Gardening in Central Florida

Still alive...

2009-12-09T10:04:00.002-05:00

A very busy time of the year for me, so light blogging until after Christmas. The usual cool/dry season things going on in the garden: broccoli, radishes, lettuces, collards, cauliflower, carrots, potatoes, peas, beets and turnips. Ran out of seed... made an order at Johnnys:

SKU:	Product	Quantity	Price	Ext. Price

23010	Snow Crown (F1)-Mini	1	$2.95	$2.95

281210	Blue Wind (F1)-Mini	1	$2.95	$2.95

223910	Windsor (F1)-Mini	1	$2.95	$2.95

227810	Fiero (F1)-Mini	1	$2.95	$2.95

2320G10	Totem (F1) (OG)-Mini	1	$3.95	$3.95

70610	Hakurei (F1)-Mini	1	$2.95	$2.95

202810	Javelin (F1)-Mini	1	$2.95	$2.95

64011	Slick Pik™ YS 26 (F1)-Packet	1	$2.95	$2.95

Tomande tomatoes

2009-11-14T12:20:00.003-05:00

I'm enjoying my tomato salad (tomatoes, salt, Sherry vinegar, olive oil, chopped Trinidad Yellow Seasoning pepper sprinkled atop), thinking to myself, DAMN that's a fine tomato. Tomande from Tomato Growers Supply. Very vigorous, very disease tolerant, set fruit at ninety degrees and is setting more at sixty degrees. Quick to ripen, too--maybe two weeks behind my cherries. Dark green shoulders. Sweet but a nice acidity to it, too. Honest, tomato flavor. Keep your heirlooms. I'll stick with this hybrid!

I've also been taking a box of Yellow Submarine tomatoes to work with me every day. Very sweet when completely ripe, nicer when a little greener. Thin enough skin. Good vigor, early, open-pollinated to boot.

Crimson Crisp Radish

2009-11-17T08:55:00.002-05:00

I may never go back to open-pollinated radishes. Quick, perfectly round, appropriately crimson, and not a single split radish in today's harvest. i sowed 'em thick, picked the big 'uns this week, and left the rest to bulb. I've also have some Cherriette Hybrid radishes going in a windowbox, which is a great way to grow a bunch of radishes. They love a rough and quick-draining mix, which makes sense, inasmuch as they were bred to form root structure. With cool weather, it's not too hard to keep the moisture reasonably even.

The new wave of urban farming (and fresh food from small spaces!) | Grist

2009-11-12T21:00:00.001-05:00

Pretty smart advice here for the apartment-bound and even for those (like me!) with some space but not a lot... I agree completely with his advice for growing potatoes in pots. Very productive...

The new wave of urban farming (and fresh food from small spaces!) | Grist:
"In Fresh Food From Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener’s Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting, author R. J. Ruppenthal turns a seemingly anti-urban idea—that farming has to be done outside, with a red barn and rolling fields of wheat—on its head. Because urbanites, too, can grow their own food indoors, in cramped spaces,"

Potting Mix

2009-11-12T14:32:00.001-05:00

My new potting mix is a 5::2::1 pine fine::perlite::peat mix. It’s really doing the trick for me… I’m in the midst of repotting all my plants—rinsing off the roots, trimming them aggressively, and moving them into this new mix. The results are impressive. I just bought a Siphon Mixer - Fertilizer Injector off of eBay ($17 delivered!) that will allow me to fertilize every time I water.

Dogwoods in November...

2009-11-11T09:54:00.000-05:00

Funny thing is that these dogwoods NEVER bloom in the spring. I'd always assumed it was the lack of chill hours, but that hypothesis seems to be proved wrong when they bloom with virtually no chilling... in November...

A quick update in pictures

2009-11-08T10:01:00.000-05:00

Calendula. Probably my favorite winter flower. It'll bloom its head off all winter and spring. I have ten of these going in undersized pots. A great way to add a spot of color and cheer to any bleak area of the garden. These are from saved seed.

Tuscan kale and broccoli.

