The sweet potato plant has multiple uses in the garden as a root crop, a leaf crop, and a cover crop. All parts can be used to feed livestock as well as people and it is at its best growing in hot dry sandy soil. This is a great permaculture crop for South Florida.
Tags: Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, growing sweet potatoes, Permaculture, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
I am back in my own garden again with a vengeance after the permaculture workshop at Heathcote Botanical Gardens. Time is flying and I have begun to consider what I am planting this summer, and when. At 1:00 PM on Sunday February 5 at Heathcote Botanical Gardens I will be presenting a class on what Continue reading →
Tags: Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, No till garden, S. Florida Summer Gardens, South Florida Vegetable Gardens, Summer Crops for Florida, Summer Green Mulch Crops for Florida
Fall is the beginning of our cold crop planting season in South and Central Florida. Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplant, Basil and Beans that were started in August may be getting ready to fruit, and may ripen fruit before our first frost. If you are starting those plants now you will have to protect them from the Continue reading →
Tags: Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, Lasagna Garden, No Till Gardening, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
I made a new friend who is not yet gardening and was rather intimidated by it and quite sure it would take him a long time to learn how to grow food. He mentioned to me that he thought he should take a Gardening for Dummies Class, and that what I had to offer was Continue reading →
Tags: Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, Heathcote Botanical Garden, Heathcote's No Till Organic Garden, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening, Seminole Pumpkin, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
My garden grows beautifully. All I do is feed the soil with lots of organic wastes. I don’t dig, I don’t worry, I don’t fertilize plants and I don’t spray plants. All in all I would say that growing the No Till No Dig Way is an easier, more successful way to nurture a food garden.
Tags: Composting, Fungal Hyphae, Growing Organic Vegetables, Mycorrizae, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening, Phosphorus Solubilizing Bacteria, Plant nutrients, Soil Organisms, Soil Tilth
This summer has been a whirlwind for me. I picked up some part time work at a local organic farm last winter and the job lasted way into the summer. A couple of months before the farm job started I began volunteering at the Community Vegetable Garden at Heathcote Botanical Gardens. Just as the farm Continue reading →
Tags: Growing Organic Vegetables, Home Garden, Home Grown Vegetables, Long Beans, Malabar Spinach, No Till Gardening, Okra, Peanuts, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
How is it, you may wonder, that shelling peas could have anything to do with our sacred inner life? Two summers ago I had lots of Black Eye Peas in my garden. I passed a big bag of peas to my rancher friend Linda from Crazy Hart Ranch. The following week, as she smacked her Continue reading →
Tags: Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, Home Grown Vegetables, Slow Food
Photos by Nan and Adina Heathcote Botanical Garden recently decided to create a community garden. I was fortunate to be at the first meeting about a year ago, and I was able to get involved with this project at the beginning. This community garden is currently focused on growing for a Sarah’s Kitchen in Port Continue reading →
Tags: Community Garden, Compost, Composting, Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, Heathcote Botanical Garden, Home Grown Vegetables, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
These Pictures were taken by Tami and Melody. This past winter Tami bought fresh vegetables from my garden, and carried a bucket of kitchen garbage to me for my compost every week. Everything changed when she ate the fresh broccoli I put into her bag. Tami said she didn’t know fresh broccoli wouldn’t stink when Continue reading →
Tags: Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, Lasagna Garden, No Dig Garden, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
The fall of 2009 was very hot and humid. We didn’t have night time temperatures below 70 degrees f. until it was officially winter time. By the time New Years Eve rolled around we had begun to have extremely cold weather and it continued well into February giving us very few warm days in between Continue reading →
Tags: Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, Summer Vegetables, Winter Vegetables
After I wrote the article Garden Pests: Nematodes I received a comment from Naomi. She wrote “Wow, mind boggling how many things can go wrong in a vegetable garden!” Her comment made me realize that I did not bring home the point of my article very well. While there are lots of potential problems [...]
Tags: backyard ecosystems, Balance In The Organic Garden, Composting, Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, Home Garden, No Till Gardening, organic insect control, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
My neighbors grow in compost not because it is the organic or no till or healthy thing to do. They grow this way because it fosters the most vigorous plant growth and the most flavorful vegetables, in a place that once seemed much less hospitable for growing food.
Tags: Compost, Grow Food At Home, Growing Food In Leaf Compost, Growing Organic Vegetables, Home Garden, Home Grown Vegetables, Mound Gardens, No Till Gardening, Soil Organisms, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
To grow in an organic manner in such a way as to decrease the cost of your inputs, increase the health and disease resistance in the garden, and increase garden yields, a grower must focus on the soil. This focus must be on maintaining optimum populations of the microbes and the invertebrates that are present in healthy soils.
Tags: Composting, Growing Organic Vegetables, Microbes and Invertebrates of the Soil, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening, Soil Food Web, Soil Organisms, South Florida Vegetable Gardens, Sustainability
The concept of this no dig bed is simple. You don’t till or disturb the soil below, and you create a mound that roughly approximates a balanced pile of stable scrapings. This is a great way to start quickly and these mounds feed the soil below as the growing season progresses attracting beneficial insects and microbes to your growing area, and you won’t have to fertilize the plants growing in these mounds.
Tags: Growing Organic Vegetables, Home Garden, Home Grown Vegetables, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening, Preparing for Planting, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
I have been studying companion planting in the garden. With a single google search you or I can come up with myriad charts for companion planting, so I see no reason to repeat that arrangement of information. Rather I am going to write about how I am grouping the vegetables I am planting this year Continue reading →
Tags: Companion Planting, Growing Organic Vegetables, Home Garden, Home Grown Vegetables, organic insect control
Here’s what’s going on in the garden this summer of 2009. I am growing okra, black eye peas, peanuts, green peppers and sweet potatoes as well as my perennial, asparagus. Long Beans have just quit, and new long beans are in the ground. It is perfect timing for some new seeds, so I put in Continue reading →
Tags: Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, Home Garden, Home Grown Vegetables
It is December, just before the shortest day of the year. Here are some pics from the gardens including the new box gardens. This so far has been a good season for South Florida growers. There is lots to eat in the garden. Here are some pics from the last 30 days or so.
Tags: Growing Organic Vegetables, South Florida Vegetable Gardens, Vegetable Gardens