Gardening in Central Florida

Planting the front bed...

2012-01-22T19:05:00.002-05:00

A long time since the last post. I decided to start anew in my front bed, so I dug it deep and then raked in a cubic yard of compost... Let it sit for a week, then today my daughter and I planted... radishes, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, chard, beets and a lot of flowers! I'll get back to blogging soon... In the meantime, enjoy the temperate weather... My plum trees are blooming! (Crazy... and no good!)

a picture for you

2011-11-26T13:50:00.002-05:00

I really need to get back to blogging!

2011-10-14T12:15:00.001-04:00

One last picture...

2011-10-14T11:54:00.002-04:00

Stupid Blogger's gone all wiggy on my background, so, for the moment, something generic...

Purple Queen

2011-10-14T11:47:00.002-04:00

Maybe not the most exotic plant in the garden, but tough as nails and sometimes very pretty.

Rain lily

2011-10-14T11:42:00.002-04:00

From Quick shots around the garden mid-october 2011

2011-10-13T08:11:00.003-04:00

Flowering cactus

2011-10-03T10:19:00.000-04:00

Usually I only get one bloom at a time, but this morning there were four... I love this cactus. I find that keeping them very pot-bound and feeding the lightly but regularly does the trick... I started this one maybe two years ago (maybe one) from a single piece of cactus from my friend, Mary.

Winter planting...

2011-10-02T15:58:00.000-04:00

A quick note: I harvested a small patch of sweet potatoes (disappointing yield), then ripped everything else out of my large garden bed. Raked it all very deep. Carted in three or four loads of compost mix, spread it on top, and planted seeds: Rainbow Hybrid Carrots (Johnnys, pelleted); parsnips (Javelin), broccoli, cauliflower (Snow Crown), and chard. Transplanted seedlings into my front bed: cabbage (Gonzalez), broc (Blue Wind), and some other cruciferous.

It's beautiful out. More like mid-May than the first week of October. (In Florida, that means "much cooler and the relative humidity is bearable.) Lots of yard and garden cleanup, too. I'm sweaty, smelly, and ready for a beer...

Time to sow cool-weather flowers...

2011-09-24T08:44:00.001-04:00

I'm always a bit later than I want to be with sowing seeds. It's been a busy time, and this weekend is the first opportunity to get my winter/spring flowers into their nursery pots. Here's what I'm planting today: Alyssum, calendula, geraniums, nasturtiums, poppies (maybe), sunflowers (worth a shot-small-flowered ones, only), pansies (star of my winter garden, so easy from seed), and maybe snapdragons. I've grown snaps for so many years now that I get hundreds of volunteers popping up all winter. But if I start some short-cycle ones now, I might actually get blooms by December or so.

I could plant petunias, too, but I hate them. So I won't.

If I can find some stock (Matthiola) at Lowes, I'll plant those, too. I forgot to order them. They're easy to grow, and I've had some success with them in the past.

I don't bother with seeds for foxgloves and larkspur. I just by bedding plants when they finally appear at the nursery.

Oh, and my latest Burpee flower order:

32052A	MARIGOLD BOY YELLOW	2.00
36012A	COSMOS PIED PIPER RED	1.00
36392A	COSMOS SEASHELLS MIX	1.00
31518A	ALYSSUM ROSIE O'DAY	1.00
40085A	GERANIUM FLOREVER RED	1.00
49405A	CALENDULA PACIFIC BEAUTY MIX ORGANIC	1.00
33015A	PANSY ATLAS MIX	1.00
36115A	HELENIUM DAKOTA GOLD	1.00
48095A	ZINNIA RASPBERRY LEMONADE MIX	1.00
32672A	ZINNIA PINWHEEL MIX	1.00
33928A	SUNFLOWER SORAYA	1.00

adding... super sugar snap peas, too.

Tecoma stans I grew from seed

2011-09-17T11:39:00.000-04:00

Just marking time...

2011-09-17T11:38:00.000-04:00

I made the error of putting my first set of seedlings in the garden too early. Hard to say what killed more--unbearable heat, sudden deluge, or bugs... I'll keep these veg (mostly cruciferous) in a protected area for another couple weeks before I trust them to Mother Earth... Right now, just tapping my foot, waiting for some cool weather, hoping it rains a bit more often, and enjoying the butterflies. This time of year, the real star in my garden is my chaya plant, the white waxy blooms of which are favorites with the winged and buzzing sorts.

Aside from my chaya, about the only thing blooming right now are: Hamelia patens, cosmos, milkweed, dune sunflowers (Helianthus debilis), yellow lantana, jatropha, zinnia (Zahara mix), white Mexican petunia (Ruellia), and blue salvias. How about your place?

May memories...

2011-08-27T22:00:00.000-04:00

Found on a memory stick...

I get questions...

2011-08-08T15:13:00.000-04:00

A reader writes...

Hey Michael, my wife and I love your blog, I'm in Deland as well and I'm just now starting my new garden. I've got it tilled and I plan to get a truckload of that compost mix from Volusia Shed to amend it. Do you plant in it immediately or do you let it rest? So far I've got several small type tomatoes(my kid loves them), brandywines, some peppers, and some broccoli seeds started. Probably direct sew some pickling cukes and carrots as well. I'm also very interested to see how your onion experiment goes. I tried shallots this last spring but they didn't bulb out well, might try them again from seed this winter.

I've planted seeds in compost almost immediately and never had a problem... That's unexpected, but then again, it's gardening, which is always full of unexpecteds. I imagine that a lot depends on the age and other qualities of the compost, and generally speaking, if it's possible, wait a few days before planting in newly-spread topsoil. Can't hurt, right? I recommend NOT TILLING IN THE TOPSOIL! All you'll do is bring nematodes up from the sand into your amendment. Spread it a few inches deep, and plant directly in it. Again, this isn't particularly intuitive--you'd think there'd be drainage problems, or that the soil would be too rich. But that's not been my experience. Our "soil" is so well drained and so poor... I suppose it's worth trying some cukes, but you'll likely have pickleworm and foliar problems--the days are too short in fall and we the wet and humid conditions are very difficult on all the cucurbits. Best to wait until March 1 (or even earlier!) to transplant healthy seedlings.

I've never known anyone with any success when it comes to shallots in FLA. In many respects, though, onions are the ideal household crop: In ten feet of sunny and rich row, I must have harvested 35 red onions this spring. Considering the price of red onions at the grocer's, I can't think of any crop that beats onions on economics! And here's the interesting thing: I picked the onions when I got back from my long six-week trip, so sometime at the end of June. The tops had completely dried and disappeared, but the onions themselves were in perfect conditions. I am STILL eating those onions! They're as good as the day I picked them. Heck, onions from the store go bad after a few days! I have no idea why these onions have such excellent keeping qualities, but I suspect it's because they were so thoroughly cured in the field. Anyway, those were from sets I got late in spring from Lowes. Sets are great, since you get bulbs in a matter of a few weeks, but they are unavailable until March. But I suspect I can get a couple successions of plantings using seeds. Onions are completely indifferent to the mild freezes we get...

I try to answer all the questions I get... But sometimes I'm on the road or too busy. Sorry if you've written recently and I have missed your email.

end of tomatoes

2011-08-07T10:11:00.001-04:00

I was still getting a few Juliettes a day, but they were suffering from a myriad of problems, so I went ahead and ripped out all the remaining tomatoes in my beds. Being gone all summer has meant my late-summer garden is lean: Sweet potatoes, lots of yardlong beans, some cowpeas, hot peppers, one sweet pepper, lots of herbs (oregano, mint, thyme, rosemary and Mexican tarragon, basil are all doing fine) and watermelons. The latter have produced some pretty good melons lately. I've given the sweet potatoes and watermelons the run of the place.

Purchased a yard of mixed compost and peat moss from Volusia Shed and moved about half of it into my beds. I spent the rest of the day pulling weeds and doing general landscaping maintenance--lots of work around the house has piled up, and my yard is sorta embarrassing right now!

Seedlings are doing great. I fed them with a half-strength mixture of Miracle-Gro today as their growth had halted. I've also moved them into full sun.

I saved back a couple cuttings from my Juliettes and I think they've already rooted. I'll put them back in the garden in a few weeks, after the compost cools down. When I do that, I'll plant some carrots and lettuce, and around September 1, I'll transplant the cruciferous seedlings into the garden.

Oh, so far, so good with the red onion seeds--I'm optimistic that I'll have a row's worth to get into the garden in early September. It's hard to see why I've always waited for sets to show up at the gardening center when growing from seed seems pretty easy.

Seeds planted August 28th

2011-08-04T08:25:00.000-04:00

In rows, all Johnnys unless otherwise:

1, 2: Blue Wind broccoli

3, 4: Gonzales cabbage

5: Edible Amaranth (Evergreen)

6: India Spinach beet

II.