I was visiting a friend's garden in August, and on a whim I grabbed a single spent zinnia flower from her garden. When I found the flower in my pocket later that day, I tossed it into an empty big pot in my garden. I swear I think every single seed germinated--I've been pricking seedlings all fall long and giving them away to friends and family, transfering them to pots, etc. Very interesting that a single flower produced so much diversity--there are (in addition to the pinks and orange here) a couple bright yellow zins and one deep red one. But mostly pumpkin orange and carnation pink. These seem to be pretty mildew-resistant, to boot.

Cool season has arrived... November in the garden

2009-11-03T08:57:00.003-05:00

Too much going on in life and the garden for a good "garden happenings" post... Cool weather has finally arrived after the hottest October on record.

Harvesting lettuces, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers... getting ready for the first radishes of the season. Zinnias, calendula, pentas, and Lions Mane (Leonotis menthifolia) and marigolds are blooming. Cool season herbs are thriving and basil is declining. Picked my last roselle and ripped out the canes. Melons have been a failure in the fall. Too much mildew. Planting beets, peas, more lettuce, chard, turnips, and carrots. My broc and cauliflower should be heading up sometime soon. First batch of greens is due next week.

Trying a new seedling mix: 6 parts perlite, 3 parts peat, 1 part dyna-rok. Some lime and micronutrients to round it out. Continue to plant a lot of pots and window-boxes with Al's 5-1-1 mix (pine fines/perlite/peat). What a great mix! It's remarkable how quickly repotted plants respond to it.

Roselle

2009-10-25T12:23:00.000-04:00

Waste...

2009-10-19T17:52:00.001-04:00

I thought this article in yesterday's Times was modestly provocative. The problem and its solution are not, I think, clearly identified in the article.

Recycling Goes From Less Waste to Zero Waste [...]Though born of idealism, the zero-waste philosophy is now propelled by sobering realities, like the growing difficulty of securing permits for new landfills and an awareness that organic decay in landfills releases methane that helps warm the earth’s atmosphere. [...]Americans are still the undisputed champions of trash, dumping 4.6 pounds per person per day, according to the E.P.A.’s most recent figures. More than half of that ends up in landfills or is incinerated.

Better recycling is important, but it seems like a Chamber of Commerce response to the problem--it's inoffensive and it leaves us feeling like, by gosh, I've done something good for the "environment".

For most problems, however, the solution to a given problem is to do less of whatever is causing the problem. If my problem is that I drink too much gin, the answer is not "take up smoking." The answer is, stop drinking so much gin. (It's not always so easy. A problem like "I'm stuck in a loveless marriage" involves solutions of a different sort.)

The answer to the problem if waste is not recycling because recycling didn't get us into the problem. Succinctly put, we buy too much crap. (Why we buy too much crap is another interesting question, but not apropos here.) Moreover, most of that crap is made of nasty plastic, and it's manufactured overseas. I never see the god awful mess (environmental and social) created by the manufacturing of my crap. When we tire after a few minutes playing with our new plastic piece of crap, we toss it into the waste bin, which every Thursday is conveniently picked up and moved somewhere I cannot see it, along with everyone else's crap.

The solution, then, is not "recycle better" (though that is part of a possible solution). The solution is, buy less crap.

............. Let me add that there's another solution to certain problems: Doing the opposite of what causes the problem can sometimes solve it. Sloth is undone by industry. So, not only should we buy less crap, but we should seek (in Wendell Berry's formulation) to become producing households, not just consuming ones. In our household, aside from producing a modest amount of the food we eat, we produce children, and take sole responsibility for their education. We produce much of our own entertainment (friends, music and reading) and try to ignore most of the mass-produced kind (no television). Finally, I guess, I produce most of the animal flesh that we consume...

These are modest things, and I am humbly aware of how much more I could do. But they are a start to the solution.

Blech.

2009-10-15T21:52:00.002-04:00

My poor winter crops! They'll make it through, but it's been tough going for brassicas, lettuces, etc. Surprisingly good tomato set, though, despite the warm nights. Really a dreadful October so far...

NWS climate report.

Climate...Vero Beach set a new record high at 94 degrees today
breaking the old record of 90 degrees last set in 2002.


