I need to get this portulaca

A quick update...

I had a Thursday an Friday off, and spent them fishing in Canaveral National Seashore and at Flagler Pier. I had only fair success, but enough to eat red drum and bluefish all weekend...

I found time to plant carrots and beets, run to Volusia Shed for half a cubic yard of potting soil, and do a bunch of garden clean-up. The weather has been unseasonably warm an dry, which from a gardener's perspective is ideal October weather.

My plants are going crazy...

Broccoli Rabe & geraniums from last week are up. Still waiting on the cilantro, dill & celery.

Five-Lined Southeastern Skink

My wife caught this blue-tailed beauty on film... The kids, predictably, went nuts over this guy.

Weekend bustling 'bout the garden...

I came home on Friday night to find (somewhat mysteriously) a box of strawberry plants on my doorstep -- three-hundred of them to be exact. I had contacted Ruby Mountain Nursery last week with an inquiry about their berries. It sounds like a great idea -- grow the berries at high altitude, far away from other strawberry plants (thus reducing the chances for viruses). Use minimal fungicides and almost no herbicides. Since it's so cold in La Jara, the plants have already had a good amount of winter chilling and flower bud development; they should produce earlier and grow more vigorously than plants grown in milder areas. Plus, he had commercial varieties that are hard for a home gardener to get. (I got Chandler (an old favorite), Strawberry Festival, and Winter Dawn.)

Anyway, I had contacted the grower last week, expressing interest and asking for ordering instructions. Next thing I know, the box is on by doorstep... (Two-hundred fifty of the plants went to Nize, my local sustainable grower. Fifty should be enough for my family.)

(For the Yankees reading this blog, in FLA we grow strawberries as annuals.)

I still don't know how I'm supposed to pay for the plants, but I guess the guy will send me an invoice. No complaints here, the plants were very nice, and I'm delighted to have plants this early in the season.

Anyway, lucky thing the weather on the coast was too bad for me to fish for reds. Instead, I spent a VERY HOT and humid day yesterday quickly preparing my beds (lots of mushroom compost, a two-inch layer of live-oak leaves, lots of cottonseed meal). I'll need to run the microsprinklers in the bed a bunch this week, with the hot weather we're predicted to have. I'm a bit worried about the plants, but they looked fine this morning. (Though by late afternoon they were again very wilty...)

I took the time, while I was hot and very sweaty, to go ahead and clean out my perennial bed. I pulled a diseased rosebush, ripped out a bunch of overgrown Alternanthera and weeded the backs of the beds. We had another inch of rain on Friday and Saturday. It's crazy how quickly weeds and mushrooms can grow here when the sun's a bit less intense and the ground's sodden.

Some relief is around the corner: This coming weekend the National Weather Service is predicting our first big "back-door front" pushing down from the Great Lakes. That should drop the temperature down to the low-eighties during the day and upper fifties at night... There will be much rejoicing in this household.

Tonight, while cooking my wife her birthday supper, I managed to plant geraniums ('Summer Showers' ivy mix and 'Ringo Deep Scarlet', both from Swallowtail), cilantro ('Delphino'), dill ('Dukat'), parsley ('Rezzemolo Gigante d'Italia'), cutting celery, and some Broccoli di Rapa.

"Tuscan Sun" Rose

I loved the color of this rose -- it's defined as an apricot/orange blend, but really, it's copper, plain and simple. It fades pretty quickly to a pale pink. You can see a blown blossom in the background of this photo. It's been a consistent bloomer, and trouble-free. Growing on Fortuniana. Purchased from the (now-defunct) Merry Gro rose company.

The accidental watermelon...

It never rains...

Three inches of rain on Monday night/Tuesday morning alone. I emptied the rain gauge at 7 this morning, and by the time I went to work around 9:30, it had already rained another half an inch... and by the time I got to work, it had started REALLY raining.

Arugula, lettuce and chard in my garden are all up. I'll be surprised if they don't have some fungal issues, though.

