Okra as a Cover Crop: Heat Tolerance, Deep Roots, and Livestock Feed

0:00 This is okra. Okra is a very heat tolerant, very deep rooted warm season broadleaf crop. It's closely related to

0:09 Cotton we really have liked it the last several years in our cover crop mixes because of the tap root that it.

0:15 Brings to the table as well as the heat tolerance. This is the same ochre that you would buy for your garden to plant.

0:22 Your garden has these big old okra pods. If you're going to eat them as something to fry.

0:29 Up or something you want to get when they're much smaller like what Dale has, but it produces a lot of seed in here.

0:35 Now what we've seen is that cattle will eat this plant very readily, not only the plant but they really like the pods.

0:41 As well, yeah, another advantage of okra is you see these hard woody stems. Even if the plant's only just a

1:00 An incredible snow catching machine in the wintertime, great addition to a cover crop mix if you're in an area.

1:10 Where snow catch is an important part of your moisture management system. I just pulled one of these up here Dale.

1:16 And look at the massive amount of soil that came up with that root system on this okra plant. Just look at how it's.

1:22 Building soil structure right around that root. Excellent, excellent habitat for worms and other soil biology. But this is what we want—we want these deep roots, but then it's also got a lot of roots coming out horizontally as well. It's got a great combination of a deep tap root with a lot of fibrous roots coming out to the side. Great soil builder. Earthworm right there living right there in that ochre.