Orlando and Vero Beach also have extended their streaks of
consecutive days with high temperatures 90 degrees or higher to 10
and 11 days respectively which are new records for the month of October.

The radishes and peas I sowed over the weekend are already up, so the cooler weather that's headed our way is particularly welcome.

I notice that this is post number six-hundred.

A quick update in words...

2009-10-10T15:34:00.006-04:00

It's HOT and DRY out there. I wartered my lawn for the first time since, well... probably May. My brassicas and chard are all doing OK, but suffering a bit in the afternoon. I ripped out all my summer beans (yard-longs, limas and cowpeas), spread a few baskets of mushroom compost, and planted a row of Super Sugar Snap Peas, and a mixed row of radishes (Crimson Crunch), carrots (Sugarsnax) and beets (Red Ace). All these seeds are hybrids--I decided this year to try them out, see if they did better for me. In particular I hope that their extra vigor helps with the poor seedling yield I've had on all my winter crops when they're planted during our hot and muggy late fall. Beets in particular can be vexing--I've had to resow every year to fill in the gaps.

Tomande and Yellow Submarine tomatoes are doing well. Peppers, especially Sweet Spot, are continuing to produce nicely, as they have all summer. Leonotis menthifolia (Lion's Mane) has finally kicked into bloom. Orlando Tangelos are coloring up a bit and, oddly, my grapes have produced a second (sparse) harvest. (I wonder if this is normal? They are ripening now, and should be ripe by November.) I cut my banana stalk a couple days ago and it's yellowing up quickly. Zinnias are getting ready to bloom. That's about it...

Change is coming...

2009-10-12T11:58:00.001-04:00

Gut Check: Here's the Meat of the Problem - washingtonpost.com

2009-10-09T05:39:00.001-04:00

I agree... why are people so prickly when you suggest that, maybe, you know, eating too much meat is bad all around... It's bad for YOU, it's bad for the environment, and eating less is easy.

Gut Check: Here's the Meat of the Problem - washingtonpost.com: "But the result isn't funny at all: Two researchers at the University of Chicago estimated that switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading in your gas guzzler for a Prius (PDF). A study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that the average American would do less for the planet by switching to a totally local diet than by going vegetarian one day a week. That prompted Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to recommend that people give up meat one day a week to take pressure off the atmosphere. The response was quick and vicious. 'How convenient for him,' was the inexplicable reply from a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. 'He's a vegetarian.'

The visceral reaction against anyone questioning our God-given right to bathe in bacon has been enough to scare many in the environmental movement away from this issue. The National Resources Defense Council has a long page of suggestions for how you, too, can 'fight global warming.' As you'd expect, 'Drive Less' is in bold letters. There's also an endorsement for 'high-mileage cars such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids.' They advise that you weatherize your home, upgrade to more efficient appliances and even buy carbon offsets. The word 'meat' is nowhere to be found."

park's order

2009-10-07T12:33:00.000-04:00

Getting my winter and spring seeds in order... I've decided to try a bunch of hybrids-beets, carrots and radishes this year.

Radish Cherriette Hybrid
Radish April Cross Hybrid
Pea Super Sugar Snap
Carrot Sweetness II Hybrid

Tropical...

2009-10-07T09:36:00.001-04:00

Still working on understanding how to grow malanga (above). It's so tasty, so easy, but wow does it have a long season. I've decided it needs a 10 month season--which, given its persistent tubers, isn't as unlikely as it sounds. I just need the space to grow it.

Well, it feels like the tropics out there (minus the rain... BOY IS IT DRY!)... so, a tropical harvest of malanga, bananas, and roselle. I cut out most of my roselles a month ago because they hadn't started forming calyxes yet and I needed space for my cucumbers (yeah, the ones that got destroyed by stinkbugs...). Now I really regret having done that--the roselles are just covered in "berries." Ah,w ell, live and learn. Creating a long-lived annual/perennial vegetable bed should help solve this problem. The roselles were super easy to grow. Seeds available from ECHO.

Very quickly...

2009-09-28T09:53:00.003-04:00

Some random notes...

