Taking no chances

I set a few garden goals for myself this year. One of the real biggies was to start a vegetable plant from seed, nurse it to maturity, and cook it up for dinner. As it turns out, this is much easier said than done. I've had an array of failures for various reasons, but I'm finally starting to get better results. I have a few plants out in the garden now that I started from seed, and they're not on death's door or anything.

The upshot of all these various failures is that I've really honed in more on what I want. I don't want to just grow any old vegetable from seed. I want okra. I have a helluva a time finding it at the stores and Brendan and I love it. Here's a little okra seedling to get us started. It's a little battered around the edges, but the okra pods are actually growing. I'm optimistic.

But that's just one plant, and I'm not ready to take any chances. Anything could happen to that one little plant. It just leaves to much room for failure. So I found a seed company that specializes in desert-adapted breeds, ordered every type they had, and planted 6 of each. Now we're talking!

Some sprouted better than others, and some got culled, but I still have four different types of okra plants left: 3 annie oakley seedlings, 2 cow horn seedlings, 2 perkins seedlings, and 3 clemson seedlings. I'll have to work really hard to mess all of those up.

I've started looking up recipes online for Indian okra, gumbo with okra, and pickled okra. Am I counting my chickens before they hatch?

Um, is it supposed to work this way?

I recently read that sweet potatoes grow great here in Arizona because of the heat. Sweet potatoes apparently love heat. When I saw pictures of a sweet potato plant online, I was hooked. These babies are gorgeous. So I got a couple of organic sweet potatoes at Whole Foods, stuck 'em in some water, and waited.

The first one is doing exactly what I would have expected. White roots that look a little like dental floss are growing out of the bottom into the water. All's well. The second one looks like this:

Green leaves are growing out of the bottom and into the water. Not what I expected at all! But pretty interesting. I guess I'll get some popcorn, sit back, and watch the show. Let's see what happens!