Seed Ordering Time for spring

Yesterday I ordered:
Better Boy and Cherry Sweetie tomatoes
Yellow summer squash
Mississippi Silver Crowder peas
Imperator Carrots
Renegade Spinach
Butter Crunch and Majestic Lettuce
Blue Lake Pole beans
Fairytale Hybrid Eggplant

Datura Magic

When I bought this Datura, otherwise known as Devil's Trumpet, it was a small seedling about 6 inches high.  It has now, a year later, taken over a large pot and stands about 4 feet high.  It keeps blooming like mad as long as I cut the seed pods off.  I have been able to share cuttings with several friends.

100 onion sets are out

Granex Yellow onion sets - about a hundred

The Beginning of Fall

Eggplant are still blooming and producing

Butternut squash are up and growing

The Autumn Sage is in its glory

Sweet potato bed is coming along

Cucumber experiment for this fall is looking good

The Constant Critter Battle

Yesterday morning I went out to survey the garden.  Some fairly large animal had dug up the lettuce seeds I had planted in one portion of my raised bed.  Leaving the other portions alone.  I was annoyed, smoothed out the holes, planted more seed, and headed out to the big box store for a repellent.  I bought the stuff the man (who probably never grew anything in his life) said was the best.  It is made of really yucky ingredients - dried blood, urine, garlic juice....that kind of stuff.  This morning I checked again and the mess was even worse.  I think the repellent just made the creature mad.  It certainly did not do any good.  Huge holes are now present where my tiny lettuce seeds were planted.  Don't know what I am going to do next.

Fall planting

More sweet potatoes are in, with a different soil combination (the experiment continues), also spinach. butter crunch lettuce,cucumbers (Eureka and Moctezuma varieties), winter squash and sweetness hybrid II carrots.  I am way too late on tomatoes for the fall, but since I have a greenhouse I may try some anyway.  Some critter got into my lettuce seeds last night and made a royal mess.  Most likely it was looking for grubs and worms.  Not sure what it was, but from the size of the holes it was not small.  Could have been a coon.  Critters are just a part of gardening.  I'm thankful for every veggie I get.

Dog Days

These hot humid August days make for a good time to kick back and do nothing.  The garden plants know it.  They are in the doldrums.  They aren't sick, they just aren't doing much, and personally I don't blame them.

Figs...... at last

I planted a fig tree three years ago.  A Brown Turkey Variety from a local nursery.  It never did well.  The weather did not cooperate and then I kept digging it up and transplanting it every year because it was never in the "right spot".  That did not do it any good. When it survived our rather harsh winter last year I knew it was a survivor plant.  This year I left it alone and it is producing figs like mad.  It is still small, only about four feet high, but has about 20 figs on it as of today.  Some are beginning to ripen.

Eggplants - Fairytale

Fairytale is my current favorite hybrid eggplant.  The plants are medium size, about 3 feet tall and really prolific. The fruit is exceptionally small by eggplant standards.  They are best when picked at about 4-6 inches long.  But boy are they tasty and tender.  They have the best flavor of any I've had.  The skin is tender enough to leave on in some recipes, but most of the time it is best to remove it.  There is none of the bitterness of other eggplants.  An added benefit is that they are beautiful.  I have them in my from garden where they are as much ornamental as anything else.  I'm on my second large crop from the same four plants I planted in the spring.  They are slow to get going, but once they do - Watch out!  We  freeze them, dry them, make appetizers out of them, stuff them and of course enjoy them fresh.  My mom had a great eggplant casserole that Diane has been able to replicate.  Mom would never write it down, but Diane has gotten pretty close. 

