Beginner Gardening: OKRA, Part ll, 1 by Ozark

Ozark wrote:
I gave my okra a severe "haircut" this morning. The okra PLANTS were thriving - 3 feet tall and 3 feet across, with leaves as large as 2' in diameter. But, no production. We haven't had any okra to pick off them yet.

Last night I looked back on the original Okra thread where this thread came from. Last year, Jim41 in LA, Horseshoe, and others were talking about pruning the leaves off okra to get production started - so that's what I did.

I only cut leaves off, especially the older growth big leaves. I didn't cut any branches with growth centers at the end. I'm trying to encourage branching and blooming and discourage excess leaves. Something had to be done - out of 60+ plants I found only two pods of edible size, two blooms open this morning, and four overgrown, woody pods that must have set on early. Those overgrown pods won't happen again - I can see 'em now!

This is my row of Stewart's Zeebest okra - I've got four other rows with four other okra varieties. I pruned them all and I figure I trimmed 2/3 to 3/4 of the foliage off my okra plants - pretty severe. It looks right to me, though. What do you think?