Some quick shots from the excellent you-pick called Green Acres in Yalaha, just minutes from the excellent bakery... 

These trees are just two years old!

Kerry, the owner of Green Acres, tells me that they picked eighty-thousand pounds of blueberries last year. I've never seen such healthy plants!

My Chioggia beets meet my pressure cooker...

My wife's amazing blueberry pie...

Chioggia beets

I have a long row of these. I've grown all sorts of beets, but these are the best, especially as their greens are perfect for cooking.

Parsnips, carrots, & turnips

Making room for tomatoes...

Sugar snap peas...

From the comments... something I wrote responding to someone who wanted to know more about sugar snap peas. They're easy, and as you can trellis them, they make a great "between the row" crop in small spaces like mine. It's hard to see in the pictures below, but I have four crops growing in what is essentially a single three-foot row: Broccoli right next to a trellis full of peas, which is itself right next to a row of hybrid, multi-color carrots, and then, mixed alongside the carrots, a few dozen parsnips. So long as you have a lot of compost and a lot of water in play, you can plant this densely. Probably everything is slowed down and there's some compromise for each individual plant's optimal production/size, but maybe not... I get a LOT of broccoli out of this row, and as you can see, a lot of peas. The carrots (there's a picture of them, too) are about ready for harvest, but will continue to grow happily for at least another month. I don't know why I grew the parsnips... I've grown them in the past. They do OK here in Florida, but not as sweet as the ones from up North. I'd be better off growing more carrots, but parsnips make a nice change, and they grow well enough here... 

OK, anyway, I don't have time to write this entry, so, here's what I said earlier about peas...

hmmm... well, let's see:
1) i use a hybrid, super sugar snap. i like them. sometimes i grow them out to have peas, sometimes we just eat them as snow peas.
2) plant them anytime in the late fall/winter. they get nipped by frost but usually always bounce back.
3) plant them DENSE... i mean, like, three peas per inch, in a zigzag. then, oversow as they grow. the ones hanging on the support you see in the picture below are the result of three distinct plantings, about a month apart.
4) use a lot of compost but little or no fertilizer. mine are growing between carrots and broccoli. really dense planting there--lots of crops in about a 2' wide row. so, you need lots of organic material. but peas don't produce well if there's too much nitrogen, so here, in this case, i just fertilized on the outside of this triple row, along the rootline of the broccoli and carrots. right?
5) water generously.
6) be sure to pick them before the peas get too big and then dry... i think that makes the plant 'turn off' and stop producing, but maybe that's just superstition.
7) full sun, ideally with a little afternoon shade, which will buy you a week more fruit.
8) they burn out eventually, when it starts to get too hot. but until they do, they're really easy and tasty.

Broccoli

Since someone asked... from the comments:

lgj... i put out two sets of broc, and the second set is still producing. i think the second set is blue wind, but i don't recall for sure. couple observations about broccoli:1) it has a long life, but not forever.2) if you put out a late set (say, good seedlings before march 1), you can harvest through april and into may.3) when the plants are winding down, the florets get really small. treat it like berry picking. they remain perfectly tasty, but if you don't pick them very small (thumb-sized, smaller), they'll flower.4) if you have the room and no other inclination, leave them to bloom. brassica blooms are probably a bee's favorite bloom. and they're kinda pretty. in europe they grow big fields of rape (aka canola) and leave them to flower all early spring. it's beautiful. then they plow it under for green manure or harvest it for silage. maybe they do it here in the states, but i've never seen it. 5) if your broc goes to flower quickly, even if it's young and the weather's not over warm, then YOU ARE NOT WATERING ENOUGH. generally, few people in fla water enough. in for a dime, in for a dollar, right?

The late-March Florida garden...

It's winter again...

I cannot believe that I'm covering plants on March 3! We had just enough of a cold start to the winter to send everything dormant, then a long hot spell that caused everything to bud, and now a couple weeks in a row of near-freezing nights. My citrus is all in bloom, my peaches are budded... My plum crop is totally shot. My beans are burned. My prickly pears (cactus) fruits are ruined. Everything tropical is brown.

I guess this is the new normal. It's not so much the warming, at least for the moment, as the unpredictability of the new weather patterns. 

Mexican Flame Vine

Yeah, it's a Mexican Flame Vine. Not really right for our zone. I've had it in the ground for three or four years, and this is the first time it's bloomed well. In the past, a late frost would always get it right before it was about to bloom, and it would only bloom, spottily, for a couple weeks in late spring. If we really avoid any late-season frosts this year, this vine will really explode come April or so. Anyway, it's a pretty well-behaved vine that needs really, really minimal care. So if you have a protected area for it, then you should find one. It's a classic passalong plant--it roots readily, and anyone with a vine can usually find a rooted piece to give away. The best vine for Central Florida, in my opinion, is the Coral Honeysuckle. Slow to start, once well established it needs nothing at all, and blooms all the time, and is very well-behaved. I have so many naughty little hummingbirds in my yard because of my large vine over a bell post. 

A few shots of the late-winter garden

January in the Central Florida garden...

Not a lot of posting lately. Lots going on in the garden, including several new peach trees, a new mulberry (Pakistan), and two new pear trees.

It's been very warm all winter long. My plum trees are in full bloom, and my established peach is budding out. All that activity is at least a couple weeks early. I dread a late season freeze!

I started tomatoes, cukes, squash and peppers last week. That's well ahead of my schedule. One reason I typically wait until late in the winter is that these Solanaceae require a lot of warmth to germinate. No problem this year.The seedlings are already up.

People ask me often what varieties of tomato I grow. I'm rather indifferent. I go to Tomato Growers Supply, and select late-early- and early-mid-season round red tomatoes with lots of letters after their names that the catalogue lists as decent in flavor. Surprisingly few fit all those parameters! Applause, Mountain Magic, and Bella Rosa this year. Some of those are determinate, some indeterminate; the difference isn't as notable in our relatively short growing season (early May to late-June for fruit... maybe 4 weeks of heavy production).

Some determinate tomatoes I've grown in the past have even defeated my indefatigable tomato trellis! So, i don't really pay much heed to whether they're determinate or not...

I wish I had had some Tomande on hand, but I forgot to order them.

Juliet and Sungold are two very reliable small-fruited tomatoes. Juliet distinguishes itself in both yield and disease resistance. If I had to grow only one...

The typical winter crops are doing well: Hakurei turnips, lettuces, chard, spinach, peas, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, radishes, cress.

Anyway, going with the whole "it's going to stay warm" thought, I've planted a long row of beans. 

Sweet potato season!

A beautiful morning here in Central Florida! First day of the dry season. (I'm sure the wet season isn't completely over, but every dry day eats away a little at the wet-season's dominance...)
Out of curiosity, I dug a little around the walk through my sweet potato patch. I found these humdingers about a foot from one another... if this offers a sign of what's in the patch, I think it bodes well... (The beer can is, of course, there for a sense of scale...)

Persimmon season!