your okra plants
wilt
so make sure that you're following a nice of watering schedule
if you have a drip irrigation system that takes care of it if not i highly
recommend that you check out my video on installing the drip irrigation system for
your containers
it works very well
and as you can see here the okra plant is now loaded with a lot of pods and this
is why i like this variety
this variety did produce a lot of pods and the pods were quite large in size
so it was a decent harvest every time we harvest heard the pods from the okra
as you can see here from just 3 plants now for the regular sized okra
I would have to use an entire raised bed at least a four foot by four foot raised
bed but as you can see here for this
okra variety the giant variety it can be easily grown in this container and
remember that this giant variety is not a GMO is just one of the varieties that
are native to the Philippines and it grows very well in that country and the
seeds are available via amazon so that they can be planted in other areas as
well so i will provide you a link to the seeds
once again in the video description
so there we have it folks that was our episode on growing this a giant okra
variety the nombo giant in containers do let me know if you have any questions
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soon happy gardening