1, 2: Bionda chard

3, 4: Snow Crown cauliflower

5,6: Moneta beet

A week later, everything's up, though poor germination for the India Spinach beet.

I get questions...

2011-07-25T13:31:00.001-04:00

A reader writes:

I'm curious about your plant list as I'm new to gardening. I found some planting guides from the county extension services/IFAS offices that say for central FL, in August we should plant pole beans, broccoli, sweet corn, bunching onions, pumpkin, summer squash and watermelon. You said you are about to plant lettuce, carrots, peas and onions. I have all but the carrots planned to start in September and the carrots in October. I'm in Lakeland, just a little south of you. Could the guides be too conservative or once skills are developed you can plant earlier or later than recommended?

Those dates (I presume) are for seedlings, which require at least four weeks to get to size. So, plant seeds now and they should be ready for transplant by the beginning of September. I wouldn't direct sow anything now: While generally I prefer direct sowing, the conditions are not suitable for it. Too much violent rain, too darn hot, too much humidity, and the earth is just writhing with buggies who love to eat your seed. Better to have some control--I like a mix of half and half peat/perlite in seedling trays. Microwave the medium for a while to get it clean, then soak it well. Keep things under cover, but where they get some sun, until the seeds germinate and break the surface of the medium. Then, move to a partly-sunny, shaded & protected site, with protection from the elements. And hope for the best! So much can go so wrong so quickly this time of the year.

Hold off on adding liquid fertilizer until the seedlings have their first "true leaves."

In the fall, I would not plant any melons/cucurbits at this time, even in Lakeland: October and November are wet, cloudy and humid... perfect conditions for molds/fungi. Just not worth it when it comes to pumpkins, etc. Same holds true for pole beans: They can certainly be grown, but they are prone to rust and take up a lot of room that would be better used growing other things.

My gardening friend Christine started her carrots mid-August, direct sown, last year. By September, they were already a few inches tall. I'm going to give it a shot this year, using seed tapes from Johnnys.

Generally speaking, it's crucially important to get crops in as early as possible. Better to have to replant than to get things started even a week or two late.

A week or two in the fall can mean a month's difference in harvesting schedule: You want plants as large as possible before it gets cold and growth slows down. I've sown broccoli a couple weeks apart, and gotten crops from the early seeds before Christmas, but had to wait until February for the seeds sown later.

Back in the game...

2011-07-23T10:24:00.000-04:00

Since May 11, I've spent a total of twelve nights here in DeLand. On the road... Now, I'm back. Florida welcomed me with a might storm last night: at least four inches of rain, likely closer to six, in a short time. I've never seen the flooding so bad.

The garden looks pretty shabby now--hot days, abundant but irregular rainfall, fungi and bugs have taken their toll. The Juliette tomatoes are still producing pretty well--two plants have produced an abundance of pear-shaped cherries, more really than the family could eat. I got back into town and, after one week of no one picking them, I managed to get about a pound of fruit. For whatever reason, presumably skin thickness (though I don't detect it), these tomatoes are pretty resistant to stinkbugs. The only thing that eats them is us and the birds.

Let's see... my grapes are ripening. I opened one of my pomegranates today: Typical Florida fruit. Pale, but acceptable. Persimmons are ripening. Sweet potatoes have the run of the place. Beans are producing scantily because of our warm nights. Basil is hanging in there, but it cannot cope with these conditions... Herbs in pots (thyme, oregano, rosemary, mint) are doing OK and will get rejuvenated when the hot weather breaks in six weeks or so.

August first is my traditional seeding day for the cool season--brassicas and carrots, the former sown in jiffy pots and the latter directly sown. I'll try to get some lettuce and chard started (including that Indian chard I bought recently from Evergreen), but I've always had trouble getting those crops started when it's so warm. Here's my Johnnys order... I'm going to give growing onions from seeds a shot this year--last year I had to wait until early spring to get appropriate sets, and while I had a very nice crop, I would prefer to get them in earlier.

Gosh, I wish Johnnys shipping weren't so dear!

Blue Wind (F1)-Packet
Vegetables > Broccoli > Hybrid

Snow Crown (F1)-Packet
Vegetables > Cauliflower > White

Super Sugar Snap-Packet
Vegetables > Peas > Snap

Gonzales (F1)-Packet
Vegetables > Cabbage > Early Green

Desert Sunrise (F1)-Packet
Vegetables > Onions > Hard Storage > Red

Moneta (Monogerm) (F1)-Packet
Vegetables > Beets > Round Red

Sugarsnax 54 (F1) (Pelleted)-Packet
Vegetables > Carrots > Main Crop

Mokum (F1) (Pelleted)-Packet
Vegetables > Carrots > Early

Rainbow (Pelleted)-Packet
Vegetables > Carrots > Colored

Bionda di Lyon-Packet
Vegetables > Quick Hoops™ crops > Quick Hoops™ crops for Zone 8 and above

my Evergreen Seeds order

2011-06-18T10:19:00.001-04:00

I'm in the mood to try something new in my summer garden... I've grown Amaranth, which is really tasty and a breeze. It's been a long time since I've grown Malabar Spinach. And I'm intrigued by the description of the India Spinach Beet, which claims that it's a popular hot-weather crop in India, which shares some of our meteorological conditions, so, it's surely worth a try. Oh, and the squash sounded like fun. I love hybrids.

Edible Amaranth, Tender 41501 1 1.85
Malabar Spinach, Green 28001 1 2.10
Edible Amaranth, All Red: 58301 1 1.85
Calabash, Hybrid Lattoo: 64401 1 2.20
Japanese Turnip, Hybrid 54501 1 2.20
India Spinach Beet: India 57901 1 1.95

adding...

India Spinach Beet is a fast growing vegetable, native to Indian hot and raining summer weather. Leaves are smooth, tender and uniformly green. First cutting can be done in 25 to 30 days after sowing and subsequent cuttings can be harvested in 15-20 days. Instead of the cutting method, some people like to harvest by picking outter leaves for eating, while the plant continues to produce more new inner leaves. This vegetable is strongly resistant to heat and is one of the most popular greens during hot summer in India and Southern Asia.

Responding to some questions in the comments...

2011-06-14T07:12:00.000-04:00

kelly:

"How do you battle stink bugs? We barely get a tomato from our plants because the stink bugs beat us to them?"

For whatever reason, I haven't had much of a problem with them this year, though in years past they've been a nuisance. It's very important to pick your tomatoes before they are too ripe--I usually try to pick them right after they've blushed, or maybe the next day. They ripen up just fine on the countertop, no discernible difference in flavor. You can also control the population with a pair of needle-nose pliers and a quick hand. The problem is that the bugs seem most active during the hottest part of the day, which makes the whole affair unpleasant on several levels.

Debbie:

This is my first year for home gardening and it's been very exciting. However, my squash and cucumbers have fallen victim to pickleworms!! I wanted to ask if you were successful with bagging your plants to resolve the problem? Do you bag the entire plant or just the blossoms/fruits? Thanks so much!

I've had great success in the past, but I was away from home during the initial invasion of pickleworms and now the cukes have stopped setting fruit, so this year, no chance to try it. In the past the biggest obstacle has been heavy rains that would ruin the bags... I wish we had that problem right now!

Shreela:

I hope that trombone squash comes up! I saw it in a youtube and loved how the slices are almost uniform when using just the neck, AND no seeds from the neck either! Never heard of those limas either, are the beans actually black

The tromboncino is really tasty, too! One fruit weighs at least a pound, and there are no seeds to speak of anywhere in the body. Oh, and the limas: These are a passalong plant, supposedly a hybrid of Willow Leaf limas and another black lima. There's a whole story about a dying agronomist in Tennessee... anyway, I found them when I was rooting through my bag of bean seeds and thought I'd give them a try. It's a bit late to plant limas, but they'll still produce.

quickly...

2011-06-13T09:36:00.000-04:00

Before dashing to the office, I planted:

Perilla
Basil (Genoa... I couldn't find a more heat tolerant one in my seeds)
A bunch of Trombone squash seeds (from 2007... I'll be mildly surprised if any germinate.)
Mississippi Silver cowpeas
Black Jungle limas

No room in the garden for peanuts. I'm continuing to plant sweet potato slips as they come available from my "stock." Now... Off the salt mine!

A note on green beans: Late-spring crop

2011-06-12T11:33:00.000-04:00

Most people I know here in Florida plant two bean crops--one for the fall (mid-August plant date) and another for spring (first warm week plant date). I don't usually bother with the fall beans.

Typically by June, the spring bean crop has burned out. I've always wondered if the vines decline because of heat/humidity/pests, or if the vines decline because, well, annuals die after a season. So, this year, about May 1, I planted a second crop to test: a short row of Rattlesnake Beans (Southern Exposure, known heat resistance).

