Okra flowers

After several years of traveling incessantly, I at last am in a house where I will be settled in for the foreseeable year or so as I finish writing my PhD. And more importantly, there is space in the back for a garden.

Australia keeps shocking me, as I learn more and more things that grow well here. "You mean I can grow a papaya in my backyard?" I asked incredulously. "And tamarind? Mango? Turmeric? Bananas? Passionfruit? Pineapple? Pomegranate?"

Needless to say, I've stuck some papaya seeds in one of the garden beds and am hoping that enough will germinate that I can be sure to have trees with female flowers and at least one (or find a neighbor nearby with one) that has male flowers, or they won't produce any fruit. Maybe I'll get lucky with a tree that has both!

The local farmers' market is a short bicycle ride away and full of friendly plant sellers. One of these vendors had a couple of okra plants that desperately needed to find a good home and be planted out. I volunteered for the job, took them home, and prepared a nice bed of 'lasagna mulch' for them. 

The soil at this house seems to be pretty poor, and very sandy, so I followed my flatmate's advice and tried making a mulch bed, which I've never done quite like this before. We'll see how it goes. To do this I watered the ground really well, then laid down a layer of grass clippings and a layer of cardboard/newspaper (as much as I had) to keep the grass from growing back up through it. I watered it again so it was well soaked, then put down another thin layer of grass clippings, some compost (don't have much yet, but the compost pile is working away quickly on our kitchen scraps in this heat!), some soil, and then a thick layer of sugar cane mulch, which is dried and compacted leftover fiber from sugar cane processing. Apparently it's great, and it's really cheap here. It expands to be a thick layer of cover for the new bed, which will help keep in moisture and do other magical garden-y things. I watered it all again, then dug little holes into the mulch for each transplant and filled them with more compost and soil. The little plants had been soaking up water getting ready for their big move, and when it was cool enough and dark enough, I carefully planted them out into their new homes, so as not to give them too much of a shock.

My attempt at a layed mulch bed. Photo by Lydia Green

They seem to be thriving in their mulch bed, and to my great excitement two days ago I woke up to see that one of them had bloomed! I missed my chance to get a photo, as I didn't realize they only bloom for about half a day (dawn to midday, I've read) before they are pollinated (luckily they are self-pollinating, as there weren't any other okra flowers nearby for it!) and set fruit. But this morning I noticed that the other one was blooming, so I rushed out and snapped a couple photos. 

Okra flower! (photo by Lydia Green)

I probably should have waited until it was a bit cloudier for more evenly diffused light, but now I've learned that lesson (photography lessons continue with practice and lots of mistakes!).

Okra flower up a bit closer! (photo by Lydia Green)

I'm a huge fan of okra, and loved whenever my homestay family in Ghana prepared it for me. I think spicy pickled okra is probably one of my favorite pickled foods, too. Even my Grammy, who doesn't like okra at all, loves spicy pickled okra, so when I visit her it's one of our special treats to have with dinner. Maybe this year I'll be able to have a hand at making some of my own!