First okra picked yesterday, woohoo! Really good tasting too. About 20 pods from the comm garden patch just showed on up. Easternmost row had about half of them. I hadn't looked at that side recently. One was actually too hard already. I put a handful in another gardener's bean bucket. They always ask how I make them, and I always say we chop it 1/3", roll in plain breadcrumbs, and fry in butter, but use whatever you use for sauteing other vegetables.
I don't have any tomatoes yet other than a few trusses of cherries. A few blushing tomatoes but not many. Really poor blossom set in this heat, from what I can see. So the okra really seems early to me.
Yesterday wasn't as bad with humidity dropped some, but this has been the hottest stretch I can recall in years. It feels like when I was in high school with 3 a days. The okra is loving it since it is getting watered a bit. It even rained last night, almost 1/16th of an inch. The northern edge of a strong front tried to break up a few miles west, but it still clipped us.
Looks like I should have pretty much corn in the first block, but I'll need to keep watering it. I did manage to get over Monday to hand pollinate some. 36 hours later a lot of yellow has begun to brown up, so I have to think it helped. I found about 6 tassels along the perimeter that had pollen to catch, and some more inbetween the rows, but that was hard to catch in there.
I was just thinking how some rich guys follow the duck migration from north to south in the fall. I think I would like to follow the corn migration south to north. Keep eating the first local corn at each spot!
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