When I returned on Saturday after a month away, I found that my early-spring crop was dead or nearly so, with only a few vines producing the typical misshapen and stringy beans I've learned to expect for this time of year. The May-planted Rattlesnakes, though, are growing vigorously, full of blossoms and perfect, mottled, narrow, tender beans. We'll see how long they continue to produce, but it seems that it's possible to extend the green bean season for at least a few weeks into mid-June or later. Since the Rattlesnakes are saved seeds, and beans are generally a low-hassle crop, the cost and trouble are almost surely worth it.

My Willow-Leaf limas, planted a week or so later than the Rattlesnakes, are blooming and vigorous. Strangely, my yardlongs seems puny. They haven't started to run or bloom. I need to throw some cowpeas in the ground where the declining pole beans are planted. Maybe I'll grow some extra limas, too.

Man, it's HOT out there. I'm "lucky" to be suffering from some serious jet lag. I was up at 3am this morning, and cleaning up the garden before sunrise.

I noticed the bee hive has gone crazy with the new super. I counted more than 60 bees a minute exiting the hive at dawn--a steady stream.

A few other mumblings and reminders, while I'm sitting here: Cucumbers are basically done. The ones that are setting are generally beset by the #(*&##%* pickleworm. I need to tear them out. Sweet potatoes are only now beginning to run. I need to plant peanuts. Peppers seem to be slow this year--lots of fruit on them, but the heat will probably limit the fruit size. I need to get some basil seeds. I harvested a bunch of large, sweet red onions. I'd all but forgotten they were there. Tops were all dead, but the onions themselves look good.

Summer harvest

2011-06-12T07:26:00.001-04:00

Back home

2011-06-11T11:27:00.001-04:00

Back after a month on the road. Ridiculous tomatoes. These are today's harvest--my wife tells me it's small compared with previous days' harvests. I'll do some updates to the blog later this weekend when I'm recovering from jet lag.

Ladybug larva having an aphid snack...

2011-05-22T11:28:00.000-04:00

All this dry weather, I have a bit of an aphid infestation. I'm away from my garden for a few days, and a friend is looking after it. She tells me that the #$%*(#$^* pickleworm has arrived, but so far the invasion is pretty limited. Dozens of tomatoes every day, peppers, loads of cucumbers... The traditional squash season is over. I might plant some Tromboncino squash when I get back.

A quick update in pictures....

2011-05-22T11:25:00.000-04:00

My beans are suffering a bit from some nutrient deficiency... note the cucumber to the left. This is my smallest cuke!

Persimmons.

The hive with its new super.

Answering some questions from the comments

2011-05-15T13:57:00.001-04:00

Lisa, gardenias are exceptionally difficult to grow in pots. I can all but guarantee you that your gardenia was suffering from over watering this winter. I recommend either planting it in the ground or planting it in a small pot with a fast draining medium. Try googling "garden web Mel's mix." If you are serious about growing gardenias in Florida, there is one absolutely crucial secret for success: you must get a gardenia grafted on Miami rootstock. Plant it in a mostly sunny spot, ideally somewhere with some afternoon shade. Take good care of it for the first one or two years, and then forget about it.

Farmer Dave my fig trees are in full sun. They are planted in a very thick covering of mulch, which I think is crucial for fig culture here in Florida, with all our nematodes. Contrary to most information I have found about figs, I think please require quite a lot water and they like a rich soil . This year I gave my fig trees a significant feed of phosphorous in early spring. This seems to have done the trick, because my fruit set is large for a relatively small fig tree. (My fig tree has been in the ground for about three years, and is approximately 10 feet tall by 6 feet wide with several trunks.) In any case, I have a good gardening friend with five or six fig trees growing on her property. Each of these big trees produce at lease a bushel of fruit per year. So, fig trees can certainly thrive here given the correct conditions.

Alma fig

2011-05-09T09:27:00.001-04:00

Juliette tomatoes

2011-05-07T13:31:00.002-04:00

Hmmm... Well, they aren't exactly cherry or grape tomatoes, though they grow in long clusters. The flavor and texture is very reminiscent of Roma tomatoes, as you might expect by their appearance. A little dry, very balanced between sweet and sour, medium skins, not a lot of seeds, all of them in a narrow cleft in the center of the fruit.

I like cherry tomatoes--great to snack on (my daughter loves them), and a nice addition to a lunch salad. (My favorite: Fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, and feta, dressed liberally with olive oil and a big pinch of Aleppo pepper...)

I suppose these are all-purpose tomatoes--good enough for salads and sauce. In any case, they live up to the descriptions when it comes to vigor, productivity and disease-resistance. I've never grown a more vigorous tomato, and the vines are just covered in long clusters of 10-12 one-ounce tomatoes.

Busy bees

2011-05-05T17:36:00.001-04:00

My kids' 4H group has placed these hives all over town in community gardens, local growers, and convenient backyards, like ours. They harvest the honey and sell it at fairs. Not bad money, really...

Between this hive with thirty-thousand bees, and the one living in the south corner of my house (our apiarist estimated fifty-thousand bees)... I don't have a lot of problems with fertilization!

First full-sized tomato of the season

2011-05-05T17:35:00.001-04:00

Tomande. A superior tomato. In the past I've grown it as a cool-season tomato.

Hydretain

2011-05-04T08:29:00.003-04:00

I picked up a bunch of this stuff last year, when Lowes was clearancing it. Yes, it really works, and it's organic. I used it last year, and it made a difference, though I don't know if it made a "50%" difference, as advertised on the label.

I sprayed it in the garden and yard on Sunday, and noticed an immediate improvement in late-afternoon wilt on my cucumber plants and what little St Augustine is in my front yard. It's pricey (it retails for around $25, though I think I paid less than $10), but a quart is enough to treat twice all my beds and the in my yard. And I only spray it once a year, in spring.

Panoramic of my front-yard bed

2011-05-01T14:56:00.002-04:00

Tomatoes, cucumber, squash, plums, persimmon...

Another Photosynth of my main garden beds...

2011-05-01T14:54:00.002-04:00

These are so cool...

Gardenia in full bloom

2011-04-30T12:48:00.001-04:00

I have a couple of these large gardenia bushes... They are about five years old, six feet tall, six feet wide. It's important to get bushes grafted onto Miami rootstock and give them a bit of shade in the afternoon. One of the bushes gets a lot more sun than the other, and though it blooms a little better, it's not as large as the shadier one.

A panoramic shot of my backyard gardens

2011-04-29T11:03:00.000-04:00

2011-04-29T09:17:00.001-04:00

2011-04-29T09:15:00.001-04:00

Mostly Tomande tomatoes, which is what I had on hand when sowing my spring crop. Great tomatoes, but I'm worried about the deep ribbing across the tops. When our rains start (and they will start... sometime!) those handsome ridges are like bacterial sponges... ah, well, que sera.

The twine line at the top marks six feet. That's quite a lot of growth from March 1, their transplant date.

Large tomatoes like Tomande (and there's Jetsetter, some German heirloom, Big Boy, and some other varieties mixed into my three rows in the back) will produce pretty well until the first week of July, when the bugs get so bad that I give up. (They stop setting new fruit earlier, sometime in June, when the nighttime low start to hover in the low 70s.)

Cherry tomatoes--I have Juliette and some Baker Creek in the front garden--continue to set fruit throughout the summer. They're such rampant growers that they can deal with the diseases and bugs. But even those are done by the end of July.

Let's see... squash is prolific. Green beans are doing well. Peaches, blueberries and plums continue to ripen. I've gotten enough blueberries in the last three days to make a pie. Hmm... cucumbers are doing what cukes do. First peppers of the season should be ready by the end of the week. Been starting sweet potato slips, transferring them out to the patch. Oh, and I planted a long row of yardlong beans today, too. Anna apples look GREAT. Very excited about a nice harvest this year. Persimmons and pomegranates look good. Melons are setting fruit.

Guess that's about it... Busy time in the office now, so finding time to zip out to the garden and do chores is tough.

Oh, finally: Damn irrigation system.

Re: [Gardening in Central Florida] New comment on First peaches, plums of the season.

2011-04-28T15:05:00.001-04:00

Someone in the comments asked about the flavor of the my Earligrande peaches and the Gulf series plums. This is the first year that I have harvested the peaches, and I chose not to thin them given the relatively small crop. The peaches are smallish. Like all early–season peaches (and these are very early season peaches: they ripened before May!), these peaches lack the rich, full, intensely sweet flavor that I associate with Midwestern and Northern peaches. A couple of years ago I was in New Hampshire in August, and we sneaked into a large orchard late one night and gorged ourselves on perfectly ripe, late season New Hampshire peaches. Unspeakably delicious. The peaches one can grow in Florida will never rival their northern cousins in terms of flavor. With that caveat in mind, I would say that these particular peaches are nonetheless very tasty. Though not quite as sweet as I might like, they have excellent texture and a very honest peach flavor. They are Freestone peaches with reasonably thin skins and fair amount of juice.