Lowell's Bread and Butter Pickles

Cucumbers have not been great growers for me.  One year Powdery Mildew killed them...that was before I even knew there was such a thing as Powdery Mildew. Then moles got them.  This year I have just experimented with a different variety in a different location.  I have gotten a few.  In the midst I ran across an easy recipe for bread and butter pickles that produced (with a few tweaks) the best pickles I have ever had, and I did it in 1 afternoon.  Here's the recipe:
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Lowell's Bread and Butter Pickles

Ingredients

·         1 large cucumber, sliced

·         1 teaspoon salt

·         1 onion, thinly sliced

·         1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds

·         1 cup white sugar

·         1/2 cup distilled white vinegar

·         1/4 teaspoon celery seed

·         1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric

·         ¼ tsp allspice

·         6 whole cloves

Directions

1.      In a medium microwave safe bowl, mix cucumber, salt, onion, mustard seeds, white sugar, distilled white vinegar, celery seed and turmeric.

2.      Microwave on high 7 to 8 minutes, stirring twice, until cucumbers are tender and onion is translucent.

3.      Transfer to sterile containers. Seal and chill in the refrigerator until serving.

Nutritional Information 

Amount Per Serving  Calories: 36 | Total Fat: 0g | Cholesterol: 0mg

Sweet Potato Experiment Continues

Last fall we had the greatest tasting sweet potatoes ever.  The variety was Beauregard, planted in July and dug up on Thanks Giving Day.  This spring I planted more sweet potatoes.  The variety is unknown. planted a different time of year, in different soil.  They did not taste as good as last year's.  Then I read about "Curing" sweet potatoes and wrote about it in a previous post.  We cured the SPs in the shed for a few weeks.   The taste definitely improved.  Unfortunately the taste was no where near last year's.  I planted more Beauregard's in late spring.  We will see if it is the variety.  I planted the unknown variety in July using the original soil mix from last fall.  We what tastes better.  This will teach me to experiment with unknown varieties of vegetables.  It was a free extra SP from some store.  I love experiments.

Raised Beds

After a year of fighting battles of mythological proportions that made gardening something other than the fun relaxing enterprise I envisioned, I decided to try raised beds.  Once you have gone raised you will never go back.  It solves a multitude of problems and gives a level of control you cannot get otherwise. Nematodes (those vicious underground plant decimators) are not a problem in raised beds.  Weeds are easily manageable, and the gardener can grow more per square foot than traditional gardening.  For small or back yard gardeners like myself I can think of no better way to go.  Here are a few of my details and why I did what I did:

Size - I went 4' by 8' - 4' wide is as wide as I can take and still not have to get into the bed to plant or harvest.  I can reach to the center from either side.  8' long just suited my space needs.  It has proved to be big enough to get nice harvests of peas, green beens, 30 pounds of sweet potatoes, enough eggplant for us and the neighborhood, and so much lettuce and carrots I started saying, "What's up Doc?".  I like the size.
I used 8' 2x12' pieces.  I really believe 2x10s would be fine, but the extra height has allowed me more flexibility when adding poles and frost cloth and other mechanical things that seem to sometimes be needed. 10 to 11 inches of dirt is great.  1x anything might be okay.  I just wanted the extra strength.  Sometimes I stand on the edges to tie things.  I think that if the gardener used 1x boards the 8' sides would need extra support.  The 2x boards do not.

Material - Controversial - Some people despise pressure treated wood.  I do not.  The arsenic is gone.  The Chemicals used now are safer.  I do not know what "safe" means anyway.  I do not see much that is safe about this world anyway.  People have been afraid of PT wood leaching it's chemicals into the soil.  Well yes, from what I could find, they do leach....copper leached about 2 inches out from the board in 10 years.  That was the worst I could find.  The deal on copper of course is that if it ever gets to leaching (that depends on a bunch of factors) it will kill the plant before anything else.  You won't have anything to eat from that plant, thus copper poisoning does not seem to be a problem.  With all of that said, I feel relatively comfortable with PT wood, but I also lined the inside of the bed with a construction grade black plastic.  It made some of my friends feel better....and me too.  It was easy to do.  I cut it and stapled it around the sides.  Once the dirt is in the bed the dirt holds the plastic and the staples can rust away.

Found this 10 inch cuke hiding under other plants

Passion Flower - Vine hosts the Gulf Fritillary Butterfly

Datura, "Devil's trumpet", beautiful but poisonous

Chill Hours in Central Florida

I Want to Thank Michael at Gardening in Central Florida for this data bit.