It's fall. We have a beautiful week on tap.
I will never again plant cukes in the fall. The stinkbugs did them in, quickly. I came out one morning to find no fewer than fifty on one plant. And the summer squash. Those, too, done in by the stinkers. I could spray them with Sevin, but I prefer not to spray my cukes.
I finally found a source for pine fines... about thirty minutes away, but right off of I4, so often enough I could stop by for a carload. $3 per forty-pound bag. Bolling Forest Products.
Cowpeas and yardlong beans are declining. That means I'll have room for some peas and potatoes in October.
Did a minor feed today.

Valley View Vineyards

2009-09-19T19:51:00.001-04:00

Valley View Vineyards. A really lovely area--"The Alps of Florida"! Located in the hills and valleys that make up the spine of Florida. Valley View has grapes, peaches, persimmons, chestnuts, figs, and pears. All you-pick. I picked a bag of pears, chestnuts and figs today for the whopping cost of $3. The chestnut trees were the real reason I headed down there, since I've never picked chestnuts before. I'm glad I brought my welders gloves! A few miles away, right next to the Yalaha Bakery, we found a you-pick blueberry and blackberry farm. That means that next May we'll be able to pick peaches, blueberries and blackberries all in the same area. Road trip!

Just Fruits order...

2009-09-17T10:44:00.003-04:00

I bought from Just Fruits and Exotics...

EARLIGRANDE (peach) New for 2009! Yellow fleshed, small to medium clingstone peach that ripens before all the rest. You'll be enjoying these tasty beauties two weeks before any other variety. Ripens mid April. Self-pollinating. 200 chill hours. Zone 9.
GULF BEAUTY (plum) Still another University of Florida patented release (USPP 11224). Richly sweet, small, red fruit. Heavy producer with excellent flavor. Needs a Gulf series pollinator. 250 chill hours. Ripens early May. Zones 8B-9.
GULF BLAZE (plum) Patented University of Florida release (USPP 10880). Medium-sized, deep ruby-red fruit with yellow-red center. Excellent flavor. Needs a Gulf series pollinator. 250 chill hours. Ripens early to mid-May. Zones 8B-9.

Brassicas in the garden...

2009-09-15T17:48:00.000-04:00

Crowder stew...

2009-09-15T10:29:00.000-04:00

Swallowtail...

2009-09-15T08:30:00.004-04:00

My order from Swallowtail... Winter is the only time I sow annuals and perennials (which I usually grow as annuals). My friend Bill has put on some great displays of direct-sowed flower beds in spring. He's also scattered alyssum on paths and let it grow up amongst the grass and weeds... it was stunning.

POPPY, CALIFORNIA--SINGLE MIX
POPPY, SHIRLEY--DOUBLE MIXED
WISHBONE FLOWER, CLOWN MIX
ALYSSUM, SNOW CRYSTALS
OBEDIENCE PLANT, CROWN OF SNOW
CANDYTUFT, SNOWFLAKE
MARIGOLD, ZENITH MIX
SNAPDRAGONS, SOLSTICE MIX
SNAPDRAGONS, SONNET WHITE
COSMOS, CANDY STRIPE

Another episode of Alison asks...

2009-09-13T19:55:00.001-04:00

Your Japanese cuke... has that been going all summer?

nope, i got it from a friend as a seedling about a month ago. but... it's very vigorous and has climbed a 6 foot string and is getting ready to run over the top of the trellis.

My organic plant protection book says that pickleworms can be fought by trellising because they only feed at ground level.

BULL! you could grow it in a locked safe and the (*%$(*^&%$ PICKLEWORM would find it... Hah. hah.

Since you grow everything up, you'd know! I found a Japanese Long cucumber, but it said nothing about pickleworm resistance.

so, i saw the first signs of the (*&DF(*& pickleworm on the plant... that means that the cukes are likely getting eaten up inside... but 1) it took them a LONG TIME to find them and 2) the cukes are fast growing. so, i plan on using newspaper and paper bags to deal with the worm.

Right now I've done 3 plantings of a pickling cucumber and everything has gotten completely eaten. There appear to be eggs all over it, black eggs laid in clumps.

are you sure they're not aphids? aphids are REALLY bad now. they look like eggs... only they're tiny little bugs. check again. the other active bug right now is the stinkbug. their eggs are pretty iridescent globs.