The plums, like all southern plums, are on the small side. Because there is a high ratio of skin to flesh, my kids do not particularly care for them. But if you relish a mix of sour and candy-sweet flesh, then you will love these plums. Very juicy, excellent texture, and straightforward plum flavor.

Sunken-bed vegetable gardening in Central Florida

2011-04-28T09:21:00.000-04:00

I've posted previously on sunken bed gardening in arid regions. (Ours isn't arid most of the year, but it shares characteristics with arid regions.) I'd like to say that my sunken bed in front is intentional, but it came about when I needed a few cubic feet of fill for a construction project in my backyard. I filled the large (ten-by-ten) trench with a couple cubic feet of topsoil and compost, but apparently not quite enough. After the soil settled, I ended up with a bed sunken maybe five inches. That bed has been incredibly prolific this season (see the photos below), and very easy to keep watered. Much easier, in any case, than my beds in back, which aren't exactly traditional raised beds, but resemble raised beds. (I have spent several years filling in these beds with compost, leaves, mulch, etc. They appear to be level beds, but that's only because I have raised the entire area by several inches. I was digging in a spot yesterday and found an old brick buried under four inches of soil, mulch, leaves--a couple of years ago, it had lain on the surface of the garden, and somehow gotten inadvertently buried under successive seasonal plantings...)

In any case, the one problem I can see in sunken-bed gardening is our heavy rainfalls causing flooding, erosion, root rot, etc. All the problems that people who garden in heavy, silty soils experience. S far, this hasn't been a problem with our arid spring. We did have torrential rains in early April, and I didn't notice any problems after four or five inches of rain. But time will tell.

I know people in Central Florida who have had some good success with raised-bed gardens, but they have some obvious drawbacks here, including increased transpiration/evaporation that makes proper watering difficult, and the fact that they tend to get infested with pests and diseases. My friend Bill, from whom I learned a lot about gardening in Florida, used raised beds for several years, but ended up dismantling them when the diseases and pests got too bad. He blames the raised beds, specifically, for the mounting problems in his garden.

April flowers, tomatoes & the new garden patch

2011-04-28T08:44:00.000-04:00

How to water a vegetable garden in Central Florida

2011-04-28T08:42:00.004-04:00

A followup to my earlier post on watering: The setup: Six feet of PVC riser with a Rainbird flush-head sprinkler head, all of it connected via a short hose to a bib-end timer. Far and away the best way I have found to irrigate the smallish gardens where I grow. The bed it waters is roughly fifteen-by-fifteen, and the sprinkler provides very even watering over the entire surface.

My evergreen seeds order for this spring

2011-04-27T20:28:00.000-04:00

I meant to post this back in February, when I ordered these seeds... The Pum Ae squash and Southern Delight cucumbers are fantastic... both of them producing heavily in my garden right now. The Pum Ae can get quite large (two pounds) without forming seeds. Its texture is firm, slightly nutty, somewhat reminiscent of a Luffa or Tromboncino, but still clearly a summer squash (and not a gourd). Beautiful, slightly zonal leaves. Seems to be highly resistant to the rusts and fungus we get.

The Southern Delight are long, sweet, somewhat spiny, with mild skin. I left one to grow to almost two feet, and it still didn't have pronounced seeds and its texture was dense. I have the melons and watermelons growing in the garden, setting fruit. I grew the Asia Sweet watermelon last year... it produced large crops (for the small space), and set fruit twice... with a tragic end...

I love Evergreen seeds! Cheap, hybrid seeds, mostly specialized in Asian vegetables.

Watermelon, Hybrid Asia 53201 1 2.50
Sweet: Watermelon, Hybrid
Asia Sweet

Korean Squash, Hybrid Pum 65001 1 2.40
Ae: Korean Squash, Hybrid
Pum Ae

Japanese Cucumber, Hybrid 47301 1 2.50
Southern Delight:
Japanese Cucumber, Hybrid
Southern Delight

Oriental Melon, Hybrid 65801 1 3.00
Arko: Oriental Melon,
Hybrid Arko

Pickled turnips...

2011-04-27T18:40:00.004-04:00

I made a large (2 gallon) batch of these pickled turnips earlier this season... they were delicious! The Hakurei turnips that I grow are so tender that I didn't bother blanching them. Just tossed them in the pickle juice and waited a week. I used beets and celery from the garden, so it was really local food...

Ingredients

1 large beet
4 small turnips (or 3 medium-size turnips), quartered
1 beet quarter, cooked
2 to 3 slivers garlic clove
2 to 3 sprigs young celery leaves
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup water
1 tbsp. coarse salt

Cooking Directions

Boil 1 beet in water until tender; peel, cool, quarter and set aside.Drop quartered turnips into boiling water for 2 to 3 minutes. Remove turnips and peel them. They will have a silky texture.Place in hot sterilized 1-pint wide-mouth jar, packing between each turnip: 1 cooked beet quarter, 2 to 3 slivers of garlic clove, and 2 to 3 sprigs young celery leaves. Combine and bring to boil water, vinegar, and salt.

Fill jar with vinegar mixture, seal and store in warm place 10 days. Makes 1 pint.

Watering the garden in Central Florida

2011-04-26T20:41:00.000-04:00

A commenter asks about watering. There's a very long answer that I have been articulating in my head for a while that involves various ethical and economical tradeoffs. But the short answer is easy: You need to water as much as the plants need, and more specifically, you probably need to water a lot more than you currently water. Certainly that has been the case for me: Slowly over the past five years I've realized a simple and obvious truth: Plants need copious water to grow well here, with our (sometimes) arid climate, strong sun, winds, and overly-drained soils. It is, in fact, very difficult to over-water here in Florida (barring the mucky soils we have in certain regions in Central Florida). Water is often the limiting factor in a home garden and dooryard orchards. Most people simply don't water enough, and water-deprived plants are unhealthy plants.

Reading gardening books for northerners, you often read about watering "deeply" rather than often. By watering deeply (so goes the thinking), you take advantage of the holding capacity of the soil, and plants can "help themselves" to the residual water in the soil.

Doesn't work here in Florida. Really, no matter how much organic material you rake in, no matter how thick your mulch, you're going to need to water often, and therefore, don't bother watering deeply. That "deep" watering is wasteful: Most of it drains out of our soils. (If you ever look through a microscope at sandy soil, comparing it with more typical, loamy/clayey soils like the kinds we find in the Midwest, the grains of sand look like boulders next to the tiny particles from "real" garden soil. What makes clayey soil clayey is precisely the particle size. The space among those sand boulders acts like a sieve, flushing water from the soil. When we take the kids up north, they are fascinated by puddles because here in Florida, we just don't have many.)

Especially during our peak growing months in spring (March and April), when rainfall is relatively rare, the air is clear, the moisture-robbing winds are brisk, and the sun is strong, you need to water daily, until the root zone is well saturated. Most days, I stick my finger in the ground when I come home around 6. I expect the soil to be dark and moist.

It takes a lot of water to do that during our hot-dry spells.

I use a mix of microsprinklers and conventional sprinklers. The latter are jerry-rigged: I mount Orbit flush-head sprinkler heads onto six-foot PVC risers in the center of my garden: I get very even, quick coverage over a large-diameter circle. I water my main garden bed about 15 minutes every day, mid-morning. My remaining areas are irrigated using Mister Mister system, which lets me water very precise areas, very precisely. I run lines into my pots and use 360° sprinklers under fruit trees, and then position 90° sprinkler heads so beds get watered "from behind"... There are many arid areas in my garden beds where I plant drought-tolerant plants, but they tend to be in the backs and corners of beds.

Look, water in Florida is cheap (too cheap). One day soon, we'll face some serious capacity issues, but not because of my vegetable garden. Blame the resorts with ten acres of St Augustine, exposed to full sun, and the jackasses with an acre of turf in their private residence who run the sprinklers every morning during the rainy season. (I have one of those neighbors behind me.)

If you garden, balancing real ecological concerns and the natural desire for plentiful blooms, fruit and vegetable is tough, but the alternative to watering sufficiently is (obviously) underwatering, which is itself wasteful, as that insufficient water is itself still a consumed resource, but one without the maximum yield (however you figure it). If you plant a rose bush or a squash plant, you basically commit to watering it enough. Otherwise, don't bother planting it in the first place.

Pickled baby squash

2011-04-24T12:39:00.001-04:00

First peaches, plums of the season

2011-04-24T10:02:00.001-04:00

Something to have along with dessert this Easter day. Earligrande peach and Gulf Blaze plum. The peaches are wee, but that's because I didn't cull them this year. No regrets--they ripened very early, likely because they were so small...

First gardenia of the season

2011-04-20T18:10:00.001-04:00

Potatoes

2011-04-19T14:50:00.001-04:00

Japanese Cucumber, Hybrid Southern Delight

2011-04-17T20:27:00.001-04:00

These cukes are remarkable! Very early fruit set, very sweet...

