Okra Forest In A Box
September 12, 2026
Okra Forest in a Box
We have a unique planting issue on our little farm. It floods. Flash floods with torrential rains that wash everything away and take hours and sometimes days to soak back down into the ground. How have we had so many successful harvests every season with various plants?
Minecraft boxes! (that’s what the kiddos call them) We found lots of downed trees in various states of decay when we arrived and started clearing. We rolled some of them to the compost pile where the chickens devoured the lovely bugs growing therein and scratch the decaying wood to mix it well. We cut, rolled, debarked, and sliced others for boards and fenceposts. But most of the big ones still get rolled into rectangles or squares, filled with dirt, and sown with seeds.
This is now what Thea and Laud call, The Okra Forest. It is a ten by ten foot box (eight by eight inside) with two rows of okra in the first two feet on each edge with sweet potatoes thriving in the center four-foot square. It’s about one foot deep on the front edge to eighteen inches deep on the lowest edge so it would attempt to be Earth level. Our yard is all uneven but we are slowly fixing that. The growing soil mix of chicken-mixed compost and rich goat-area dirt was laid atop laid-flat cardboard boxes and paper feed bags to help with weed control and water retention. We started it in the drought time and it was daily watered for almost a month before the rainy season came.
When the cute little okra plants started producing almost a month ago, Thea was in charge of harvesting. She loved her job! Almost every third day since, we have had okra n tomatoes over rice. There are two gallon bags of okra in the freezer right now, waiting for the next day we need an easy meal. We chop (or if you are Louis, don’t chop) the okra, toss the okra, tomatoes, and water in the crock pot, sprinkle seasonings and start it. Voila! Easy meal by the time the rice is cooked.
Two weeks ago, Thea came in with three poor little okras in her basket and sighed sadly, “Mom, I can’t reach the rest of the okra.”
What??
I came out to this:
When I walked out, I discovered there were dozens of little “big as Thea’s thumb” okra pods well out of her reach. Several plants were taller than me! Fast forward another two weeks, and for today’s harvest I’m standing on a stump so I could cut the pods! There are branches off each main stem and they have easier to reach pods at three-, four-, and five-foot heights. It really does look like a forest!
I’m going to keep tracking it as the season progresses and will likely update on how high the Okra Forest gets. Granted, I told them we have to measure from the base of the stalk (which Lucas calls “tree”) because we can’t count the dirt where the roots are. I’m also very happy with our sweet potato center and rather excited to see just how many pounds of roots we gather from that. We’ve already harvested at least three pounds of leaves from the vines there. I add them to soups for a sweet flavor.
How is your real-life Minecraft garden growing?
Thank you for reading!
Type at you later!
~Nancy Tart
