Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 20 JulyA sown row on 23 July with six or seven seedlings up along it, each still only a pair of seed leaves held flat and opposite on a downy stalk, notched at the tip and pale down the midline, and not one true leaf yet on any of them, in hard sun.Week of 27 JulyA bed on 28 July almost entirely soil, a dozen seedlings scattered across it at wide spacing and no two alike, one a heart-shaped blade on a stalk above two strap cotyledons, others still two green specks, the crumb drying to pale clay along one edge.Week of 27 JulyBare bed on 28 July, broad enough that a dozen fingernail seedlings barely register, one a single two-lobed blade with veins radiating from its notch, one still trailing a strap cotyledon, and a long dry grass stem curved across the near corner.Week of 27 JulyTwenty seedlings on 30 July at roughly even spacing, most still on a pair of rounded kidney leaves and a few pushing a crumpled new one at the center, volunteer clover between them and a taut orange string line stretched across the grass beyond.Week of 24 AugustA Clemson Spineless 80 okra pod on 27 August, standing straight up at a leaf node with a second already forming beside it — five-ridged, drawn to a point and sheathed all over in fine bristles — on stems flushed wine-red at every joint.Week of 31 AugustClemson Spineless 80 okra on 3 September with no flower open at all: two spent calyces splayed back into fringed straps where the blooms have gone, and one bud still cased in stiff white hairs that hold the drizzle as separate bright spheres.Week of 21 SeptemberClemson Spineless 80 okra on 22 September, one ridged pale yellow-green pod standing upright against a red-flushed stem with three or four plump buds above it, one nearly open. Soft shadowless light under flat gray overcast.