Not to mention lots of carrots

2011-04-17T10:17:00.001-04:00

Last cauliflower first blueberries

2011-04-17T10:15:00.001-04:00

Stokes aster

2011-04-16T17:03:00.003-04:00

Stokes aster

2011-04-16T17:03:00.001-04:00

Earligrande peaches

2011-04-16T16:55:00.001-04:00

Tomamde tomatoes

2011-04-16T16:54:00.001-04:00

Freesia

2011-04-16T16:53:00.001-04:00

First beans.

2011-04-15T08:47:00.001-04:00

Cukes

2011-04-13T17:17:00.002-04:00

Growing Snapdragons in Central Florida

2011-04-12T10:12:00.000-04:00

usi aluminiu has left a new comment on your post "Snapdragons":

In my garden i can`t grow snapdragons. They need something special or i don`t know, some conditions?

Posted by usi aluminiu to Gardening in Central Florida at 8:58 AM

Snaps are a BREEZE for me... they need abundant sun, well-drained soil (no problems there), and sometimes some support (tho i often let them flop and then they grow bushier). timing is probably the hardest thing--they take FOREVER to grow from seed.

In my garden, all the snaps you see are volunteers from last year's crop. (Consistent irrigation (not TOO much water) is key here: When they germinate, they need damp soil.) They typically infest beds, and I pull out hundreds of seedlings every year. I also collect seed and plant it in windowboxes in September. They take a hundred plus days to mature... and they stay tiny most of the time. but as soon as the weather warms, they take off. The ones that I plant in windowboxes get transplanted throughout the garden.

My experience: They transplant well, are reasonably low in their water needs, bloom from the beginning of March (earlier, sometimes) until mid-June. SAaved seed is HIGHLY variable. But charming in its outcome: I have some peach and yellow picoteed ones out there now.

At the end of the season, let the seed pods dry thoroughly before ripping them out...

Spring or summer in the Central Florida garden?

2011-04-10T11:28:00.003-04:00

The title to this post presents real dilemma. I am sitting in the shade where it is still at least 83° trying to cool off after a morning of picking vegetables and tending my gardens. And on that level at least, it's clearly an early summertime here in Central Florida. We've had abundant rainfall over the last couple of weeks, at least 4 inches. It's seems the rainy season has started early this year after a cold winter. Our spring, in other words, has been cut short on both ends. But the evenings are still dry and cool and the spring flowers are sure bloomy. In the vegetable garden, I'm still harvesting spring and winter vegetables like cauliflower, broccoli and brussels sprouts. This morning I harvested my first small handful of the potatoes. I didn't dig up the plants, I just fumbled around them until I found a good size potatoes. My mother tells me that this is called "scrambling" or "scrabbling" where she grew up in western Kentucky

I tried brussels sprouts for the first time in the winter garden this year. I can't say that I met with a lot of success. They took forever to grow to any good size, and the yield was disappointing, if tasty. I made a simple dish last night of boiled cauliflower and brussels sprouts dressed with a garlicy, mustardy butter sauce. Tasty. But, not worth the real estate in the garden when it comes to the brussels sprouts.

A quick roundup of what's going on in the vegetable garden. The carrots continue to do well, I still have two long rows of them that need to be pulled sometime before May. I am harvesting the last of the broccoli and cauliflower this week. I planted out the seedlings in my garden at the end of February and am getting my final harvest in mid April. My squash plants are producing abundantly. The cucumbers are just now starting to set a lot of fruit. Tomatoes are growing vigorously and have a good number of green fruits on them. I might manage a small harvest by the beginning of May, and they'll produce until the beginning of July. (Longer for the small-fruited varieties.) Pepper plants are getting larger although still not flowering. First beans of the season should be ready at the end of this week. Chard and salad greens are still going strong but they will begin to decline by the end of the month. Finally, peaches and plums are rapidly gaining size and starting to color. They might be ready by the beginning of the second week of May.

A bit of a mismatch in squash supply and demand

2011-04-06T09:25:00.001-04:00

Anna apple

2011-04-06T09:24:00.001-04:00

Tomatoes in the March Florida garden

2011-04-06T09:23:00.001-04:00

Ranunculus in bloom

2011-04-06T09:21:00.000-04:00

Quick update

2011-04-04T20:42:00.002-04:00

Today in the garden, I picked the first cucumber, and the first head of broccoli that I planted in my new front bed at the end of January. I also picked the last of the seasons peas and ripped out the pea plants to make room for more beans. It looks like my Ranunculus plants will start to bloom in the next few days. A good thing, considering that this steamy week has been very hard on these beautiful but delicate bulbs. Finally, I noticed that my largest tomato plants have begun to set fruit abundantly. In particular, my Tomande plants are producing very well.

First cuke of the season

2011-04-04T08:52:00.000-04:00

Growing carrots in Florida

2011-04-03T12:49:00.000-04:00

A couple feet of one row of Sweet Treat carrots that I planted on October 24.

Hummingbird heaven

2011-04-03T12:44:00.000-04:00

Snapdragons

2011-04-03T12:43:00.000-04:00

Early April garden

2011-04-03T12:41:00.000-04:00

Gonzalez cabbages

2011-04-02T14:13:00.000-04:00

End of March Vegetables in the Central Florida Garden

2011-03-29T20:41:00.001-04:00

The welter of activity preparing for the spring garden has mostly passed. I've got beans, cukes, melons, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash in the ground. The squash has already started to produce nicely--three plants provide an overwhelming abundance! The pole beans are really starting to run up their strings, and I noticed that they've begun to bloom. The first cucumber should be ready any day, and the vine is loaded with fruit and blooms. Tomatoes are blooming profusely, but I haven't noticed any fruiting. Melons are still small, but large enough that I don't worry about them any longer. I pulled the last couple of feet of parsnips this weekend. First time I've planted them, and I'm pretty satisfied with them as a crop: They take up more space than carrots, and probably produce a bit less, but they're a nice change of pace and the flavor is excellent. Speaking of carrots: I have ungodly amounts. I've been giving them away to friends and coworkers.

Beets are doing very well, too. I've decided that I like Chioggia beets the best in the garden. They aren't the intense beety color I love in Detroits, and they aren't quite as luscious in texture, but they grow very large, quickly, and their greens are by far the best of any beet I've ever grown. Milder than spinach. I've also got some Red Ace out there that are about ready to be picked. That hybrid from Johnnys did well, but I'm not sure that it did any better than Detroit or Chioggia. Let's see, what else am I harvesting? Chard, onions, peas (still going strong!), mâche, lettuce, turnips, more chard, Brussels sprouts, cabbages, potatoes (still small...)... Probably more out there that I'm forgetting now. I have a last row of mixed broccoli and cauliflower that's heading up nicely. Should be ready for harvest in ten days, maybe two weeks. Did I mention chard?

Flower garden is gangbusters now, too: red yarrow, Vietnamese Hollyhocks, Cape honeysuckle, volunteer snaps, calendula, volunteer cosmos, roses, borage, alyssum, volunteer pansies (still going strong... whoever thought they were weak?), zinnias starting to bloom, volunteer Osteospermum, nasturtiums (not for much longer)... My gaura should start to to bloom soon, and then the perennial phlox and the oakleaf hydrangea. My garden, which looked so bare in February, will be overgrown by July.

It's a great time in the Florida garden. Like northern spring and summer combined! If it doesn't get too hot, too quickly, I'll soon be picking sweet peas and tomatoes while the ranunculus and cosmos bloom.

Why hybrid seeds are better than heirloom...

2011-03-24T19:16:00.000-04:00

I've got more dirty hippie credentials than anyone I know. But when it comes to seeds, almost without exception, I plant hybrids. The Times ran an article that I wish I'd written. Here's my favorite 'graph:

“A 1902 cabbage by Burpee was a perfectly good cabbage by 1902 standards,” Dr. Navazio said. “But the truth of the matter is, none of our ancestors ever viewed these things as done. You never stopped breeding your livestock. You never stopped selecting your cabbage.”

The article features prominently Johnnys Seeds, an outfit where I buy the majority of my seeds. Yeah, sure, I grow some nonhybrid lettuces and I think that Chioggia beets are the best varietal for Florida beets. But I'm always eager to plant a new hybrid. Even at twice the cost of "heirloom" seeds, they're worth it.

Read the article. Tell me what you think.

Quick March Update in Pictures: Beans, tomato staking in Florida, and spring flowers

2011-03-22T07:46:00.001-04:00

The floriferous side of the garden.

St. David blooming under Earligrande peach.

I love the red Knockout roses. But I hate the pink ones.

One corner of my garden is infested with pansies. I've never had this happen. I use the hybrid ones in pots during the winter for a spot of color. I guess one of them wasn't sterile! And now it's reverting back to its crosses and to its natural heterogeneity. I probably have 200 seedlings, everywhere in the garden. I wish they'd started to bloom a little earlier, since we're nearing the end of the pansy season.

