Growing Okra - Identifying Bad Seed

[Dave2000]

For the first time I tried to start some okra this year but haven't had any luck with it. I'm getting terrible germination rate, only 3 sprouts out of 40 or so seed made it above the dirt and all three were a pale yellow color including the first set of leaves, only to die a few days later.

It's in the same soil as all my other plants which are coming up fine. I thought possibly the ground was too cold here still but starting some in a temperature controlled ~ 85'F growing chamber I'm not having any luck either.

I have zero live sprouts a month after seeding so I'm starting to wonder if I have bad seeds. How do you identify bad seeds? Are they darker or lighter, brownish or more of a pale green? I read that if you soak them, the floaters are bad but most did not float. I haven't tried the freezing them in an ice cube trick but I did nick a few and soak a few and neither of these things seemed to make much difference.

The seeds were fairly good sized, so I am assuming they came from a mature pod but I don't know that for certain. I would've thought that no matter what, at least the first set of leaves would start out green not light yellow. Am I overlooking something that okra need in particular?

 

[retiredwith4acres]

My mother always soaks her okra seed for at least 24 hours. I have heard of even scratching them with sand paper. Okra can be hard to germinate.

 

[thistlebloom]

What type of soil are you using to germinate them in?

 

[Kassaundra]

Guess I've been blissfully ignorant, I didn't know it was hard to germinate, I just put my seeds in the ground direct sow and they came up? (both last year and this year). Sorry I can't be of any help.

 

[so lucky]

It looks like I will get very poor germination on my Clemson Spineless Okra this year, too. I'm trying to remember what brand name it was. A lot of my flower seeds had very poor germination this year. They were mostly the cheepo packages, like for 20 cents. But the germination is supposed to be at some pre-determined rate, by law. Dave, I just happened to think: did you possibly pretreat the soil with anything that may have killed off the germinating seed? Such as Treflan, unusual fertilizers, water retaining crystals, manure from a source that may have used a chemical? Okra is not that hard to grow. The fact that the seedlings yellowed and died makes me wonder. Too wet? Just kicking ideas around here.....

 

[Dave2000]

My soil is hard to describe. I don't have a large plot, don't direct sew but rather start things in small containers. First I started out with a mix of typical N.KY (Cincinnati) soil which is a fair amount of clay, with me adding some topsoil in past years, and some peat, all seasoned for a year plus pseudo-peat as root strings from prior plants, plus fertilizer and coffee grounds, egg shells, etc. Anything else I've put in the soil grows, which is what leads me to the suspicion the seeds are bad.

Then after no luck with that (regarding only okra) I put some seeds in miracle grow seed starter mix which is fertilizer enriched peat.

I'm suspecting bad seeds because nothing else has a problem growing with the mix I have. While it may or may not be optimal, I have a lot of plants ready to set outside now in my zone from the same soil but no okra.

 

[thistlebloom]

Were these commercial seeds, or your own saved seeds?

 

[Dave2000]

I bought them from one of the lowest cost sellers on ebay.


Silly me
I won't do that again, but want what we all do.

 

[897tgigvib]

I grew Okra when I worked at a greenhouse in Montana.

When they seemed slow to sprout I talked "southern y'all" around them, and then they grew just fine.

 

[Southern Gardener]

I've never had trouble with okra. I don't pre-soak them or score the seed. I direct sow and they take 4 to 5 days to germinate. this year I've planted Louisiana Long Pod and Clemson Spineless. Dave you've probably got bad seed.