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| From The Late February Central Florida Garden: Permaculture |
The whole point of this front bed was to give me room to stage and rotate plants, without resorting to culling plants to make room for new seedlings. But I have a lot of tomato and pepper seedlings, and I really want to get a lot of them in before March 1... So, I yanked half a row of cabbage this morning. and replaced them with some pepper seedlings.
Carrots are getting close to harvest.
I pulled up the last of the radishes. I grew Cherriette this year, a hybrid radish from Parks. I planted them on October 24. I had a handful of huge ones left in the ground and, remarkably, not a single one had split. Some were as large as a racketball. Impressive.
I noticed that my blackberries have started to bloom. And my Southern Highbush blueberries are in full bloom now, constantly surrounded by a handful of wood bees that squirm and wiggle their way inside the narrow flower. Still no sign of persimmons breaking dormancy, but their surely close. Oh, and my citrus has set buds, so they should be blooming in the next week or so.
Good time in the Florida garden.
4 comments:
I love all your updates!
How much space do you have for your garden overall? I'm currently plotting ahead where I hope to plant things in the coming seasons. I'm on a 1/4 acre homesite, but 2/3 of that is in the front yard and far less in the back. I feel like I'll need to extend food gardening into portions of the front to be able to grow as much as I want, rotated the way that I want.
Love citrus blossoms. I have a huge grapefruit and a big tangelo, and both are in full glorious bloom now. Really enjoying it while I'm out in the garden!
i have a tiny back yard, half of which is too shady most of the year for gardening. (my house shades it out until, say, mid-april.) the front yard spot i've chosen is the sunniest in my yard, and though it shouldn't, it still surprises me how much better plants do with an extra hour or so of sun.
my advice for small yards is to take advantage of sunny corners, pots, and the fact that we can have deciduous trees (plums and peaches, figs, persimmons, etc) that during the winter don't shade out the garden spots, and during the summer produce fruit. so i have lots of areas where my fruit trees are placed to allow me to vegetable garden in the winter, but not the summer. blueberries and blackberries grow low enough to allow you to grow vegetables around them... trelissing makes efficient use of small spaces for things like peas and pole beans, etc etc. i think you'd be amazed at how much you can fit in a tiny space, if you plan (and if you're willing to experiment).
I started pulling out some of my brassicas - the ones that seemed to be done for the season - and put in some peppers. Luckily my tomatoes were able to fit in between my greens. Now I'm eyeing my lettuce bed to figure out how to phase in the next round of plants over there while not disrupting the lettuces. It's the first time I've grown lettuce so I want to see how long they last into the summer.
Thanks for the suggestions!
I'm grateful that most of my sun is in the backyard, and most of my shade in the front. The majority of my backyard is in full sun (for now, until I add more fruit trees).
I'll definitely play around with different approaches as time goes on, though my budget and schedule are both pretty restrictive of investing in things like trellises right now. Still, I remind myself that it's not a sprint and I have years to get things how I want them.
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