About the garden...

The weather's been dreadful the past few days--we've had TEN INCHES of rain in three days, and not a ray of sun. The weeds are running amok, especially the Asian Dayflower, which thrives in this kind of weather. The bugs are unbelievable. And did I mention the electrical storms?

So, not much desire to spend time in my garden. I've pulled up all the remaining full-sized tomatoes with the exception of a couple Tiffany, which is a very disease-resistant bush. It's even managed to set some fruit in the last few days, though my experience has been that fruit this time of year isn't very good, and tends to collapse on the vine from the bug onslaught and the heavy rains. (They crack in all this rain, then gnats or fruit flies get into them...) But the tropical stuff loves it: My malanga has finally leafed out after surviving squirrel attacks, the cassava seems to grow a few inches every day. Sweet potatoes are running everywhere. And the cowpeas and yardlong beans are hitting their summer stride. Peppers continue to produce spottily.

I've been making a very tasty Thai salad based on shredded peppers (hot and sweet) and shredded greens (sweet potato leaves, various herbs, Okinawan spinach), banana blossoms, and cherry tomatoes. Blue crab on top. Dressed with a lime-based vinaigrette. Tasty.

Let's see, in the flower garden: My roses are looking surprisingly good for this time of year. I have yet to spray them since very early spring, and they don't have much black-spot to speak of. This time of year, probably because of the heat and water, they tend to spend their energies on vegetative growth, not on flowers. I'm growing a couple new-to-me plants that have earned a place in my garden: Blue Scaevola aemula (Fan Flower) and Angelonias. The Angelonias aren't constant bloomers, but they sure are a nice, low-maintenance plant that's easy to propagate. I'll also make Buddleia in pots a permanent part of my garden. They have to be deadheaded frequently to stay in bloom, but they're such wonderful blooms and their fragrance fills the yard.

Oh, and I should mention the surprise of the summer: In the corner of a bed, I left some Allyssum that I started from seeds in the spring. Though I think of it as a delicate spring flower, it's flourishing right now. Not a lot of flowers, but enough, and very compact and well-behaved.

Grazing in the garden...

From a post I did over at the Florida Forum on GardenWeb:

Lately I've been grazing:

left to right, top to bottom.

okra: My gardening buddy Nicki gave me a plant. I usually wait until at least July, when nothing else grows, to add okra.

blueberries: 'Sharpblue' blueberries are ripening. I've eaten a bunch of Emeralds this season (they ripened at the end of April). So far, emerald has been the best blueberry. This is the second year they've been in the ground -- I'm expecting lots more berries for next year. I won't bother with rabbit eyes any longer -- Southern Highbush are the best for Central Florida.

herbs: Basil, thyme, mint, thyme, parsley, savory. This time of year, mostly shade, in pots, and lots of water.

'Sea Foam' chard. The only chard i consider growing. Way more heat tolerant than any other; and slugs really can't deal with the savoy-leaf.

pomegranate! -- Bill, another gardening friend, gave me a seedling sometime last year. I don't think this one's edible, but i have a Grenada cultivar that should bear sometime next year.

eggplant 'Little Fingers" from Tomato Growers Supply. Second year in the ground (buried pot, actually), still producing heavily.

'Jet Setter' tomato. Blasted thing's only set one fruit. Not much of a setter...

Michael's crazy squash. I found this volunteer last year in my garden, in August. Just popped up. No idea where it's from. produced ridiculous (20+ from one plant) winter squashes. Sneers at diseases. apparently invincible. Ill behaved. I love it.

Malabar Spinach I have a bunch of these seedlings that I plan to grow them up ropes.

Sorrel. It's been going nonstop all winter, and the hot weather doesn't bother it in the least.

Goose Creek Tomato. Really vigorous tomato. Tasty, too. I'm also growing 'Tiffany' (tgs), Sungold (an excellent cherry), 'Matt's Wild Cherry,' 'Pomegranate.' I have several plants of some of those varietals.



Tabasco Pepper. I've grown this one plant for years in a pot. I dry most of the peppers, but there are always a few handfulls for fresh use, too. Incredibly hot. It's starting to fail this year -- I'll probably get a new one.

