The pods on my smaller tororo-aoi plants, at least the ones seeded indoors, have started to ripen.
They actually transition from green to dry brown quite quickly, so I have to check daily for dry pods and pick them before they drop their seeds.
Some of these pods are starting to open up, and I want to pick them before this happens. The pods can be split open easily to reveal the seeds:
The pods (and the plant in general, but mostly the pods) are covered with fine prickly hairs. The skin on the working side of my hands is not bothered by these, but if I accidentally brush the back of my hand, or my arm, against these, the hairs break off and get into my skin. This causes some minor irritation, but is nothing like poison ivy or stinging nettle, because there are no irritant chemicals involved, just very fine pointy bits.
I also picked all the pods off the larger plants since they were pretty much all ripe as well.
The direct-seeded plants are in full bloom and starting to form pods. As the pods ripen quickly I expect most of them to be ready before frost kills the plants off.
The plants seem to stop growing once in bloom so the indoor-seeded and direct-seeded plants will end up being the same size. I don’t know how this affects the root growth. After the first flush of flowers and fruit, the plants to try to grow side shoots that would eventually produce more blooms, but our growing season is not long enough for these to mature.
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