Sunday, March 24, 2013

The late-March Florida garden...

















7 comments:

Unknown said...

Your veggie garden is amazing!Love the bees!

LGJ said...

Is that broccoli I see? Are you still getting heads? We had to pull ours a few weeks ago because what was left was bolting before it got to any decent size.

Your garden looks awesome, as usual.

Michael said...

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?

Ghost Pepper said...

Great photos. Your garden looks amazing.

Leon said...

Looks fantastic! Pretty much everyone that I know got wiped by the freezes(s) this spring - what's your secret? :)

Michael said...

we're on a high point inside deland, and deland itself is on a ridge. plus we're downtown... so, while we had a lot of freezes, they were all above 30*, and i just used a lot of blankets... i lost my entire plum crop though!

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