Burpee Seeds

Burpee was very prompt in delivering their seeds. I needed some cool-season veg seeds:

• Carrot Sweet Treat Hybrid (recommended on GW Florida Forum)
• Snap Pea Super Sugar Snap V.P.
• Radish Cherry Bomb II
• Detroit Dark Red, Medium Top

I'll plant the carrots and beets out tomorrow -- some in the kids' garden, some in a sunny spot in my main bed. I need to wait a few weeks for the peas and the radish: Our forecast is for the mid- to high-80s for the next couple of weeks.

Leu Gardens

A lovely late-summer day. "Cool" temperatures (86 degrees or so) and very low dew point of upper 50s combined to make a gorgeous taste of the cool, dry season that lies at most a month away. We spent the morning at Leu Gardens, enjoying the weather, butterflies, and the blooms. Leu has a great Bamboo Garden, and in today's heavy winds the creaks and cries from the timber bamboo were eerie and beautiful at once.

I finally finished unloading the mushroom compost from my truck. Driving the 'hood, I noticed ten large contractor bags full of live oak leaves! Very exciting. My garden is now heavily composted and thickly mulched in leaves.

A great day.

More rain, now a cool morning...

The winds have started blowing out of the north-east. That brought a bunch of rain off the Atlantic yesterday, dousing us with a good one-and-a-half inches of rain. I don't know if that made up for a pretty dry August and a very dry spring, but I imagine the lakes and rivers are all back more or less to normal. This morning in the garden it was a cool sixty-nine degrees and very pleasant, except the blasted mosquitoes, which were hungry but torpid.

Salsa, anyone?

Crowder Succotash

Kind of a bummer day. I was stuck at home with my sick daughter. We both had head colds, mine came with an ear-ache. (God, when was the last time I had an ear-ache? When I was six?). It was hot and humid this morning, then it poured rain all afternoon (more than an inch and counting). We managed to plant some beets, peas and lettuce before the deluge commenced. Oh, I also mowed under some crowder peas, but not before I harvested a few gallons, along with okra and peppers ('Pimientos de Padron'). So, tonight I made a sort of succotash, and served it over mashed sweet potatoes. Very tasty -- more than made up for the wasted day.

Crowder Pea Succotash
- a few rashers (4-6 oz.) of smoked bacon, diced medium
- 2 pounds of sweet potatoes (preferably the white "Japanese" ones), peeled and diced in 1" chunks
- 2 medium onions, diced
- a couple of spicy red peppers, sliced into 1/4" rounds
- a few handfuls of okra, sliced medium
- 3 cups of shelled crowders, with some young beans broken into 1-inch pieces*
- 2 cups of corn (fresh or frozen)
- a can (28 oz.) of tomatoes (I really like Muir Glenn's fire-roasted diced tomatoes)
-"sweet" fresh herbs (like parsley, basil, chives), chopped fine
- salt (I like really flaky sea salt) and freshly ground place pepper, to taste (lots!)

*(or substitue canned black-eyed peas)

In a large cast-iron skillet that you can cover, slowly fry the bacon until crispy. Meanwhile, in a medium sauce pan, boil the sweet potatoes in salted water until tender. Mash the sweet potatoes, and season to taste with salt, pepper, warm milk, and butter (and we add goat cheese, which binds the potatoes nicely).

When the bacon has crisped, remove it, leaving behind the drippings. Over medium heat, slowly fry onions until they color. Chuck in the pepper, okra, peas, corn and cook slowly for a few minutes.

When everything has softened a bit, dump in the tomatoes, raise the heat, and bring to a merry simmer. Clap the top on, lower the heat to low, and let cook until the okra (in particular) has softened. Serve the succotash over the mashed sweet potatoes, with chopped herbs & reserved bacon sprinkled on top.

Mmmmmm.....

Fall seeds...

The boy & I started planting his half of the kids' garden. Our timing was off, but the boy was really excited about starting his garden, so we planted anyway and can hope for the best. We're a bit early for the 'Bright Lights' Swiss Chard and the 'Summer Glory' lettuce blend (Parks); and a bit late for the 'Miniature White' cucumbers.

For the first time, I used some shade cloth over the greens. Maybe that will allow us to sneak the plants into fall without summer's noticing. The cukes are marked forty-nine days, giving us a good chance at harvesting some before our likely frost date around the end of November.