No fruit to eat, but the foliage is all but gone. Would those be pickleworms?

I couldn't find a description of their eggs anywhere.

nope. this is what the worm looks like: http://centralfloridagarden.blogspot.com/2007/05/organic-control-of-pickleworms.html

I've had luffa in all summer and they have shown no interest in that. They've also stayed away from my watermelons which were planted at the same time as the first round of cukes. I'm baffled. About to rip them out and give up on fall cukes... what do you think?

rip 'em out. here's the info for the cukes that have done so well for me now: www.evergreenseeds.com Japanese Cucumber Hybrid Tasty Queen.

Your yardlong beans... when did you get them in the ground?

hmmm.. maybe a month ago? not long ago.

We've had great success with red-seeded asparagus beans, but I've never tried a second planting in late spring/early summer.

if you got the space and seeds, why not try? they make good green compost material in any case, and don't need any inputs... just sun and rainwater.

They just pooped out with the corn. I'm wondering if the same variety will keep us in beans all summer if I just planted a second round. We got pretty tired of okra this summer. :->

i don't understand the combination "tired of" and "okra."

What do you do to cure your sweet potatoes? The research I've done suggests rather putsy temperature keeping that would frankly be impossible. I'm wondering if keeping them in a basket on the porch where there's no direct sun but still heat and humidity would be enough.

i keep mine all fall/winter long on the gazebo, on my wooden slat table. they can be kept for months with good airflow. i wouldn't keep them in a basket--that might reduce the airflow & risk rotting.

We're also not planning on harvesting all of them until December- would you suggest picking them earlier so we still have a fair amount of heat for the curing process?

keep them in the ground as long as you can... i harvested mine only b/c i needed the space. you can pick 'em and eat 'em right away... but if you want to keep them for a period, you do need to "cure" them... which means, essentially, dry them out a bit, which sweetens them and heals the skin blemishes from harvest, lowering their disposition to rot. curing them supposedly increases the sugar content, too, by reducing the amount of water in their cells. but, really, i eat them whenever. the keys are to NOT RINSE THEM, keep them dry, out of the sun. leave the sand clinging. when you're ready to eat, then wash them.

Bay Laurel

2009-08-30T07:51:00.005-04:00

Things I'm thinking of ordering from Bay Laurel...

To replace a couple of my southern highbush blueberries that have died:

SUNSHINE BLUE
SHARPBLUE

and...

Izu persimmon
4-N-1 LOW CHILL PLUM COMBO

sweet potato harvest

2009-09-12T21:08:00.001-04:00

I needed the space, so I harvested my batatas a little earlier than maybe I should have. There were some real lunkers in the mix, but plenty of medium sized ones and some smaller ones, too. The kids had fun, even in the rain.

OK, if you look at my fingertips you can see the tail of a Copper Skink that ran into my sandals as I was trying to dig the potatoes... I did a little dance and managed to extract it without harming it. I love these little skinks, finding them under leaves and in the mulch all the time.

My kinda failed malanga experiment. I transplanted the malanga on June 15. At the time they were little corms about the size of the smallest ones above. This is my "harvest" from two plants (out of half a dozen). So, in three months, one plant yielded one four-inch "potato" and a bunch of smaller ones. My guess is that they need at a minimum nine months in the ground to produce a malanga tuber large enough to be worth it... That's a long time to take up real estate in my tiny veg garden. Anyway, the whole experiment confirms my idea that I need a farily large, sunny spot where I can plant perennial vegetables like malanga, cassava, chaya, okinawan spinach... and things like papaya and hot peppers--low maintenance, not overly thirsty, sun-loving plants. I have a perfect spot, but right now it's part of one of my butterfly gardens in the front yard. So, I think I'll spend a couple weekends during the cool season clearing out that bed (it's heavily mulched with fabric), moving the plants (I have a perfect spot for a new butterfly garden), running PVC and enriching the bed. I'll probably grow some bananas and limas in that bed, too...

My sweet potato harvest--not bad for a ten-foot long row. There are several varieties there, including white japanese.