Concrete reinforcement wire ($8), two steel electrical conduits ($2 each), and a handful of cable ties (pennies). One length of concrete reinforcement (five feet?) is enough to stake five tomato plants. The "cage" is only five feet tall, so I'll have a problem come mid-June when some of these plants will reach severn feet... But, I'll deal with the problem then.

Slick-Pic from Johnnys. I planted these seeds seeds on February 20. So, less than a month, and the plants are three feet wide and filled with baby squash. Moreover, most of the blooms are female and most of them are setting. That's what makes it an early variety. I notice that Johnnys sells these on their earliness, not on flavor. But, let's face it, I've never eaten a bad fresh squash. I have several cukes flowering, too.

Beans are up--nearing three feet. I got these in extra early this year, and they should be producing in the next two weeks.

Early March in the Central Florida Garden (update in pictures)

2011-03-06T12:03:00.004-05:00

Tomatoes are a bit smaller than I'd like, but they're growing quickly.

Borage

With all the cold this winter, my Lady Banks yellow rose (Rosa banksiae var. lutea) is blooming very well.

I love this combination of Seminole Rose and Chinese wisteria, though both plants are evil, wicked things the rest of the year.

Sunshine Blue blueberries... heavy bearing, even in a container. Easiest blueberry by far.

One of my Gulf-series plum trees. The two that are in their second year are loaded with fruit.

Earligrande peach. Way ahead of my FlordaPrince, as the name implies. Second year in the garden. I left approximately fifty fruit on the tree, and culled the rest. I'm always astonished how prolific and quick peaches are.

One of my plums. It went in the ground at the same time as the peach (above). Much slower growth rate, but it looks ready to bear (relatively) heavily this year, probably twenty-five fruit.

I nursed this Osteospermum through the summer, in a large pot. It's very large now (three feet in diameter) and loaded with this lovely blooms.

First squash should bloom in a couple of days. Slick-Pik from Johnny's.

A bit of my new, front-yard bed.

Front yard gardening...

2011-02-26T14:28:00.001-05:00

Here's a better picture of my new, front bed. I've already started doing what I swore I wouldn't--tearing out brassicas and salad greens to make room for pepper and tomato seedlings...

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.

Permaculture in the Florida Backyard Garden

2011-02-25T10:06:00.003-05:00

What isn't in this slideshow? Apples, blueberries, peaches, onions, lettuce, cabbage, collards, chard, broccoli, peas... The slideshow is best viewed full screen...

How quickly the Central Florida garden grows

2011-02-25T09:45:00.002-05:00

My new, front bed today. This half of the garden has onions, mache, turnips, carrots, lettuce, and cabbage.

The garden one month ago, after I'd planted the seeds and transferred in a few seedlings.

The garden in late December, as I was digging it out.

beans, tomatoes, blooms...

2011-02-22T09:00:00.001-05:00

My pole beans are up, my tomatoes are in the ground, and my peppers are up to bat. Apple, peach, plum and blueberries are all blooming.

Spring garden...

2011-02-20T16:10:00.001-05:00

A couple weeks early, I've planted squash, tomatoes, melons, pole beans, & cucumbers in the garden. I need to get my peppers in the ground, but the ones I started long ago are all still so small... I guess they still have a full week before March 1, my typical spring-garden planting date.

It's warm and sunny out there. A bit dry, but nothing out of the ordinary for our springs.

A quick note...

2011-02-12T12:11:00.001-05:00

A warm week ahead, so, several weeks earlier than in the past, I planted two short rows of pole beans (McCaslan and Fortex). I had to harvest some collards to make room, but I got plenty of greens. Pole beans are up there with sweet potatoes when it comes to ease-to-yield ratio. And they take up very little space.

Tomato seeds that I planted weeks ago, and that I kept on a heating pad in the window for over a week, have finally germinated. They're weeks behind where they should be. After some damping-off and curious squirrels were done with my first batch of tomato seedlings, I think I have maybe five "big" plants left. (And by big I mean six inches tall... so, way too small.) But my decision to sow cucumber and squash a couple of weeks early has paid off--I've already "up-potted" them once, and they're ready to transplant directly into the ground tomorrow, or sometime early next week when I have a spare minute.

Peach, plum and blueberries are in full bloom. Nasturtiums are starting to run all over. Pansies are very happy with the cold nights and warm, sunny days.

Munching on snap peas, turnips, salad greens, carrots, radishes, beets, anything and everything green, broccoli...

Spring!

2011-02-12T12:03:00.001-05:00

beets!

2011-02-10T20:50:00.002-05:00

A great beet season.

fruit trees @ lowes

2011-01-23T08:05:00.000-05:00

A friend asked me about peach trees at Lowes and chill hours. Here's my answer.

chill hours are a complex calculation--essentially, amount of time that it's "cold" in an area, under 45°, although duration of the cold, and its severity, are very important. (so, one long stretch equals more chill hours than several short stretches of sub-40° temps and a few hours at 22° means a lot more than a few hours at 32°.) anyway, the measure matters when it comes to deciduous flowering/fruiting trees--chill hours are directly related to flowers and fruiting during the next growing season. over the past decade we've averaged something like 300 hours in our part of volusia county, though the standard deviation has been pretty high. some winters we get 150 some we get 650. (here's what i've written about it.)
even if we don't receive enough chill hours, that doesn't mean a tree won't produce the next season, but production will be suppressed. it's a threshold number--more than X chill hours in a season is optimal.
350 hours is really the outside number i'd look for here in our area. most of my trees have fewer than 200; my flordaprince, for instance, requires only 150. but i think there's probably a tradeoff--these trees have been chosen for their ability to produce fruit in an area that is not entirely appropriate for stone-fruit production, and my guess is that a tree with 350 chill hours, all things held equal, produces tastier fruit.
since you have a LOT of space (you could put 30 trees in your front yard, easily!), i recommend buying the flordaking they have at lowes. they looked like really healthy trees. my only reservation: i don't know what rootstock they used, and i don't think it's indicated anywhere. rootstock is incredibly important when it comes to nematodes, which may or may not be an issue where you live. that's why, ultimately, i choose to buy my trees from JUST FRUITS & EXOTICS, where i know for sure they've chosen the right rootstock and done a good job with the union. but the trees are more than twice as expensive for smaller trees.

Seasonal Vegetable and Fruit Guide for Central Florida

2011-01-17T12:32:00.006-05:00

A rainy MLK day has put me to thinking about vegetable gardening planning. People write me all the time asking when they should plant seeds or set out transplants. It's far more complex than up north, where there's a flurry of activity in early spring, and then a waiting game. For me, Florida has four seasonal vegetable gardens: A Spring Garden (full of summer vegetables), a Summer Garden (tropical vegetables), a Fall Garden (a shortened version of the Spring Garden, and one I often omit), and a Winter Garden (frost-proof vegetables).

Gardening is very, very local stuff. Thirty miles or so north of here (north of highway 40) is a completely different zone, and forty miles south of here (somewhere south of Melbourne) begins a much more tropical zone with many fewer freezes, historically speaking. So, my thoughts here are pertinent for a very narrow band of Central Florida--roughly the I-4 corridor, broadly conceived. St. Augustine to Tampa.

These are optimal planting times for broad categories of plants. I say optimal because I hardly ever manage to get my act together sufficiently to meet these dates--seeds aren't ordered, or they don't germinate, or I don't have space in the garden. But, anyway, this post is mostly for me, to set some goals for future seasons based on five years of gardening and thinking about these things. Not long, all things considered. I'll start in the middle, where all good stories begin.

August 15: The Florida Summer Garden is still going strong: Cassava, sweet potatoes, roselle, hot peppers, lima beans and yard-long beans, peanuts, okra, and trombone squash (Cuccuzi) are all still producing. But mid-August is the right time to sow your Winter Garden staples: Cruciferous/brassicas like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, collards, as well as beets, chard (which is like spinach only it tastes good), and maybe turnips. (Despite everything you've ever read, beets transplant just fine.) Maybe it's a little early to try lettuce seeds, but they're cheap, so go ahead a sow a row or a pot of them for transplant later. (I've found lettuce to be somewhat picky when it comes to germination temperatures and conditions: If I sow too early, they don't sprout, either because of temperature, soil moisture, or various fungi that thrive. If I sow too late, they take forever to germinate.) My gardening friend Christine said she planted carrots mid-August and that they did great--much earlier than I've done it, but, hey, it's just seeds.

If you want to do a Fall Garden, now's the time to sow your heat and disease tolerant tomatoes and peppers. I rarely put in a Fall Garden since I'm so busy in August; what's more, I don't really want to eat fresh tomatoes in December, and too often, my tomatoes start to really produce the very week that we get our first big cold front... too much frustration with too little satisfaction. Maybe if I lived forty miles south, it would be worthwhile.

In the fruit department, August means persimmons, chestnuts, grapes, and bananas.

