Lived on Long Island for forty years, and had a vegetable garden. My son recently recounted having someone at the house from the South - and her reaction to learning that we had fried okra!But it’s a marginal crop to grow that far north, I grew some near Washington DC one summer and was amazed at the productivity of it. Well - I’m told it’s a relative of cotton . . .
Don’t garden anymore, but here in central PA we have Amish farmer’s markets that sell fresh okra in season.
Okra does best in a hot climate. The hotter and dryer the better. In S. TN it will grow and produce until fall. If you start from seed it won’t even come up until the ground is good and hot. It also doesn’t like too much water at first and our springs are very wet. I have been planting plants and put them out in May and even the plants don’t take off until June when it starts to get really hot and not as rainy. The fact that it enjoys a hot dry climate is why you don’t see it up north much.
Ah, I’m a western MD boy. Sounds like you might be from around the Lancaster area. (I’d kill for a Seltzer’s double-smoked Lebanon bologna sandwich right about now, but I’m on a diet.) We have a country kitchen with a working wood stove and cast iron on the brickwork, and I have Amish signs and pictures hanging on the walls. It’s amazing what you can find in the antiques malls down here. I miss the farmer’s markets back home, and the Amish and German food. My wife actually container grew okra last year. Man, is it prolific. She was born and raised in Atlanta and here in east Alabama - she knows how to get those nasty little hairs off the pods that like to stick into your skin like fiberglass insulation. There’s a lot of canned Southern food down here in the stores, and one is a seasoned mix of tomatoes, okra, and corn. They season it with garlic, onion, and the like, and we have to heat two cans up as a dinner side, because it’s so good we could eat it alone as a meal.