Mississippi Silver Cowpea. From Southern Exposure. Just starting to yield. Grows in sand, no water needed. A handful of plants will provide you with all the delish cowpeas you care to eat... and I eat them with wild abandon in August and September, when nothing else really seems to grow in the garden.

Collards. I've been pickin' at these all winter. Still going strong. Not at all bitter. My wife makes delish green "pies" from these -- a calzone dough, wrapped around a mix of these greens, feta, and olive oil.

Goose Creek Tomato: What a vigorous, wonderful, pest-free tomato bush!



Lettuce crop: 'Appollo' arugula and 'Summer Glory' lettuces (Parks). The shade cloth helps a lot. The arugula deals just fine with the heat. This is the first time i've tried salad crops this late into the summer. Growing in straight-up mushroom compost. Full sun plus shade cloth and lots of water. So far, so good.

Basils: I grow six or seven kinds of basil -- genoa, greek columnar (thanks, tony_k!), african, thai, purple...

Another crazy squash plant

Lagos Spinach: An edible amaranth from echo. does very well in the heat and humidity. Nutty.

Sweet Potatoes. These are volunteers from last year. A mix of Japanese white and traditional orange. My plan is to let the crazy squash and sweet potatoes fight it out for street cred in the sunniest, driest part of the garden.

Tromboncino squash. Just getting started in my garden, but Bill had a bounty of them in his garden already this year. He complains about the taste, but the ones i stole were incredibly tasty -- only squash i've ever eaten that tastes good raw. Dense, sweet, crisp. a single squash has to weight in the 2-3 pound range. Great cooked, too.

Italian Peppers. Another plant from Bill. May and June are the best months for peppers in my experience. Come June, i'll have so many I can't eat them all. I have eight or nine peppers in my garden.

Cassava. Looks just like pot, no? My gardening buddy Felix gave me cuttings. I got six plants from the one branch he gave me, and I've added some variegated ones i found on sale as a foliage plant. First time I've grown them in my garden. I love cassava.

In addition to these vegetables, I have Malanga, Okinawan Spinach, Cachucha peppers; and of course figs, citrus, bananas, and grapes coming along towards harvest at the end of summer.

Raising Cane

From my new-found gardening buddy, Felix, I got a five-foot length of freshly cut sugarcane lst Saturday. I dutifully stuck it in a pot of wet compost in the shade. I checked today for fungus and rot, and was amazed to find that the canes had already put out impressive roots. I promptly transferred them to the garden. I've never grown sugarcane, and I don't really have plans for it (what DOES one do with sugarcane, other than chew on it?), but I have space in the summer garden, and failing anything else, I can use the canes as green manure.

Onions!

I got onion sets in December -- seventy-five onions for a couple bucks.
The onions are sweet (like red onions from the store) but with just a bit of heat on the finish. These are the first I've harvested. Very tasty.

Cassava and malanga

I'm going to give them a try this summer... Just have to figure out how.

Trying to Connect the Dinner Plate to Climate Change - New York Times

Trying to Connect the Dinner Plate to Climate Change - New York Times: "The biggest animal rights groups do not always overlap in their missions, but now they have coalesced around a message that eating meat is worse for the environment than driving. They and smaller groups have started advertising campaigns that try to equate vegetarianism with curbing greenhouse gases.

Some backlash against this position is inevitable, the groups acknowledge, but they do have scientific ammunition. In late November, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization issued a report stating that the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.

When that report came out, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other groups expected their environmental counterparts to immediately hop on the “Go Veggie!” bandwagon, but that did not happen. “Environmentalists are still pointing their fingers at Hummers and S.U.V.’s when they should be pointing at the dinner plate,” said Matt A. Prescott, manager of vegan campaigns for PETA."

Amaranth Grain

I planted amaranth this spring to use as a green, but my chard has survived much longer than I expected, so I let the amaranth go to seed. Poking about the ever useful ECHO site, I found how to harvest the grain, namely, just like any other grain:

HARVEST
Basically, you must thrash it like mankind has always done until the invention of the thrashing machine. The three stages include let the heads dry out, knock the grain from the heads, and winnow the grain. Many of you live where local folks know far more than I about such techniques. For others, here is what we do with small quantities of seed (which must be kept separate from other varieties).

Cut the heads when the grain appears to be mature, and put them somewhere to dry. If left too long much of the grain may shatter (fall to the ground).