~~October 1:~~ Mid-Late September: The sweet potatoes and peanuts I planted in my Summer Garden in mid-June take around 110 days to mature, so most of the Summer Garden stuff should be ready for harvest now through mid-October. Limas and yard-longs are declining. Everything is suffering from fungal issues. Time for general garden cleanup, spread a yard or two of compost, wait a week, and then transplant your large brassica and lettuce seedlings from mid-August into the garden. Don't forget a row of onions (short day onions!) planted densely, a row of carrots, some potatoes, turnips, and a row of peas. Mulch and sit back. It's still hot out there. My traditional date for harvesting sweet potatoes is October 15.

January 1: Start tomatoes, peppers, eggplants for transplanting on March. You want large, vigorous seedlings to go into the ground as soon as the weather becomes consistently warm and the cold fronts have passed. This means protecting them from temperatures below 35°. Germination will be slow. (You could start cucumber, melon and squash seeds now, but I never have... they grow so quickly that I doubt it's worth sowing them much before the end of January... But if you have space or a greenhouse, why not?)

The Winter Garden is in full production: Brassicas and lettuce mostly, but sweet peas should be producing if the winter hasn't been too cold. Onions can be thinned and used as scallions. Beets, turnips and radishes should be large and completely indifferent to cold spells. Anything green and leafy thrives this time of the year, especially if you got them into the ground early and they are large. Sow the peas every couple of weeks so that by mid-February, when things have warmed up, you have tall, thick rows of peas. The potatoes will get burned with every freeze, but they come back. Start more broccoli and cauliflower to replace declining plants. If you have the space and the organizational skills, you can rotate into your garden brassicas all winter long, remembering that by May they won't be producing very well. That means the last round of broccoli and cauliflower should go in the garden as seedlings no later than the beginning of February. Remember to sow lettuce every few weeks--I use window boxes, and then transplant the seedlings when they're an inch or two.

This year, with the coldest December on record, I haven't lost anything in my garden, even though I didn't bother with blankets. Several nights of 21° or 22°. The peas got burned, and the potatoes suffered, but everything else came through with only minor damage. Of course after a week of below-freezing nights, the growth rate on everything slows down to a crawl.

So far as fruits go, it's high season for citrus and strawberries. Mid-January is the perfect time to put in new fruit trees.

March 1: As winter ends, I resist the temptation to re-sow winter crops in the sunniest, best spots in my garden clear, leaving space for the tomato, peppers and eggplant seedlings that I started in January. The Spring Garden in Florida is filled with what northerners would call summer crops. Our "summer" lasts from the beginning of March to the middle of June--much shorter than the May to October growing season up north. Our days are furthermore much shorter (30° of latitude makes a huge diurnal difference), and the conditions are often very dry. So we Florida gardeners have to be really organized in order to get good tomato crops: large transplants by the first of March 1.

You can still harvest winter crops--last year I cut my last broccoli head in early May--but don't bother resowing them. Lettuce tends to bolt quickly, but I still manage to grow some heat-tolerant varieties until the weather turns really hot in late May. If you've got the space, small potatoes (like Russian bananas and fingerlings) can be planted in a sandy, sunny spot. They take maybe six weeks to produce a small harvest.

I wait until the first hot week of March to sow my pole beans--otherwise they rot or get rust. I tend to replace peas with beans this time of the year: The peas are slowing down and will burn out soon, and the beans will grow up the strings to replace them.

March is the time to start sweet potato slips: I stick a couple of sweet potatoes I harvested the previous October in a nursery pot full of pine mulch and a little compost and let them run all over. A good time to start roselle, too, if you're going to grow it.

The first week of March is also a great time to direct-sow watermelons. I had tremendous success with Asian-hybrid icebox watermelons from Evergreen Seeds last year. They can be sown at the tops of rows of winter crops, and their vines guided to run down the rows. By the time they need more space (and start to root at nodes) your winter vegetables will be ready to pull.

The only fruit I know that ripens in March is the loquat. There are a few selected cultivars out there, but the wildings that people grow as shade/ornamental trees produce bushels of fruit. I like to eat them out of hand, but they're even better made into butters and jams. The peach, plum, persimmon and blueberry plants are all in full bloom.

May 1: The height of the Spring Garden. I've harvested my first tomatoes, peaches and blueberries at the beginning of May and look forward to weeks of great fruit and veg. My favorite time of the year. It's hot, dry, but comfortable. Winds are dying down so I can fish.Windows are open, and the garden's full of flowers and vegetables.

June 15: I think of June 15 as the end of the Spring Garden and beginning of the Summer Garden. Some tomatoes, particularly the small-fruited ones, will continue to produce until the beginning of July. But most tomatoes need several hours of 70° or lower temperatures to set fruit, so they generally stop producing around mid-June for me. I always pull my last tomatoes out on July 1, my birthday.

The Summer Garden is an African/Tropical garden--now is the time to plant or transplant cow peas, lima beans, cassava, sweet potatoes, peanuts, hot peppers, Trombone squash, luffa, Okinawan spinach, eggplants, chaya, and roselle. All of these should be planted by the end of the third week of June. (Hot peppers are year-round plants for me, if they are container-grown and protected from cold. I had several three-year-old plants that died last year in the severe cold snaps. Generally best to sow them in January with the sweet peppers, but transplant them into containers rather than the ground.)

I had great luck with watermelons planted in March last year--they produced a harvest in July and another fruit set in August that was destroyed by raccoons before I could harvest them. Peanuts are dead easy, pretty, and good for your garden. Buy a package of green peanuts from the grocer and stick them where ever there's a bare spot. Nothing beats the production of sweet potatoes in Florida. I have harvested fifty pounds from a small plot.

I think of June through August as a time to let my garden grow wild. I make sure it's watered during our droughty periods, and I fertilize regularly, but, let's face it, Florida can be pretty miserable this in late summer. Better to spend my free time fishing in the Lagoon or working in the cool comfort of my office.

Later, rinse, repeat... August sowing/reaping is right around the corner.

Seeds planted today

2011-01-16T20:32:00.001-05:00

A quick note... Among many other things this weekend, I planted:

Pack I (6 seeds per item)

1) Johnnys Hybrid Slick Pik squash

2) Tien Chin Long (Asian hybrid cuke)

3) Suyo Long (another long Asian hybrid cuke from Johnnys)

4) Tasty Jade (cuke)

5) Shishito Peppers

6) Sweet Treat Hybrid Peppers (Tomato Growers)

Pack II (6 seeds per item)

1) Sweet Cayenne (Tomato Growers)

2) Tacoma stans

3, 4, 5) Zahara Zinnias (a mix called "Raspberry Lemonade")

6) saved seed from my Liatris, which bloomed very well this year

seeds

2011-01-11T10:13:00.002-05:00

Planted today in my Parks seed starter:

1. Bella Rosa tomato

2. Mountain Magic tomato

3. Virgina Sweets tomato

4. Applause tomato

5. Sungold tomato

6. Little Fingers eggplant

7. Baker's Creek Cherry from Miles tomato

8. (ABC) Luna Hibiscus

8 (DEF)/9. Maverick Scarlet Geranium

I also transplanted 15 tomato seedlings from the end of November into Styrofoam cups-- Sungold, Tomande, Goji & Jetsetter.

New garden bed...

2011-01-09T17:39:00.002-05:00

My new bed--seven rows, six feet each. I spent yesterday morning shoveling two cubic yards of compost and topsoil, filling in the bed. (I'd barrowed out fifteen loads of sand for another project, which is, apparently, about two cubic yards!) I spent $40 on the soil amendments at Volusia Shed. That gave me about ten or so inches deep of good soil to work with. I mounded the rows another few inches, and threw the old mulch into the furrows. So now a good deep strata of soil in the rows--more than I've ever planted in. We'll see if the trouble and expense (minimal as it was) were worth it.

I transplanted seedlings of parsley, green cabbages, collards, leaf lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower; and sowed turnips, carrots, cos lettuce, and mache. Sprinkled some pine straw, since I try never to leave soil bare. The hose and wand sprinkler are a temporary fix, until I finish extending my "irrigation system" into this new area. (My irrigation system is microdrip connected to PVC and spigot timers.)

The space is roughly ten feet by eight. In that space I fit a dozen parsley plants, twenty-odd cabbages, a dozen collards, half a dozen each broccoli and cauliflower, god knows how many lettuce seedlings, four feet each of turnip and carrot seeds (so, say, twenty-five each), and then some various other greens (the cos and mache). When I add pots of herbs and some window boxes between the rows, I'll have quite a lot of veg in a tiny area. Next week, I'm adding two new plums and another persimmon (all from Just Fruits) in the east side of the bed. If there's room, I'll probably transplant my Kaffir lime from its pot--it's proved itself quite frost tolerant, despite indications otherwise. It has half a dozen limes on it, and though I've left it out a few times in sub-35°, it not only hasn't had any visible damage, it's kept its limes. (Yeah, I know, you're supposed to eat the leaves, but the limes are very juicy and have a coconut-tropical zip to them.)

