Red Okra / Ladies Fingers

Commonly call as "bendi", this plant grows very easily.

Red or green, they grow equally easy..

To plant:

To grow them, i just put them into shallow holes in the ground and give them a good watering. Watering daily is sufficient for these hardy plants. Just be careful when they just started to sprout, they are tasty for something at night..

For cooking, plant many of them.. Each plant can give you 1-2 bendi and to feed a family for a meal, you would need plenty. So, plant as many as you think you need.

Soil

My soil at my garden is mainly those tanah liat with some normal soil.. Not the black, healthy soil rich in compost. I mixed them up with some packets of compost soil that I bought from the road-side shops.. The small, transparent plastic bags (3 from RM 9 or something) isnt that good. The white, hug bag (RM 10 per bag), is much more worth it.. Trust me..

My observation:

1. When they reach a certain height, they tend to die off. Could by my soil though.. After digging 1 feet deep, there is a thick layer of really rough cement-coloured sand..

To propagate:

Just leave the bendi on the stem to dry out.. Really dry out. It would turn brown and the lines on the bendi will crack a little. It's good to collect them for your next round! Then the seeds would mature sufficiently. I dont think you can grow bendi from the ones you bought in the fresh market for cooking. Keep the seeds in a dry box or plastic bags.

To harvest:

Got this tip from my mom. Break off the tip at the end of the bendi. If it breaks, that means it is still young and ready to harvest. If it bends instead, it's too old for consumption. So just leave it to dry out.

The bendi grows very fast. One night it can be ripe for harvesting and the next day, it can be too old.

From my experience, consuming them directly after harvesting them is e