I dont have your answers. My melons failed a couple of years due to the
weather. Melons have their growth stunted when the temp falls below 55 F,
or 13 C, any time after they have they have been set out or come up from
seed if you dont start them yourself in pots. A few years ago I had planted
about 50 melon plants and didnt harvest any. Last year I harvested about 3
from 20 plants.

I have raised okra when I lived farther South and have had very good luck
with it. It loves hot weather and quits bearing early if you dont water it.
I never paid any attention to the ants or the roots. I do have a recipe for
canning it (hot water bath) when you get enough to can, if you are
interested. You will have to send me your e-mail. After canning, you are
supposed to be able to rinse it off and get rid of the slime that a lot of
people dont care for. Otherwise you can cut it into 1/2 inch slices, roll
it in egg batter and then crumbs or flour and fry it. This also gets rid of
the slime.

Good luck. Dwayne (in Kansas)


"0tterbot" wrote in message
...
hoping for an idea on my okra problems, but i'm aware okra is (quite
rightly!!!) not particularly popular, so maybe i'm whistling :-)

had 8 plants, & all but one were pretty healthy & grew to the appropriate
height, etc (one was stunted). all had loads of flowers. what i found over
summer was that as each flower fell off, the bud, instead of growing on
into a pod, would just shrivel back to the stalk as soon as the petals
fell off. over all of summer, dh got, iirc, 3 pods in total :-) the plants
would grow & flourish & continue on regardless, but all covered in
withered knobbles on dead stalks. ;-)

one thing i did notice about them was that black ants (the slightly larger
kind, about 4mm long) were terribly attracted to the flowers. other than
that, nothing odd to report. i think it might be too cool here for them
really (i had a notable lack of success with my watermelon too - they
simply just never got ripe) so perhaps that is part of the problem?

when i pulled the okras out today, i did notice that the roots were all
sort of lumpy & gnarly & twisted, a bit like pictures of clubroot on
brassicas that i have seen, but i don't know if that is significant
because i don't know what they're meant to look like anyway. :-)

thanks if anyone has any ideas.
kylie