Jim's Climbing Okra

We have some dear friends who are a few years older than us.  We have known them for many years.   Jim does a lot of back-yard gardening.  Earlier this spring he gave me some seed that someone had given him.  He said it was "climbing okra".  Hmmmm.  Well, I had to try this, but had trouble finding room for it.  I finally decided to harvest all the lettuce in one of the cold frames and plant it there.  It was late in the spring when I finally got it planted and it took a long time to come up.  I had almost given up on it when a few plants finally poked up through the soil

Tom rigged up a trellis for it out of some short pieces of cattle panels he had on hand.  We don't have any cattle, but use cattle panels for a lot of things.  They are normally used to build pens for sheep or goats or cattle, but if you are creative, you can figure out a lot of good uses for them.  Here's a picture of one someone bent into an arch in their back yard.

Anyway, it took the climbing okra a long time to start growning, but when it did, it really took off!  Here is a picture of it now.

For the longest time, it was all leaves and no flowers.  Then a couple of weeks ago, it started blooming.  Now it has bunches of pretty yellow flowers.  I've been watching it closely for signs of any "okra".  Finally, this week I found one.  This is what it looks like:

It does look something like a piece of regular okra, but I am relatively sure this is a variety of luffa gourd.  These can be eaten when young and tender and are a standard staple in many Asian cuisines.  If you let them grow, they get rather large and develop a fibrous core that can be dried and used as a pot scrubber, hence the name "dish rag gourd".  These are also sold in many bath shops as body sponges.  We grew some one year and I sold them at the farmer's market.  I had several customers surprised to learn that these "sponges" came from a plant and not the sea.