fall 2012 central florida vegetable garden

I’m more than a month late for the fall gardening season, argh!

I’m planning to catch up so today, I prepared my beds—nuking out the summer stragglers and weeds that’s still in the garden. Tomorrow, I plan to do some seeding.

Here’s my fall 2012 garden plan:

• Tomatoes (Super Boy 785 Hybrid)
• Pole Beans (Asparagus Yardlong)
• Eggplants (Early Long Purple)
• Bush Beans (Burpee’s Stringless Green Pod)
• Bitter Gourd 
• Zucchinis (Gadzukes! Hybrid Zucchini and Burpee’s Hybrid Zucchini)
• Okra (Clemson Spineless)
• Spinach (Baby Leaf Hybrid)
• Radish (Cherry Belle)
• Mustard (Florida Broad Leaf)
• Chinese Cabbage (Napa Rubicon F1)
• Sweet Potatoes 

The sweet potatoes are the only mainstays in the garden as I grow them for the leaves. They make yummy salads, especially with fresh tomatoes, sweet onions and a tablespoonful of freshly-squeezed lemon juice. (I’m suddenly hungry.)

Here's the vegetable garden scenario this fall:

I’m planning to create new beds for my herbs this season. I’ll be growing the following:

• Catnip
• Rosemary
• Oregano
• Basil
• Chives
• Cilantro

I’m debating whether I’ll set them all out in ground. Definitely the catnip will have to go into the vegetable garden for mosquito deterrence. I’ll probably end up growing the rest in containers in preparation for the February frosts.

In the following days, I plan to write down the stuff to remember about growing each vegetable. One thing to look out for though: my month-by-month Florida gardening guide says to keep an eye for caterpillars this September. And I’m seeding, too. Ack!

saturday afternoon delight: weeding!

Wow, it’s been close to three months that I’ve neglected this blog. And, truth to tell, my vegetable garden as well.

I’ve a great excuse: there’s been lots of rain—blessed rain!—in the Sunshine State.

precipitation in Florida for the last 3 months

And of course, I’ve been, er, slacking off, heh. (What else is new?)

The thing is, my garden has gone to weed! Weeds everywhere—in the beds, along the aisles, and even in between the beer bottles that served as bed borders!

I couldn’t attack them before because of the dry thunderstorms and the rains that peppered our Central Florida weeks. I had visions of getting drenched in a sudden downpour or being struck by lightning so I avoided the garden as much as possible. Plus, the mosquitoes!

Today though, despite the threatening gray clouds, I couldn’t stand the sight of those darned weeds any longer so I decided to annihilate them once and for all. The rains have let up and there were no thunderstorm forecasts so...To the garden it is!

precipitation in the Sunshine State for the last 7 days

Well, it helps that it’s time to prepare for the fall planting, heh.

I forgot to take a Before picture, so I’ll only show you the After:

the itsy bitsy farm, circa august 2012

That clean look was achieved after two and a half hours of duking it out with them weeds. Those two buckets are actually packed tightly with these garden monsters.

buckets of torture

Finally, my beds are ready for September. I’ll be planting the usual suspects: okra, yardlong beans, green beans, bitter gourd, zucchini, eggplants and tomatoes. No more cherry tomatoes though. We've had too much of them last time.

Speaking of rains and thunderstorms...

From May to August, Central Florida—and the whole state, for that matter—has had a generous drenching as you can see in the maps from the National Climatic Data Center.

Beginning last June, Central Florida had been extremely moist—in the real world that's like pounding rains every afternoon and sometimes well into the night (and early morning, for that matter).

Here's how it was, rain-wise in Florida for the last 90 days:

observed precipitation in Florida for the last 90 days

It's a relief that there was no drought in Central Florida the past three months, too. The heat outside was simply unbearable even in the late afternoon. I couldn't imagine myself watering and cleaning the garden in the sweltering, nosebleed-inducing summer heat. Thank God for these mercies!

