I’m excited to share an update on my okra adaptation project here in northern Québec, Canada, developed in collaboration with Going to Seed.
This year (2025) marks the second year of this long-term effort to adapt okra to a northern climate — shorter seasons, cool nights, and unpredictable weather.
The plants were direct-seeded in June, and despite a challenging environment and a tough growing season, I managed to harvest around 300 seeds from about 150 plants. Not a huge yield, but every seed counts when you’re working toward local adaptation!
I invite you to watch the video (sorry, it’s a bit long).
I’d love to hear your comments, thoughts, and experiences growing okra in northern or short-season climates. Let’s keep learning and sharing together!
You can read about my trial (you can also try search older trials). Based on weather statistics I have even more challenging climate for okra, but I compensate it by using cloth for the whole season. I could do without if summer is really favourable, generally it’s needed so far. Had one plant grow without and by the end of the season it got to the same size as yours at mid july. But that trial did teach me that okra can also tolerate cold quite well. Those just refused to die even when temperatures didn’t really go over 20C during the whole of june. Those under cloth grew a little during june, but they also suffered. Hotter period in july saved them and I got seeds also. I would sow them as early as possible, some 10 days before it’s likely to be frost free. It might not make harvest any earlier, but it might help with the selection. In my main project I had clear plastic for the early season to help germination and early growth, but that small trial I sowed about 20 seeds under cloth when ground was still cold and 2 of those germinated about 10 days from sowing. Didn’t check what the ground temperature was, but air temperature got barely to 20C at most. The cloth makes it a couple degrees C warmer so I would think with black mulch around 20C over longer period should be enough.
I was wondering, why didn’t you pick those pods at the end of the video or where you just showing those that were ripest. Over here they never get that dry, but I collect everything that has been in the plant a little longer and dry them in a drier. They don’t need that long to be mature and only need to dry.
Glad to hear another story of okra adaptation in a cold climate!
I did harvest the seeds you see at the end of the video — it’s also a remake for 2026!
They didn’t grow very well in my case because of the soil conditions. It’s my first year at this new place, and nothing grew as I expected. Honestly, it’s been the worst gardening season in ten years.
The soil drains extremely fast and has almost no organic matter, which has been a real challenge for all the crops I tried on this land (summer squash, sunflower, tomatoes, winter squash, sorghum).
It would be great to exchange some seeds — what do you think?
Were you able to harvest any seeds yourself? And what year are you in for your okra project?
No point sharing seeds between EU and Canada as there is a change that they just get confiscated and distroyed. At least on this end would happen easily. I don’t have that much to share anyway and I have some people to share within EU, who are in a little better climate to make the most of them and make seed increase. I had three “premium” plants meaning they were the first to flower and made some 3-5 pods for seed before the cold spell stopped all new pod formation until september shortly before first frost. 3 others made some pods with ripe seeds. Total few hundred viable seeds. Over here they don’t dry in the bush (and can easily start to mold before that), but they were mature enough that after going through drier most of the seeds looked viable. I sowed probably around 1000 seeds and culled the weakest until I had 30-40 plants. The rest seemed to have trouble with flowering or forming pods from the flowers. After early august there was only one day barely over 25C. After mid august no days over 20C until one warmer week in september. So fairly good and hard selection. I can’t afford to oversow next year quite as much as last year, but I hope those that survived are a little more adapted that there isn’t as much need to oversow. I also have seeds left from last year to sow separately a little more carelessly. This one was 2 year of direct sowing. Year before that I grew from transplants to make seed increase of kandahari pendi landrace (which had already gone through a bottleneck so not as much variance). This year I had some wider mixes so could say that next year is second real year. Hope to cross them as widely as possible. This year also, as I had the cloth on for most of the time, I used pollen from different plants if it was possible when I hand pollinated them.