Also planted my ranunculus and freesia bulbs... More general garden cleanup. Now, a nice Campari and orange juice and loafing, listening to bad French pop...

Cauliflower

2011-01-07T09:35:00.000-05:00

A note to myself: Snow Crown Cauliflower (Johnnys). High quality, smallish heads, but very quick to mature. Planted tight--maybe 12" center in raised row of compost. Sowed in cells Oct 1, transplanted 3rd week of Oct; harvest ready Jan 1 after exceptionally cold December. Could have started them earlier--next year, Sept 15.

Growing beans in Florida

2011-01-07T08:45:00.000-05:00

My two cents.

Forwarded conversation
Subject: beans and misc
------------------------

From:
Date: Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 10:17 PM
To: "centralfloridagardener@gmail.com" <centralfloridagardener@gmail.com>

I have tried with no luck over the past 9 months to grown bush and pole beans. The bush beans keep drying up into little twigs and the pole beans got attacked by black aphids. Do I just suck or am I overlooking some trick. Particularly with the bush beans. Seriously, 4 different plantings, different places, etc. All germinate fine but then die.

Also, what date should I use for my frost free date when calculating when to start seedlings inside?

Thanks,

----------
From: Central Florida Gardener <centralfloridagardener@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 8:45 AM
To:

well, i plant my beans when i see the first week of warm (80+) weather predicted... whenever that is. beans need a lot of warmth to grow and there's no use starting them early. i get lots of production from my beans in april, may. i then usually switch over to lima beans. i have only ever grown fortex (pole), rattlesnake (pole), and willow-leaf limas (pole from southern exposure). you might have luck with other varieties, but these are the only ones i have used.

they need SOME organic material and fertilizer, but not much. too much of anything just makes them very green, lush--but no beans.

my guesses for why things haven't worked: 1)not enough CONSISTENT moisture. water EVERY DAY. this is not up north. our soil drains very quickly. use a heavy layer of mulch. 2) timing; the best time of the year is spring. some people plant a fall crop, but i have better uses for my space, moreover there's lots of fungal issues in the fall and i don't use any chemicals in my garden. 3) wrong variety. try the ones i've listed. 4) wrong spot. Full sun is a LOT of sun in the summer. a little afternoon shade is probably a good thing. I think the best exposure is 6 hours of morning sun and then partial shade the rest of the day. that's florida. we have strong sun.

finally, i assume you're asking about spring tomatoes and peppers, since those are the only two crops that you need to worry about. start your seeds NOW (last week, really). nurse them along. as early as the end of feb, transfer them to the garden.

good luck!

Cauliflower!

2011-01-06T09:53:00.002-05:00

First head of cauliflower this morning. I have six or seven heads out
there, all of them ready to pick. In the past, I've made the error of picking heads too
late: The cauliflower goes all "ricey" with an unpleasantly fine
texture. It's still very usable at that stage, if you puree it, but of
course it's best to pick it while the lobes are still large and tight. So, I need to figure out how to use a lot of cauliflower... and soon.

Unlike broccoli, cauliflower doesn't produce additional heads after the first harvest.
I need to clear this row and transplant my cabbage seedlings into it.
We still have until at least mid-March to grow cruciferous crops...

We'll make cauliflower and hazelnut sandwiches from Nancy Silverton's

excellent book, The Sandwich Book.

Rain!

2011-01-06T09:06:00.001-05:00

Our first major rain event in months. At least two and a half inches here in West Volusia. I'm sure it's a record amount. We needed it.

Detroit!

2011-01-06T09:04:00.001-05:00

Red beets. First beet of the year. Tennis-ball sized. I got these as seedlings back in October from a local organic co-op in Orange City. For supper tonight: Thinly-sliced red beets, green apples and sharp cheddar on a pizza. Sounds odd, but it's hard to beet...

a reader's question about cucurbits

2011-01-05T09:13:00.001-05:00

Forwarded conversation
Subject: cucurbits
------------------------
Hello,

I am a shareholder with a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) down here in Osceola County. We have tried at different times of the year to plant cucurbits in our garden. The various varieties include cucumbers (Diva and Genuine), Zucchini (Plato), Summer Squash (Yellow Crookneck and Summer Zephyr), Butternut squash, Acorn Squash and small pumpkins. The plants all do well flowering well and sometimes even producing enough for our shareholders to have one or two in their boxes for a couple of weeks. I am amazed and bewildered at how little production we have when most of my experience has resulted in so much produce that you can't give it away for the abundance of it all. That however has been my "northern" experience. Down here, there must be a specific season or growing condition that we have missed, althought the strange weather conditions of the last couple of years have definitely impacted our production, I wondered if you had any suggestions. I liked the one about the microperf plastic bags to protect from insect infestations.

We have had great flowering and healthy plants in two forty-five foot rows and not had more than a couple of dozen fruit to harvest in a week. I thought perhaps we might need to "assist" in the pollination, but that is a tedious process I would like to avoid if possible. Is there something specific to Florida growing that I should know?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

for what it's worth, my response:

cathy--i'm in a rush, but here's my two cents: 1) people VERY often make the error of thinking that lots of blooms should produce lots of fruit. but cucurbits flower a lot, much earlier than they are ready to produce. think of it this way: generally speaking, the volume green matter equals the production capacity. (so, a three-foot cuke vine isn't going to produce many cukes). that's why the plants get so big, and they take a VERY long time to come into production. our problem in florida is that we have only, maybe, 6 or 8 weeks of prime cuke/squash weather. (most cukes, unless specially bred, won't set fruit when the nights are warm, over, say, 74°--they need a cool period in the evening to fertilize. let's not even talk about the bugs!) we'll never get the harvests you got up north.

what this tells us: we must get those cukes in EARLY. beginning of march, large seedlings IN THE GROUND. i've only ever had luck with cukes when i've gotten them in very early. plant fast-growing, disease-resistant hybrids. be VERY liberal with water and fertilizer--unlike up north, where cucurbits are grown as least-hassle plants.

finally, consider metki squash, trombone squash, luffa, and armenian cukes. i've also heard some people have had tremendous luck with asian hybrids--i'm going to try some this year.

happy planting!

Warnings for Inland Volusia County, Florida : Weather Underground

2011-01-01T22:13:00.000-05:00

Warnings for Inland Volusia County, Florida : Weather Underground: "Statement as of 8:57 am EST on January 1, 2011

... Record cold average temperature set at Melbourne for
month of December...

a record cold average temperature of 54.0 degrees was set at
Melbourne for the month of December in 2010. This breaks the
previous record of 56.2 degrees set in December of 1989."

New garden bed

2010-12-26T14:55:00.001-05:00

It doesn't look like much here, but this hole is the start of a new, small garden bed. It measures ten feet by eight feet, and I've dug out a cubic yard of sandy soil--roughly the top foot of "soil." I'll back my truck up to it, and fill the bed to the top with mushroom compost. The area gets a lot of sun in the spring and summer, but this time of the year it's shaded out by my house and the large live oaks in the front yard. It will give me some space for rotating crops from season to season.

I've got a bunch of cabbages, collards, and broccoli ready to plant, once I get the bed finished.

Brrr....

2010-12-26T08:48:00.001-05:00

Our average December high in this part of Volusia county is the mid- to low-70s. It's reached or exceeded the average only three times this month. We've set one record low, and several record "low-highs."

Freeze damage in the garden is on par with last year: Bananas killed to the ground (several were at bearing stage for next year--three year cycle in my garden). All tropical crops are dead or burned to the ground. Blueberry leaves are bright red. Cruciferous crops are fine, but growing slowly. Peas were damaged by our several days of low-20s, but might recover when the weather warms. My poor tomato seedlings are hanging on, but they haven't grown a centimeter since they sprouted. They'll likely succumb to disease, since they can't "grow out" of any problems.

A late-December update

2010-12-18T10:54:00.001-05:00

Late-December harvest... the first turnip of the season was
fantastic--sweet and crunchy, no heat. It would be a pity to cook
them... Citrus is sweet and escaped the freeze. But I spent the
morning whacking the frost-killed and damaged vegetation after a week
of record-cold temperatures.

Freeze & more winter sowing...

2010-12-07T10:44:00.000-05:00

Pretty hard freeze last night. My guess is it got to 28° last night here, on the highest point in DeLand. Maybe a degree colder. This morning at 8:30am, my microsprinkler droplets were still freezing on the lettuce... So much for my prediction of a warm winter, at least so far. My tomato and pepper seedlings are safe indoors, on the fridge, out of the path of feline devastation.

We've got more freezing temperatures headed here tonight.

This morning after a long, cold, run (I never did warm up the entire time), I planted some seeds from my Johnnys' order: celery, cabbage, kale and mache.