First Day of Blogging

Well. I'm starting this blog to keep a record of my gardening adventures in Florida.

For those of you unfamiliar with Florida gardening, it's been said that to garden here you have to forget everything you've ever learned elsewhere. I've been here for 4 years and I have found that to be fairly accurate!

the beautiful Melbourne Beach coastline

For this blog, I'll be starting where I am. That is, in my 4th year of gardening, approaching the cruel tropical summer, here on the East Central Coast of Florida. In the salty, sandy soil of Melbourne Beach Florida.

I'm a transplant from Baltimore, where I learned to garden following zones and seasons. Here we have two seasons: dry and wet/hot. We can garden twice during the dry season. That's when we grow the typical garden plants. And we can grow them pretty much all at the same time. During the wet (HOT) season, which lasts about 6 months, we can grow tropical spinaches, and southern crops like okra and cowpeas. I grew okra two years ago, froze it, and still have it. So I won't be planting okra again for a while! I will use the summer months to enjoy inside hobbies like art and knitting (yes, knitting in summer here!) and fixing up the house.

So today I am tending the garden which I planted late (as usual)... in late February and March. I have the following plants in the two raised beds which my husband built for me out of galvanized aluminum and wood.

Frangi is my garden helper

Raised Bed Plants

Tomatoes

• Husky Cherry Red
• Super Sweet 100
• San Marzano plum
• Early Girl
• Midnight Cherry

All have been producing since mid April.

Peppers

• Cubanelle
• Jalapeno
• Poblano
• Yellow bell

I've picked a few Cubanelles and the others have tiny fruits. This year, I was unable to find Banana Pepper plants anywhere. I'm sad about that because I like to pickle them.

Herbs

• Basil
• Culantro

None of my seeds really did anything this year. I may have to try seeding in trays next year. But some basil popped up anyway, from previous years I guess. The culantro I bought as a seedling.

Carrots

I seeded these way too late, in late February. But they've sprouted so I'll keep watch.

Beets

Again, too late. I hope I get a few leaves for salad.

tomatoes, peppers, herbs, roots

Beans

• Kentucky Wonder
• Chinese Red Noodle Beans
• Asparagus Beans

The Kentucky wonder vines look sickly (yellow leaves), but the long beans are halfway up the support arches. One has aphids (and as of today: ladybugs!!) Today I picked our first asparagus bean of the season. There are many red noodle beans growing, long but super thin! They'll be ready to harvest in a day or two.

Cucumbers

• Suyo

I try these every year because I love pickles. Every year they succumb to the dreaded pickle worm. What to do? I grow them anyway and get a jar or two of pickles.

Squash

• Tromboncini
• Seminole Pumpkin

I started growing Tromboncini Squash because supposedly it wouldn't succumb to pickle worm. false advertising! It's still cool though, and the baby fruits are edible even if they never develop. I grow them up arches. (I use ladder mesh; two 8 ft. pieces interlocked at the top and stretching between my two raised beds.) The pumpkins are new for me this year! My plan is to start them in the beds, then move them to the ground near the gardens.

Melons

• Cucamelon
• Kajari Melon
• Sugar Baby Watermelon

The Cucamelon seeds didn't really take. The Kajari Melon did. I believe I bought this to be a trap crop, but I forget! The Sugar Babies are growing, but still small. I have a-frame trellises for the melons.

Tropical spinaches

• Callaloo
• Malabar Spinach
• New Zealand Spinach
• Egyptian spinach

The Callaloo plants have sprouted up without my help. I have a couple growing amid my banana trees which I've harvested from already. I also have one that sprouted among my tomatoes. I'll move these plants eventually. The other tropical spinaches were just seeded today. Hopefully I'll get something from them for our salads.

beans, curcubits, greens

In the yard:

Elsewhere on the property I am trying to grow food. Here's what I have.

banana

bananas!

I bought 3 pots of Dwarf Cavendish bananas a few years ago. After the summer, the ground was overgrown with weeds. I went out at Christmastime looking for something, and found a rack of bananas on the ground! They were green, and I was busy, so I left them there. By the time I got back to them, they were gone :) I have since cleared the area of weeds, and hopefully I can keep it that way although summers are really brutal here.

We bought 2 avocado varieties at the Melbourne Botanical Festival in 2023. They are alive but struggling a bit. I think they need more sunshine but I'm afraid to move them. There isn't much of a main trunk. I thought about pruning them, but apparently you are supposed to let them grow their lower branches well in the early years.

lula avocado

avocado

chaya

chaya tree

This is a very interesting looking tree. We haven't tried eating the leaves yet. You have to boil them for 15 minutes before eating because otherwise they are poisonous. We tend to eat our spinach raw, so I'm not sure if we'll eat much of this!

I planted this strawberry tree as an edible berry to substitute for all the berries we eat, but they really aren't that good. People say they taste like Captain Crunch or Cotton Candy. Maybe that's somewhat true, but they also have a thick skin and gelatinous flesh. I'm keeping it because the bees like it and it supplies shade.

strawberry tree

strawberry

citrus

Lime tree

I bought a Persian lime tree and a Meyer lemon tree in pots several years ago. They are in the ground. The lime tree looks pretty good but it's short and wide. It hasn't had any fruits since the first year. The lemon tree doesn't look so good and something is chomping on the leaf edges. Probably a grasshopper.

We have mango trees that were here when we moved in. Unfortunately, they are in the jungle area on the west side of our property which is constantly overrun with wild grapevines, among other things wild and wooly (ARGH). I have worked on this area a few times since originally posting this. Weeding, pulling vines, getting lots of blisters. It's getting there. But still, sadly, no mangoes :(

mango

sweet potato

These are a great success! I bought an organic purple sweet potato at Publix couple of years ago. I sprouted it and planted the slips in a grow bag. I left the grow bag in a spot that gets watered by our watering system. They came out of there and sprawled on the ground. Now I have free sweet potatoes whenever I want them, and they are providing a ground cover in that area around our avocados and bananas. I am transplanting ones that grow where I don't want them, and new slips, to serve as a groundcover there. Hopefully the bidens alba and bitter gourd won't overtake them this summer.

sweet potato groundcover

slips to plant

OK that's it for my first post. I have a lot of learning to do. I intend to keep this blog as a record for myself, so dates and conditions are important. I wonder if I can add a calendar to this? I am such a newb.