I think I’m gonna collect pollen from my different okras and try to pollinate and only save seeds from the best tasting plant. Not sure if it’s a good strategy but I’m going with it.
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What varieties are you growing? I think it’s a good strategy to select for what appeals to you
I’m not for sure all of them. Clemson spineless, hill country red, Perkins long pod, emerald green, jambalaya and I can’t remember or just outright didn’t know what the other ones were. I’m nearly certain they were all spineless types.
So I have two landraces from EFN that were planted out and they both said that they’re direct sown readily.
I had very poor germination when sowing out the same time as planting peppers and tomatoes outside.
Should I have soaked them before direct sowing?
If so, how long would you say I should soak them?
Thanks in advance.
I really appreciate that breakdown of what to be looking for.
You’ve inspired me not to give up for the season and to try again. 
I always germinate corn and okra with the paper towel method in a Ziploc bag. If you have a heat mat that will speed things up a lot as well. I did that with the GTS corn and my first two rows of corn are the seeds that germinated really early, and the second two rows germinated on average 4 to 5 days later.
Okra seed are naturally hard seeded. They don’t need to be but can benefit from being scarified to allow water to penetrate the seed coat and start the germination procedure.
As it doesn’t take a lot of plants to feed a family with a decent amount of okra I usually scarify my seed. Sandpaper on a tabletop and the seed under my nail (I sacrifice that nail to some damage in the name of life). Just a few scrapes and constant check until you have a tiny circle of white showing. You don’t want huge circles of white just a hair that shows you can get good water penetration.
When I’m lazy I just chuck my scarified okra seed in a small jar of water and leave it on the heat mat. They all reliable sprout at the same time treated this way and I then transfer them on to cells in my seedling trays. This year I skipped growing them out inside as I started them very late—the last week before I shut down my germination station for the spring garden. As soon as they were showing signs of sprouting I just went into the backyard and planted them.
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Where I live okra is notoriously bad at germinating. I’m not sure how cold it was there when you planted. Most people here wait much later than when they plant tomatoes so that the soil warms up, and it’s common to have to re-sow. I’m personally hoping this Landrace breeding thing sorts out the germination problem I have, though I had pretty decent germination this year. If I had seeds I was babying I would try both Jeremy and Peter’s advice.
I usually soak overnight at room temperature. I’ve had sprouts in 24 hours, so not more than 12 hours.
I forgot to mention. This year a guy at the feed store told someone I know to soak their seeds in water overnight with a small amount of bleach added to the water to break down the seed coat. They tried it and supposedly had near 100% germination. Not my cup of tea but maybe you want to try.
Good point. Okra needs warm conditions to germinate. As in soil temperatures over 65, preferably over 70. This is an unusual year, but I’ve had tomatoes in the ground since the first week of March and have three random volunteer plants with tomatoes set. I’m still waiting to put my okra in. I think next week.
Alas, this community amazes me yet again. Thanks everyone for the responses to my question. You were very helpful.
First year with okra. I planted many varieties. What they say about it being a heat lover is absolutely true! I have high hopes for a lot of production. Fingers crossed.
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Wow, just saw this post. I started growing a mix up okra a few years ago. I was pushing a little toward the short, fat reddish colored pods but mostly because I like the looks. We haven’t experimented with cooking them yet except for frying and I’ve been picking them very small for that.
When I start a new crop that I didn’t grow up with, it takes me a bit to figure out what to do with it. I think you post might have just saved me some time in deciding what to select for. THANKS!
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Here is a close up of one of my okra plants that shows exactly what I describe for the leaf trimming technique to get less stings and open up the okra pods to be easily see and harvested. Easy.
Now just grow a bunch together in rows and treat them his way and you’ll have a almost daily okra bounty in no time.
This variety the longest pod on the left is still edible but just reaching the point of going tough and fibrous. The short fat ones go hard in no length at all in comparison to this variety.
Most of my okra gets eaten raw off the plant and never makes it inside. I snack on them while doing the rounds through the garden.
I will be returning to rows of them closely planted next year as I have finished building up my seed supply to do large plantings of them.
Zoom in to see the stem details if needed.
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If someone is feeling more ambitious and creative, the genus Abelmoschus contains a bunch of species. Several of the edible ones are descended from hybrids of wild species, which suggests further potential for hybridisation.
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Great thought! Already pursuing this in a very small way, though we’ll see where it gets me 
. The EFN was selling a couple of manihot varieties this season. I’m also wanting to try this season or next to plant near rose of sharon and our native swamp rose mallow to try for inter-generic crosses that could be perennial here, the same way okra is in its native climate and these wild plants are here
In 2022 I planted Okta seed I got from VEN Saatgutliste Startseite | nutzpflanzenvielfalt.de (great site for Europeans by the way). They were very unhappy, but made enough seed so I could sow this year again. I started some transplants and sowed some directly but they are clearly very stunted. The transplants are still about 20 cm high and the little ones have still only 2 leaves at about 8 weeks of age. Last year I had the Okra in pots, clearly keeping it out in the open like this year is taking things too far. Next year will be the last time I try, because I can’t dedicate space and labour to a crop that is clearly wide out of its comfort zone in my garden. But I so badly want the Okra to suceed! I see that this plant has so much potential. I raised the transplants at my boyfriends place and planted them in my parents garden. After the transport in my car I saw that one of them had a broken stem. I left it in my car and when I came back later, it had survived 5 days in 30°C weather, without water, in a hot car. I planted it at my boyfriends place, which is 600m lower in altitude than my parents garden. It is in a pot, so quite the restrcted root zone and it is significantly happier than the other plants (even though it is still only about 40 cm and has not flowered)! So how do I recreate this conditions in my parents garden?
Should I plant near some stone heaps for maximum heat? I don’t want to plant in pots again, because my mother wants to reduce her work in the garden and watering pots is a significant time investment. I don’t want to coddle them, I just want enough seed to begin a small starter population for a landrace. The problem is that Okra is very niche here in Switzerland and I don’t have access to a wide range of varieties.
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Okra is one of a few crops that thrives above 35 or even 40 degrees, and you’ve discovered that it doesn’t like cool weather at all. It also doesn’t need a lot of water, although it will tolerate a wide range of moisture conditions. Is it viable for you to build a small poly tunnel or greenhouse or even a cold frame to get an earlier start on warming up the soil?
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Thank you for your input Beth. I am thinking hard about it 
I know that Okra is seriously pushing it. It is even worse than chili and tomatoes, which are also too heat loving for my place. I think I may be able to fabricate some sort of a raised bed against the south wall of some building. Do you direct seed your Okra or transplant it? My transplants had about a month of hot dry weather, they should not be so stunted…Do they suffer from much transplant shock? They cleary grow because they thicken their stems, they just don’t make any new leaves…
Have you considered hibiscus? Rose of sharon hibiscus is a perennial bush that is in the same family as okra (Malvaceae). The pods are edible, and apparently taste very similar to okra. They’re drought tolerant and cold tolerant, and are often grown as an easy ornamental in my desert climate with zone 7b winters.
Hollyhocks are in the same family, and are equally perennial and drought tolerant. They’re equally edible, and they taste a lot like okra, and have the same texture.
Feel free to keep giving okra a try, especially if you want it. You may also look at some related edible species and see if any of them may be happier in your climate and give you something you like for the same reasons. You can easily have multiple “okra” ideas going on at once. 
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