Three Sisters Garden Project Progress!

I worked all morning on prepping and seeding the fourth mound. It's seeded with two kinds of Okra, a red and a green. Okra, Bhindi, Gumbo, quingombo, and quillobo, the native name for the plant in the Congo and Angola area of Africa. Per the Aggie Horticulture article whose link I've placed at the end of this paragraph, okra is thought by many genobotonists to have originated in Ethiopia and can be found growing in the wild there to this day. It was spread by conquering Moslems to Egypt a few hundred years back and can also be found growing wild there along the White Nile. By trade and conquer routes, it spread east across the red sea and eventually to India by the beginning of the Christian Era.

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/PUBLICATIONS/VEGETABLETRAVELERS/okra.html

Okra has been cultivated on this continent since the 1600s, thought to have been brought by explorers and French Colonists. It is a member of the marsh mallow family (hibiscus) which grows wild in the swamps of my home region. Many mallow are edible, flower, stem and leaves, and this one, after blooming, produces a tastey, tender, and edible seed pod. It loves climates and soils such as we have. The question becomes, how native must native be to be considered native. Plants do not require hundreds of generations to present with evolutionary changes but there is also the question of how long it takes them to establish some place in the food chain, and are they a damaging, invasion, non native, or have they simply slid into a comfortable space where the ecosystem is served but not harmed? Take the Georgia peach. peaches are not considered native because they originated in China and have been cultivcated there since ancient times. Georgia would probably disagree with the statement that peaches are not natives.

We debated the question for a considerable amount of time and then decided to go ahead and plant the okra. They have been on this continent for sometime now, and naturally adapted to our climate and soil conditions, both being quite similar to their theorized continent and country of origin. This was the most important point, as many non natives suffer under the heat, wilt and die with mildew or pests, and require much more of the natural resource for often times, a dismal harvest.

Having been raised in the Texas/Louisianna area, okra was a favorite staple in just about any dish but especially raw with sunnyside up fried eggs and some kind of hotsauce or rolled in seasoned cornmeal and iron-skillet fried. I do not recall Mamma's gardens ever being without okra. And believe me, I would know because kids were subject to Saturday and Sunday gardening as well as food foraging in the wild, if some fruit, nut, or other wild food was coming ripe.

Mound three, our Everglade Tomato mound, shows no sprouts breaking out, yet, but we are hopeful and patiently waiting. Mound one and two, planted with the three sisters is doing well, though some seeds are sluggish. The wampum maize seems sturdy and thriving while the Oaxocan green dent seems a bit wiltish. All three pole bean species are thriving, as are most of the squash, though one in particular seems somewhat diminished by the climate. The experiment is weeding out the species that require maximum energy expenditure for minimum harvest. In the end we will be left with those that require minimum energy expenditure for maximum harvest and repropigation.

Just a note: When picking your okra, remember to collect them when they are small and tender, otherwise they enlarge with seed, turning woody and inedible. always leave a few so that the okra reseeds itself.

Stop by and say hi. I am usually working at the garden on Sunday mornings from 9am-11 or 12.

Finally, I ask all of you who have some great okra recipes to post them to this blog, so that everyone can tatse the pleasures of okra. It's also really good raw.