Late Fall Update

It has been a while since my last update. The fall and early winter is always the busiest time of year. Gardening tasks have been a small part of my life lately and football and parties have taken over. This has been the best harvest season that I have ever had as a backyard gardener though. I still have lots of garden failures but many more successes this season. Here is an update on what has been going on.

Harvest
We have had and still have a great crop of Juliet and Cherry Tomatoes. I have not been keeping tally on our harvest but lets just say that we have been non-stop eating tomatoes and I cannot see the end in site at this time.

From Garden

The tomatoes are taking up most of one of my square foot gardens and a large part of the second one. In spite of this, I was able to harvest a couple of other vegetables. We got one very nice eggplant that we ended up giving to my mother in law at Thanksgiving (we haven’t got an update on how it tasted). We also harvested a couple of small green peppers. I have always struggled with green peppers. There is something nutrient wise that they are lacking and I have not done research to figure out what that is. Figuring out how to grow better green peppers may be my springtime project.

We also have collards and kale ready to harvest. Here is a picture of one of our collard plants.

From Garden

Squashes are not really growing well either this season. It seems like we have better luck when my husband randomly drops squash seeds throughout the yard than when I actually attempt to plant them in a garden. To their defense, I have not been hand pollinating them. I guess sometimes you cannot rely on nature to do it. We do have one acorn squash that looks promising, but that is one my husband randomly planted.

From Garden

Baby it’s cold outside
Last winter we had unseasonable cold temperatures and it looks like this winter may be following suit. We have already had at least one night of freezing temperatures and there are more to come next week. Typically we don’t see freezing temperatures in central Florida until at least January or February. I have and plan to continue to cover my square foot gardens for as long as I can but I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. Some of the vegetables won’t mind the cold temperatures but the tomatoes will definitely die off if I don’t protect them.

From Garden

Future Plans
I am getting ready to start seeds again for some cold weather crops. I might be too late for some of them but I am going to try anyway. With my Juliet and Cherry Tomato success, I might try to grow some Roma tomatoes as well…..we’ll see……

Impulsive Plant Buyer

I am an impulsive plant buyer. I buy plants before I have any idea what I am going to do with them. This muscadine grape was purchased at a big box store after pigging out on local grapes and I discovered that we can grow grapes here. I purchased this plant before I did any research on proper growing methods. It is now living on our porch. Below is a papaya and melon that we “won” at the last organic growers meeting. They too have been sitting on the porch. And finally, today I walked out of another big box store with a petite fig plant that was on sale. This was of course after I watched a gardening show that featured figs. They will live on the porch for at least another week or so but then I will be forced to do something with them. I would like to get them established somewhere before the cool weather sets in.

I have pulled up most of the old square ft garden. Two onions, about 3 carrots, and this homely looking tomato plant is all that is left of the group that started it all. I am keeping the tomato plant because there are two tomatoes just like this one hanging on. I keep hoping that they will ripen and I can say that I got a total of 5 tomatoes before the hornworms ate all of my summer crop. The garden is being simultaneously prepared for fall crops.
This burlap cloth is covering some beans that should start growing any day. In fact, at the time of this blog’s publishing, about 4 have emerged.
Good news is that the second square foot garden seems to be doing great. I had a slight hornworm scare last week but I have since sprayed the tomatoes and plan to continue to spray at regular intervals.

Inventory of the new garden:
2 Winter Squashes
1 Zucchini
4 Corn
? Onion/Chives (sort of just threw a bunch of seeds down)
1 Okinawa spinach (another “win”)
4 green peppers
2 eggplants
4 tomatoes

Garden Failure
I have been wanting to purchase huge barrel like planters for a while for things like peanuts and sweet potatoes. I finally broke down and purchased resin barrels from a big box store about a week or so ago. I took out the plug but ignored the instructions to put rocks at the bottom. I transplanted a very moist sweet potato plant and killed at least two baby potatoes in the process. After one big storm, the result is what looks like a big barrel of crapola. If I am lucky, this thing will dry out and the plant may be salvaged. Barrel number two will have rocks at the bottom to help with drainage.

Garden Savior

Some of you know that I recently returned from a great two week trip to France (I have at least one set of pics from a Paris Garden I can post at a later date). I expected to see all the plants I started for the fall (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, basil) dead when I returned. Before the trip, I devised an elaborate watering scheme to water the new plants while I was gone. The plan consisted of a soaker hose and a battery powered facet timer. The plan may have worked but I unfortunately tried to set it up the day before we left for the trip and it didn’t exactly work as planned. When the facet was in the “on” position and ready for the timer it continually dripped water onto the ground. If you know Carlos and I, you know that some affectionately call us tree huggers. This leak was unacceptable and I didn’t really have time to deal with it. I turned the system off and placed the plants under the shade of the Okra plant. I secretly hoped they would survive unattended. You might say, why didn’t I just ask someone to water my plants? The thought did cross my mind but I have a problem asking people for help (other than my husband). So I left my plants to take care of themselves for a little over two weeks. However, not all was lost. Before the the trip okra was in full production and tomatoes were expected soon so I told my aunt to feel free to come steal some veggies. During a visit, she noticed that my baby plants were not looking so good and took it upon herself to water them on a regular basis while I was away. So I have to say that my aunt was my fall garden savior. Without her, we would have a lot less fall crops on the way.

Plants that were saved by my aunt Betty

Hornworms
Before our trip, I reluctantly sprayed every tomato plant, young and old, with BT. When I returned from the trip, the plants were not fully stripped of leaves but there are no tomatoes in sight. This leads me to believe that the first treatment probably worked but has since worn off. Since returning home, I have mutilated two small and two big hornworms. I will be spraying the plants soon. I have too many tomato plants planned this fall to carefully inspect them on a daily basis. When I say daily, I really mean twice daily. A large one I caught this morning had done considerable damage in less than 12 hours.

Okra Party

We are starting to like okra now, which is a good thing considering that the okra is non-stop. I am about to start just one more plant so we can extend the harvest into the fall sometime. I just hope I am not too late to extend the okra party.

New Starts
Since returning home, I have started corn, tomato, zucchini, eggplant, kale, and collards. This along with what I plan to start in the next week or so, should hopefully provide nice fall bounty. The official inventory post vacation was about 11 tomatoes (6 good ones), 4 peppers, and 2 eggplants.

Bamboo
This past weekend I traveled to my co-workers house to get some bamboo. I felt a little guilty about buying the perfect little bamboo sticks from the big box store when my co-worker had uncontrollable bamboo growing in his neighbors yard. Since the bamboo is pretty much invasive and will eventually take over his yard, he had no problem using the machete to cut the heck out of some of it for me. It was a very hot morning and we were all sticky and sweaty after gathering the bamboo. I plan to use the stalks to stablize climbing and leaning veggies. The left over leaves will be used as mulch. Don’t pay any attention to the dead grass in the backyard. We are in the process of replacing all of it with a florida native plant called Mimosa strigillosa .

Tomato Herb Planter

Last Saturday we purchased a cherry tomato plant at the Winter Park Farmers market. This purchase led into the ideal of creating a mix herb pot. I had plenty of mini herb plants started from seeds so it seemed like a great idea for a porch plant. The 9 side holes have a mix of marjoram, dill, parsley, cilantro, oregano, sage, and basil. The cherry tomato is planted in the top hole. We are excited about seeing this planter grow.