End-of-season edit: I did, finally, get an excellent yield out of Jambalaya okra. Toward the end of August/early September, productivity picked up. I had a string of days on which I collected my mess of okra (defined below) per day. In that light, I’ll revise this to say that 24 high-productivity okra plants is enough to give you a mess of okra per day, for a couple of peak weeks in the okra season. It’s not nearly enough to yield that, on average, for the entire season.
That said, I could not be more pleased with Jambalaya okra, compared to other varieties I have tried.
Original post follows.
My goal is to grow “a mess” of okra a day, defined as enough to be worth frying up as a side-dish for two. My wife guesstimates that as 24 tender okra pods.
How many okra plants must I grow, to yield a mess a day?
More than 24, that’s all I know for sure. That’s what I have producing right now, and I’m nowhere near my goal.
Answer: Like onto 75. Or roughly 150 square feet of okra. Near as I can figure.
All artwork in this post is from Gencraft.com AI.
An okra yield of 9000 lbs/acre/season works out to …
I’m now three years into growing okra, and I think I’m finally catching on.
First year, I didn’t get much in yield. Well, that year, I grew Clemson Spineless, that’s an old variety. That must be the reason for the low yield.
Second year, I didn’t get much yield. I grew “Heavy Hitter”. That was reputed to be an ultra-productive okra. But in my garden, the yield seemed indistinguishable from Clemson Spineless. Must be my bad luck, with that rare variety, maybe I got some dud seeds.
This year … I’m not getting much yield. I’m growing “Jambalaya” (Post G23-024), reportedly among the most productive okra varieties one may grow. This variety is certainly different, and began producing pods far sooner in the life of the plant than other varieties.
But, despite that, and despite having around two dozen okra plants — I still cannot grow a mess of okra a day.
What am I doing wrong? The plants appear to be thriving.
I knew that typical okra yields were lower than, say, tomatoes. As shown above. Acre-for-acre, okra would be expected to yield maybe one-fifth as much edible fruit as tomatoes.
But I never did the math on that 9000 pounds per acre per season. What does that work out to, in terms of okra pods per day, for (say) 48 square feet of okra plants?
The bottom line is that in order to harvest 24 pods/day (= 1 mess/day), I need to grow about 150 square feet of okra, or about 75 plants, or about three times as many okra plants as I am currently growing.
So it’s a good news/bad news thing. Good news is, I don’t appear to be doing anything wrong. Bad news is, there’s nothing I can fix. If I want a steady stream of 24 pods a day, I need about 75 plants. Or about three times as many as I planted this year.
Conclusion
I’ve always wondered why fresh okra was so expensive, at the farmers’ markets around here. When you could find it. It’s not as if it’s hard to grow, or picky about the soil, or any of that.
Now I know. It takes a lot of land and labor to produce okra, compared to other crops.
I thought I was growing a lot of okra this year. Turns out, I’m not growing anywhere near enough, if I want a mess of okra a day.
As a final check, here’s a gardener in my climate zone, bragging about a burdensome okra harvest. Her yield? Between one and two pods, per plant, per day. If I could achieve that, I’d get a mess of okra a day, out of my 24 plants. But so far, I haven’t see anything like that much yield.
