Abelmoschus esculentus Seeds | Burgundy Okra
LATIN NAME: Abelmoschus esculentus
COMMON NAME: Burgundy Okra
Plant Profile
Burgundy okra is a vegetable grown as much for its colour as for its pods. Plants reach 1.2-1.8 m in a long warm season, with lobed leaves, pale yellow flowers with a crimson centre, and pods that start deep red and turn green the moment they hit a hot pan.
The pods are the crop, picked at 7-10 cm while still tender, four or five days after the flower opens. Left a day longer they turn woody and stringy. Plants keep producing for two months or more if picked steadily, and a single row will out-yield most households.
Okra is a tropical African plant, domesticated in the Ethiopian region and carried across the Mediterranean and into the Americas. It needs heat that most European gardens struggle to supply, which is why the Burgundy strain, which colours early and grows strongly in a cool season, has become popular with northern growers.
Science & Biotechnology
The mucilage that puts some people off okra is a rhamnogalacturonan polysaccharide held in the pod wall. It thickens when heated, which is why okra works as a natural thickener in gumbo and stews, and why the same pods sliced and fried hard stay crisp while slow-cooked ones turn slippery.
The red colour is anthocyanin, and it is water-soluble and heat-sensitive, so it leaches into cooking liquid and fades in a hot pan. That is chemistry rather than a fault: a quick blanch keeps the colour, a long stew does not.
Okra seed contains a good proportion of oil and protein, and the roasted seed has been used as a coffee substitute in parts of Africa and the southern United States. Modern breeding has focused on spineless pods, uniform colour and tolerance to verticillium wilt, which is the main soil disease of the crop.
Uses & Benefits
In the kitchen the pods go into gumbo, into tomato and okra stews, into Indian bhindi masala, and into the pickles and relishes of the southern United States. Small pods can be sliced and fried whole, or griddled with oil and salt until the surface blisters. The leaves are edible too, though they are coarse and rarely sold.
The plant is handsome enough for the flower border, with hibiscus-like blooms that open for a day each and are visited by bees. Grown in a polytunnel or against a warm wall, it gives an ornamental crop that looks better than most vegetables. Commercially the crop is picked by hand in almost all producing regions, which is why good fresh pods are expensive.
Growing from Seed
Soak the seed for twelve hours before sowing to soften the coat, then sow at 20-25°C, 2 cm deep, from March onward. Germination takes a week to a fortnight. Okra will not tolerate cold soil: below 15°C the seed rots rather than sprouts, so wait.
Plant out when the soil is above 18°C, at 40 cm apart in full sun and rich, well-drained ground. Water steadily, and feed with a potassium-rich fertiliser once flowering starts. Pick pods every second day; leaving them to size stops the plant producing. In cool climates grow under cover or against a south wall, and expect the first pods about 55-60 days from sowing.
Our Take
Worth growing for the flowers alone, and worth growing properly for pods that taste of nothing you can buy in a northern shop.
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