In The Garden: It is nearly planting time and Pole Beans make a great hot weather crop and a great way to start out in the garden this August. There are several types of beans that grow on poles. The Yard Long Bean, Vigna ungulculata is my favorite so far. Yard Long Beans look like…
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This is a great time to be growing Sweet Potatoes in the garden. They don’t mind the weather this hot,and as long as they are in well drained soil they can take whatever rain we are getting. Sweet Potato slips planted now (July) here in S. Florida would be ready in time for Autumn dinners,…
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I intended to write about what I am doing this summer to prepare my no dig garden boxes for the winter growing season, but this blog has taken it’s own direction instead. Today I write about Synergistic Agriculture and my evolving garden practices. This summer I have been growing in gardens I would have left…
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I was visiting my friends Wynn and Bob at Creature Safe Place one day, and I noticed that I was not being attacked by mosquitoes which is unusual pretty much anywhere in S. Florida where there is vegetation, but really unusual at Creature Safe Place because it is surrounded by woods and pasture, and they…
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One of just a few garden amendments I like to use is Coconut Coir or fiber. It is the fiber from between the hard shell of the coconut and the hard outer husk. I have buckets of this when I am done opening coconuts, but the Coir I am talking about today comes to me…
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This site is primarily focused making soil and growing natural food, however the ecosystem we hope to make of our yards is dependent upon diversity. It is therefore appropriate to post some pics of what else is blooming in the garden this summer. Enjoy
All joking aside this world was made to regenerate itself. When trees and plants drop their leaves on the ground they set in motion the cycle of decomposition that makes it possible for life to go on. Raking up leaves from the ground on your land is a shame. Bagging them to be taken off property is a crime. When you pick up your neighbors’ leaves from the curb you are doing your part to erase that crime.
Now go fight crime.
South Florida in the garden: It is July now and you have decided that you want to be ready to grow vegetables for your family when our first planting time comes NEXT MONTH!?! Yes, some of us will start putting seeds in as soon as August. Don’t worry you don’t have to. September and October…
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When ranchers, farmers, feed store keepers and those of us in the garden talk about Hay and Straw we are talking about two very different commodities. When I say it is good to mulch with Straw I do mean straw, and not hay. Hay and Straw come from the same plants. Hay is the top…
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Eventually when I speak to people about their compost piles and bins the inquiry turns to earthworms, and whether they should *buy worms to add to their compost piles. I always say “Put your compost on the ground, and the earth worms will come.”. That, it seems, has always been true for me, or has…
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Soil is not just a lifeless anchor for plants it is a universe of life forms and systems which interact intimately with plants and their systems to form one ecosystem.
Check out this trailer for a must see movie coming this summer to a theater near you.
Here is a really great article about saving seeds and why we should all be doing it. It is written by Suzanne Richmond the Orlando Gardening Examiner from the Examiner .(dot) com. Saving and swapping seeds: Creating your own hardy strains Ever consider the magic that is inside of a little tomato seed? It is…
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It is June now and everything in my S. Florida organic garden is changing with our weather. The rainy season has commenced, and that means high temps and high humidity. Rain brings some wind and cooler temperatures and if the sun doesn’t come out again it will stay comfortable outdoors. If the sun comes out…
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Your preparations for the organic garden do not have to cost you a lot of time. One excellent way to save time and build great soil for your garden is to compost directly into the vegetable garden. This requires that you expect to have a fallow season for at least some part of your garden. Many South Florida gardeners do put their beds to rest when the rainy season starts, so this will probably work great for you. The beauty of this backwards planting season (growing in the winter, fallow in the summer) for us is that while our summer is so extremely hot and wet that our bedding plants will rot it is perfect weather for the fastest compost possible. Here’s what you do.
Everything you need to create a good and fruitful organic garden is readily available to you when you need it, and it doesn’t cost you anything but some time and some effort. All organic gardens start with great soil. Great soil is easy to make, but it needs some time, so start now. Gather vegetable…
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Right now Black Eye Peas are coming up next to Okra, Collard Greens are hanging in, bush beans are still producing, and pole beans are beginning to kick in. Biter gourd is coming up now, and the garden is mad with small native cherry tomatoes. They don’t seem to mind the heat one bit. It is summer crop season and time for building and planning next fall’s gardens. I am psyched!
Organic gardening is not about doing nothing to help your garden thrive and wishing for results while accepting unreasonable losses. It is about employing naturally occurring systems present in our environment so as to eat without doing damage to our ecosystem. It is about fostering interdependence with our world rather than conquering and ultimately destroying it. This is not mumbo jumbo new age magic, it is solid science with practical applications, it is stuff we knew once and forgot along the way. You can do this too.
A month later when my brother and his eldest daughter came to visit Florida they packed Lettuce the frog into a bag of organic lettuce, put the lettuce bag into her backpack, and that night Lettuce the frog was release back into the garden from which he came. He had traveled a total of 2,000 miles, spent several weeks in a terarium in a zone 5 town in February, and survived to return to the land of his hatching.
Greenbrier, Catbrier, Horsebrier, Smilax from the family Smilacaceae is edible. Not just edible for my rabbits, it is also edible for me. Better than edible it tastes great. I have heard it called wild asparagus, and I have found pieces so vigorous and large that they resembled asparagus tips a little. Like asparagus the part…
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