Grain easily shatters from the dried heads. Put a few heads in a burlap bag and beat it against the cement floor a few times to knock it loose, or strike the bags with a stick. Then place the grain in a 5-gallon bucket (many other containers would be suitable). You will notice that a lot of chaff comes along with the grain. This is where winnowing comes in.

Place an empty 5-gallon bucket in front of a fan and, cautiously at first, pour some grain and chaff into the empty bucket. A steady wind will accomplish the same thing as the fan, but a gusty wind will cause problems. The grain is denser and will fall closer to the fan than the chaff. Quickly one begins to get a feel for how far the buckets should be from the fan, and at what height to hold the one bucket in order for the grain to land in the empty bucket and the chaff to blow far enough to miss it. Pour the grain back and forth until it appears to be clean.
Final cleanup can be done by swirling and shaking the grain around gently. Remaining chaff will "float" to the top like ice in water, and can be removed by hand.

May Day Veg

I don't know what varietal these cukes are -- I bought them at Lowes. That's one plant that has been trellised onto four strings to keep them off the ground and less prone to fungal problems. I've harvest dozens of cukes so far. I ended up making some tasty quick pickles with the excess. If you look carefully, you can see the next couple of dozen cukes ripening on the vine.

These are Tiffany tomatoes from TGS. Very vigorous, early to set fruit and redden, nice yield so far with probably two dozen medium-sized fruit now ripening. They are VFNT, so if they taste decent, I'll definitely raise them again next year.

Yellow Banana Peppers. Good yield, tasty.

Quail Grass, an Amaranth (like Celosia) that's supposed to be very mild and low in oxalic acid and nitrates, making them tastier and easier to digest than must tropical greens. I tried some raw a few days ago and found it to taste pretty much exactly like spinach, only less oxalic acid (the unpleasant bitterness/grittiness that characterizes spinach past its prime) and a bit nuttier. Tasty.

I had some trouble with germination and slugs, but two plants survived and that's all that can likely fit in the four-square feet I've given them. It gets five feet tall and blooms in the fall.
Pretty plant, no?

Garden crops for Florida Summers

From a gardening standpoint, we have three seasons here in Florida: We have an extended fall, which runs from the first cold, dry airmass that hits Florida sometime in late October until the last frost date, sometime in February. Spring lasts from mid-February until the onslaught of the wet season, which starts most years the first half of June. Summer lasts until late October, etc. etc.

You can, with good timing and a little luck, grow really just about anything during fall and spring. For instance, I often buy mums in late October for a little color and to replace my summer annuals (zins, dahlias, tithonia). Those mums bloom for a couple of months, go dormant in December, and then, if I'm patient, will bloom again abundantly in March. I buy pansies and Johny Jump-ups in November, with the first sustained cool spell. They bloom constantly and reliably all the way until at least the end of May the beginning of May. Biennials like Foxgloves (Foxy) and Poppies, when planted in November and December, bloom in March and April. The "cold season" (November through the beginning of May) find my roses in full glory.

But our summer is a lot like the winter up north: Many plants -- flowering and vegetable -- cannot make it through June and July, and those that do usually die of fungal issues during September's combination of shorter days, hot nights and constant deluge. By October, I need those mums to add a life back to the garden.

Anyway, I've really been into the whole veg gardening thing. I've pulled pounds of Collards, tons of Rocket, bunches of carrots, turnips, lots of lettuce, some strawberries, fennel... Just recently, my peas have started to produce prolifically. My favas look to be not far behind.

I'm now ramping up my spring garden, with a couple dozen tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and various warm-season greens like chard and spinach hybrids. I expect to switch over to warm-weather gardening soon, pulling up the brassicas and cool-weather plants and replacing them with the Solanaceae (tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, etc.). I've got dozens of seedlings ready to transplant into my intensively-planted beds.

That phase of the garden, though, will come to an end in June. Fungal diseases, nematodes, insect damage and dry spells just make it not worth my while. What to plant then?

I ordered some vegetables for summer planting from ECHO, which should do pretty well here in Central Florida:

• Quailgrass (Lagos Spinach)
• Edible Amaranth
  
• New Zealand Spinach
• Roselle (Florida Cranberry, Red Sorrel)
• Ethiopian Kale

Descriptions of all these plants can be found here.