Chill hours, Orlando area

Someone sent me this interesting calculation of chill hours in Central Florida, based onFAWN temperature data.

I have calculated chill hours for Orlando based on the FAWN weather data. I thought you may find this useful since you have posted similar information on your very informative and interesting blog.

Best,

Thomas

Chill Hours* for Orlando
Winter		Calculated
1997	1998	160
1998	1999	184
1999	2000	249
2000	2001	387
2001	2002	196
2002	2003	383
2003	2004	247
2004	2005	203
2005	2006	255
2006	2007	143
2007	2008	136
2008	2009	325
2009	2010	468
	Average:	257
	Minimum:	136
	Maximum:	468
* number of hours the temperature is below 45 degrees F and above 32 degrees F

Of all the complexities of Florida gardening, this one is particularly vexing: We cannot really grow much in the way of tropical fruit like mangoes and bananas. Sure, in a limited way, we have some success--some years, I get more bananas than I can eat. But, as has been the case for the past two winters, other years my bananas get burned down to the ground (delaying fruiting by a year or more), and my mango tree dies despite my best efforts.

So instead of tropical fruits, we try deciduous low-chills, like tropical peaches, persimmons, pomegranates, low-chill apples and pears, etc. Years with cold winters yield heavily, while years with warm winters result in low flowering and fruiting, sometimes no crop at all. This past winter was so cold that my pomegranate is stillflowering in mid-July! My peach tree bore heavily, my apple tree set fruit for the first time, and so on.

Having done a lot of shopping for such trees, the sweet spot seems to be 250 hours or more--it really expands the variety of trees (if you believe the chill-hour requirements that growers list... I don't, mostly).

DeLand is a few degrees cooler than Orlando, so it's safe to add ten or twenty hours to the numbers above. That still means that every other year, or maybe every third year, is well under the minimum "ideal" of 250 hours.

So, just barely cold enough for temperate, not quite warm enough for tropical.

I guess there's always citrus!

For Sweeter Sweet Potatoes - they have to be cured

Last year was he first time I ever grew sweet potatoes (Beauregard was the variety). Well, if you count kindergarten when we put them in glasses of water to watch them sprout then it would be the second time. Needless to say I don't know much about sweet potatoes other than the fact that they are ridiculously easy to grow and they taste great. Last fall our grandchildren and children had a great time digging the sweet potatoes I had planted. It was like a treasure hunt. They hung in the shed for awhile because we had other family activities and come December they tasted great.

They were so good I planted more this spring. We just dug them up and Diane baked a couple immediately. Yuk. They did not taste sweet. I could not figure out why these did not taste as good as last year. We gave some to some friends. Same story. So I started Googling to find the answer. Well here it is, straight from a Louisiana Ag Specialist.

After the roots are dug, they should be cured to heal the cuts and trigger development of the sugar-creating enzymes, the LSU AgCenter horticulturist explains. Cure by storing in a warm, humid room for five to 10 days. A temperature of 80 F to 85 F and a relative humidity of 80 percent to 90 percent are ideal. These exact conditions will be hard to establish around the home, so select a room or building that comes close to these conditions.

Amazing. I had no idea that sweet potatoes are not sweet when first dug. Last year's delay in eating is what made them great. I have a bag in the shed. I'll wait a week or so and then try them. Can't wait to find out the results.

Gaillardia (blanket flower) belongs in all Florida gardens

Amaranthus

I love cannas

June 2009

June in the garden - Kentucky wonder pole beans in back, Better boy and organic cherrie sweetie tomatoes in the middle bed, with cukes and eggplant in the front bed. Last year the cukes got powdery mildew. Not good. This year I am trying a new variety.

Three 4 x 8 raised beds. Pressure Treated wood lined inside with plastic so none of the treatment gets into the plants

Getting Started

I have to start somewhere. I have always loved to grow things. 9 years of living on a boat put that on hold until a few years ago. Here are some pictures of my new beginning.