I've been busy at work (I have to get rid of that job thing), so instead of growing my own from seed, I purchased some tomato seedlings from Nize, my friend and local organic grower. Don't get me wrong -- I was ready with a bunch started indoors. But the darn cat ate them. And the dirt they were growing in. And then vomited them everywhere. But mostly on the furniture.

Sometimes it's hard to love the cat.

Anyway, I couldn't find time to replant, and it's probably too late to start now. So, I bought some small, organic seedlings. In my own plot, I put some 'Purple Cherokee', 'Roma' and 'Better Boy' into my grow holes filled with mushroom compost.

I should quickly run down what's blooming well in my garden...

• The zinns have started to fail. Not enough sun, so fungal issues.
  
• The Torenia that's been growing for months now is also looking ratty. But the cuttings I rooted still look fine, which makes me suspect a nematode problem. I'll check when I yank them.
  
• Confederate Rose is blooming daily.
• Roses. 'Our Lady of Guadalupe' continues to bloom nonstop. 'Tuscan Sun' is a close second. My 'Natchitoches Noisette' hasn't bloomed as much this year. It's the fourth year it's been in the ground, and it may well be starting the slow decline that is the inevitable fate of all roses not grafted on 'Fortuniana'. My English 'Abraham Darby' looks great, but I'm still waiting on 'Teasing Georgia', an English Rose I bought in the spring from the (now defunct) MerryGro Farms. It's growing well, just a little reluctant to bloom. But I think I should have a nice flush in November. It's not a great time for roses here, but fall's blooms are right around the corner.
  
• My geraniums made it through the summer for the first time. They look great. Keeping them pretty dry was, I think key. And so did starting them from seed. I should probably try to remember to plant some of the seeds I got from Swallowtail next week.
• Brugs rock. And so does my Datura. I need more.
  

Froggy weather

A persistent and slow-moving low pressure area off the Southeast Florida coast has soaked my part of Volusia county. Forecasts predicated about an inch of rain... my rain gauge reads a mite bit over four inches. The ground is just plain spongy, and the retention ponds are almost filled.

We haven't had a rain like this one in two years. It's welcome to stay around as long as it likes.

Corn, brugmansia

Sweet potatoes and onions...

In spring, I'm ordering a number of varieties of sweet potatoes and onions from Steele Plant Company.

Mississippi Crowders

Mississippi Crowder Peas (Cowpeas, Southern Peas, Vigna uniguiculata). Aren't they lovely? The top are the seeds I'm saving for next summer; the bottom, some freshly-shucked peas for tomorrow's sup.

Confederate Rose

I bought this 'Confederate Rose' (Hibiscus mutabilis) about a year ago from Bioscape. The bloom starts off almost white, goes pink during the day, and the next day it's practically carmine.
There's quite a lot of variablity in the species. I think I've read that the single blooms throughout the year; this double/triple only started to bloom this week, but if it blooms like last year, it will bloom until hit by frost, and again all spring. The leaves go a bit wilty in the heat of the afternoon sun no matter how much it gets watered, but I'd say it's very drought tolerant: It made it through a dry spring without hardly any irrigation, and it's in almost full afternoon sun.

Veg

The boy and I put this little garden patch together this sultry day. He looked at me and said, "Dad, this is how hard kids should be working, not sitting on their rumps watching t.v." Emerson says somewhere how eerie it is to hear your own words echoed back to you.

This corn (Silver Queen) went in around August 20th. It's a bit beleaguered by God knows what, but it seems to be growing faster than the bugs can eat it...

Probably too early for this romaine, but I couldn't pass up the nine-pack at Lowes today.

Blooms

Glads, from easytogrowbulbs.com. I order from this outfit pretty often. The quality of the bulbs is really outstanding.

The bloom on my Mississippi Silver crowder peas.

Dahlia 'Sunshine' from Easytogrowbulbs.com. I'm really happy with these dahls. I'd had no luck this year with any dahlias, so I'm pleased to see them blooming abundantly now, during the toughest time of the year in FLA.