Planting Out Okra

I never took any photos of it, but back in the spring I started some okra ("Clemson Spineless") indoors. Okra is a heat lover, and because of that may be hit or miss here in Massachusetts, but we figured we'd give it a shot. What it has going for it is that it has a pretty short growing season, so if we get a few hot weeks, we might be ok.

Our original plan called for 16 plants, but not all of our sweet potato slips made it, which left room to put in an extra row (bringing us to 20 plants). These are about six inches high right now:

It's hard to imagine that this little seedling might someday be as big as the ones we saw in Williamsburg last fall. Probably not this far north, but it would be nice to get enough pods to make a gumbo and some shahi bhindi bhuna. 

In other, less exciting news, we spent the better part of the day in the orchard pulling weeds, re-edging, and mulching the fruit trees with compost. This was a bummer of a task because we let it go for too long, so we had lots of crabgrass to pull. It also wasn't super-satisfying to be spending so much time with trees that will not be rewarding us much this year. At least it looks nice, now, though:

On the bright side, we discovered a Gala apple that we didn't know we had (and promptly bagged it up in netting to try to keep away the squirrels). We also wrapped up over a dozen peaches that have survived the squirrel raids, so we may get at least a taste of fruit later this summer.

We also opened discussions about adopting a barn cat.