I think of okra as the raw oyster of vegetables. You either love to eat it, or the thought of doing so makes you sick. It’s just so slimy!! Luckily, I love it. My favorite way to eat it is to make gumbo with it. I also like to boil it or saute it with onions and tomatoes. You can help to make it less slimy by cooking it with tomatoes.
My husband grows lots and lots of okra. There is more in another area of our garden. We freeze it and eat it all year long. The above picture shows our plants when they are small. It is just about time to trim the bottom leaves off the plants. Rubbing up against the leaves makes you itch, so he tries to keep the leaves to a minimum while having enough of them to produce the vegetable.
The actual okra pods start producing from the bottom of the plant and move upward as the year goes by. Okra likes really hot weather, which we have no problem with here in Texas in the summer. It will produce until a frost kills the plants.
Although we didn’t grow the corn shown in the picture, we do blanch and freeze many of our vegetables, especially green beans. The first step in blanching your vegetables is to pick and clean them. Then you want to separate them by size. Bring water to a boil and drop the cleaned vegetables in for about three minutes. Times may vary depending on what you are blanching. Then immediately scoop them out and dunk them in ice cold water for the same amount of time. After removing them, dry them off as best as you can and pack them into containers for freezing. One thing that we used to forget was to label the items with the name of the product and the date. Labeling helps to rotate the food we eat and always use the oldest first to prevent waste.
Several years ago, we started growing a vegetable that I have heard very little about. It looks like a lemon, but it actually is a cucumber. It has a much milder taste than a normal green cucumber, and it’s compact size makes it perfect for a snack. Sometimes I want to make a salad just for me, and most cucumbers are too big for just one person. This little cucumber is perfect!
So if you’re feeling a little adventurous or even just a little curious, you might want to try a lemon cucumber!
The first things to come up in our garden every year are the wildflowers. My husband originally planted them behind the fence in our backyard. They were beautiful, and they saved cutting a little part of the grass in the yard, which is pretty large. But soon the neighbors were commenting on how wonderful they looked, and even the walkers and bikers just passing through the neighborhood were stopping and taking pictures of them.
Next my husband started a vegetable garden. It began as just a small area, and we grew some tomatoes, green beans, eggplants and squash. Then each year, he expanded the garden a little more. The next year he cleared an area behind our shed where he grew more beans and okra. Then he expanded it to an area along the fenceline – in front of the fence and on the fence – all one hundred and sixty feet of it. After that, he dug out twelve more beds, some four feet by eight feet, others twelve feet by twelve feet. Finally, we built two raised beds to grow lettuce, beets, carrots and radishes in. I’m sure, by now you have an idea of exactly how massive this garden has become. It’s a whole lot of work!! But there is nothing like picking a vegetable or herb and either eating it raw or cooking it right then. It makes eating so much more enjoyable, and do we like to eat!! The health benefits of knowing where the food comes from and what has or hasn’t been put on it are unquestionable.
These are some of the early veggies from this years garden. The radishes are some of the prettiest that we have ever grown. This year, it has stayed cool for a longer period, and we have received much more rain than we ususally do.
I decided to pick a few green beans for a meal so I came in with just a small amount. My husband came in a few minutes later and said that he had potatoes and onions to add to the meal. All of these were grown in our backyard.
As we pick more vegetables, I will ocassionally update you, but for now, have a wonderful and safe day!!
Granny Shot It 