🌶️ Okra
The highest starting temperature of any common vegetable — under 18°C of soil it will not even germinate.
Okra at a glance
Is Okra frost tolerant?
No. Cold hurts it even above freezing: damage starts at 5°C and it is killed below 2°C. Sow or plant it out only after your last frost.
What temperature does Okra grow best in?
It grows best between 20 and 33°C. Below 15°C it stops growing altogether, and above 38°C it slows down.
How many days does Okra take to mature?
About 55–70 days. That is a typical figure: it needs roughly 750 °C·d of warmth above 15°C, so a warm season gets it there sooner and a cool one later. The city calendars below give the sow and harvest dates for each place.
Is Okra a cool-season or warm-season crop?
A warm-season crop. It needs warm days and nights, so it goes in after the last frost, once temperatures are reliably above 20°C.
What the numbers mean
These are the actual parameters this game runs on. Growth is driven by growing degree days: each day contributes max(0, min(mean temp, 35) − 15), and Okra is ready when that total reaches 750. That is why the same seed takes a very different number of days in Dublin and in Guangzhou.
| Base temperature | 15°CBelow this, the plant accumulates no growing degree days at all. |
|---|---|
| Degree days to maturity | 750 °C·dThe heat budget it must accumulate before it is ready to pick. |
| Comfortable range | 20–33°CWhere it grows without stress. |
| Frost damage below | 5°CLeaves start taking frost damage below this low. |
| Killed below | 2°CBelow this it does not come back. |
| Heat stress above | 38°CAbove this the plant slows down and stops setting fruit well. |
| Typical time to harvest | 55–70 days |
| Yield per bed | 20 pods |
Things worth knowing
- Pods must be cut four or five days after flowering; any later and they are too fibrous to eat.
- Okra is in the mallow family alongside cotton and hibiscus, and its flowers look the part.
Where and when to sow Okra
Pick your city to see the months when Okra scores well against that city's real climate records: