my sister lives in chicago and has to buy okra transplants if she wants okra. i believe she has bought them about 10 or 12 inches tall in 4 inch pots and has had great success with transplanting them. So what i am getting at is maybe if you have to you can grow them indoors in a window for a while and then set them out. Or maybe you can open one end on the low tunnel to let cool air in. My little greenhouse got so hot a few days ago that it literally broke my mercury thermo i had in there. The mercury came apart and will not go back together.

My plants are in two inch soil blocks, they just popped leaves yesterday but all of them have at least a two inch tap root sticking out of the bottom of the block already. I think I would need at least an 8 inch pot to keep from stunting them badly, to be honest I don't have room to grow them under lights either. 50 peppers,40 tomatoes and a ton of other things like basil, tomatillos,eggplant etc already have all my transplant shelves occupied.

I'll plant and report..

I'm not sure where you're located geographically, but I'm in south-central OK almost at the Texas border and volunteer okra plants began popping up in my garden last week, so apparently we are warm enough for them now. I bet they'd grow fine under row cover or plastic-covered tunnels if you are in a cooler location than mine. I keep 50% Aluminet shade cloth on my greenhouse year round because otherwise my greenhouse can hit 145 degrees on a sunny winter day if I don't open both doors and all 4 vents. Otherwise, I experience thermometer issues like Scott mentioned.

Our weather at my house has alternated from highs in the 20s back in January to highs now in the 80s, but with lots of unseasonably warm days in the 80s and once, the 90s, even back in February. A cold front comes through and gives us highs in the 60s or 70s and lows in the 40s or 50s and then the cold front passes and we'll have lows in the 60s or low 70s and highs near 90. It is somewhat abnormal to have as many days in the 80s and 90s as we've already had this year, but the plants (except for the lettuce and other cool-season greens) love it. I wouldn't hesitate to put okra in the ground here now since volunteer plants already have germinated with no help from me. I sowed squash seeds and cucumber seeds yesterday. It is kind of early for that if you plant only by the calendar, but I had winter squash seeds germinate in the compost pile area last week, so the temperatures should be warm enough for summer squash and cucumber seeds to sprout and grow now no matter what the calendar date shows.

Northwest Arkansas, one county from the Missouri border. Our highs are much like yours maybe a bit cooler, but our lows can still drop like a rock on clear, dry, windless nights. 28 last Wednesday, low was almost 70 last night though... Rollercoaster weather for sure.

I had volunteer tomato plants come up in early February under a plastic low tunnel that was growing spinach, mache, and claytonia at the time...the spinach survived but the other roasted even uncovered. Fun worrying about plants freezing or bolting in the same week.haha

I've tried, and been successful with, many different head start methods for okra. My favorite, because it is the fastest, with the least amount of work, is to direct sow, then cover with cloches made from 2 liter bottles. To prepare the bottles, cut the bottom off, discard the screw top lid, and wash with hot soap and water. The heat collects nicely in the bottle and warms the earth for germination. The uncapped opening allows excessive heat to ventilate. The cloches can be prepared during the dead of winter, then stored nested in a trash bag. Good luck!

jdevers, Oh, your weather is just like mine! Our average last frost date is March 28th, but in about 7 out of 10 years at my house we'll have about one freezing night per week until around May 3rd or 4th. It makes me crazy, but I just try to plant when soil and air temps are in the right range, and then use floating row cover to protect plants on the occasional late cold night.

That is funny about having to worry about plants bolting and/or freezing at the same time and my experience here this spring has been very similar. The weather in this part of the country sure can change rapidly.

I like Seedmama's 2-liter bottle cloches. To store similar things, I cannot put them in trash bags or my husband thinks they are trash and hauls them off to the dump, so I store them in nicely labeled kitty litter buckets. I use duct tape to label the buckets. Of course, if you go into the greenhouse or garage, it looks like we are hoarding cat litter, but I like reusing buckets for storing many items. A cat litter bucket here gets used over and over for a million and one things until it finally cracks or breaks and then it finally goes into the trash. I bet I have some buckets that are 10 years old.

I don't worry too much about okra getting an early start most years. It grows so fast once the soil temperatures are just right for it that I tend to just wait and plant it at the normal time. Or, even worse, I see volunteers sprouting on their own and that makes me realize it is time to get the seed in the ground if I want to grow the specific variety I intended to grow. Or, I can just dig up seedlings (they tend to sprout near the compost pile where I know I have thrown overmature pods in the past) and transplant them where I want to grow them if I don't care what variety it is. Nothing says "it is time to plant your seeds now" more than seeing volunteers that already have sprouted. Due to us having a lot of hot days this past winter---not in a row, usually, but just 1 or 2 here or there, we had a lot of strange seedlings popping up randomly, including summer squash, gourds and okra in February and March. Of course, they froze later on.

Dawn

Haha, yea, I had some tomato volunteers in early February that actually lasted a while. They were under a low tunnel that I was growing cold hardy stuff in this year. I've never had okra volunteers but that's probably because it is one of the few vegetables I think freeze so well that I stay vigilant all year. Fall is much like spring in that most things produce really well until they freed solid around Halloween or a week or two later.