Here's the monthly precipitation mapping since I've been to my vegetable garden in May:

observed precipitation in Florida, June 2012

observed precipitation in Florida, July 2012

observed precipitation in Florida, August 2012

tiny farm, circa may 2012

Here’s a look at my itsy bitsy farm for May 2012.

All the plants are robustly growing and as you can see I’ve managed to mulch the peripheries with dried oak leaves. Now, the next step is mulching the aisles. I’m thinking a hundred times about mulching the beds though.

itsy bitsy birdhouse

One of the reasons that spur me to wake up early in the morning—the rare times that I do, that is—is the itsy bitsy birdhouse in our backyard that Brother A set up.

The birdhouse was a gift from Cousin A.

I’ve probably seen at least 10 species of birds—sporting all sorts of colors in their plumage—visiting the bird feeder and the bird bath beside it.

It’s a shame my camera doesn’t have those high-tech telephoto lenses that could probably shoot a flea mid-spring.

I can only take pictures from afar or upload digitally-zoomed-then-cropped ones because, true to their wild nature, a li’l bit of movement from me and the birds go off...and that doesn't give me time to capture the high def beauty of our winged visitors. Le sigh.

orange picking at gordon’s grove

Whenever visitors from the homeland (Philippines) come to Florida, they’ll always be treated to a trip to Gordon’s Grove in DeLand—one of those “u-pick” citrus operations dotting the Florida landscape.

If our guests are lucky, it’s strawberry picking time, too—which we do over at Vo-Lasalle Farms in De Leon Springs.

The orange (er, citrus) picking season at Gordon’s Grove is from October to June so when my brother-in-law came to visit in November after a business conference in Chicago, we hied off to the citrus farm.

The parking area’s big—the whole front lawn to be exact, which is meticulously maintained by the owner. In fact, when we were there, he was methodically scouring the lawn for overgrown grass. Methinks he was having a blast joy-riding on his riding mower. :) Helps him think, maybe.

Planted with 16 acres of citrus, Gordon’s Grove sits along a quiet strip on Hazen Road in DeLand. You can pick grapefruits, tangelos, satsumas, amber sweet oranges and red navels...and even take an ample sampling while picking.

On this November day last year, the ground was littered with citrus peels in varying stages of decomposition.

Picking is fun, and at $8 per 5-gallon bucket, you can easily bring home enough to last you—and your friends—through the week.

There's nobody manning the, er, front desk. Paying for the fruits you pick is based on an honor system, the money placed in a can.

They must get a lot of out-of-state and out-of-the-country visitors because their guestbook had place names from as far away as Southeast Asia (not just the Philippines, heh.)

We have lots of friends so we often tote home four buckets worth of the sweet citrus. And they are extremely sweet, my favorite among them the red navels and the satsumas.

When we were exploring the grove, we saw a bee farm that the owner maintained on the property. I guess, the scary bugs are necessary if we are to enjoy loads of fruits every picking season. :)

What’s best about picking oranges at Gordon's Grove is that you won’t have to rise super early—like awake-with-the-birds early—to get to the farm on time.

Gordon’s Grove is open from sunrise to sunset so as long as you can still see by the sun—except on a Sunday, when they’re closed—you’ll still have time to sample and pick their sweet oranges.

How to get there:
Gordon’s Grove
1624 Hazen Road, DeLand, FL 32720
Telephone: (386) 734-0620
Directions: 4 miles from center of town, off truck route 15A

(This is not a paid post.)

gardening tasks for may

It’s the merry month of May! It’s late spring, but it feels like summer’s come too early here in Central Florida.

Anyhoo, I’m thinking of my gardening TO DO list for this month. And I’ve got plenty. I wonder if I’ll be able to check off every single task on this list come June...

So, here’s what’s up for my vegetable gardening efforts this month:

1. Plan for late summer planting—inventory seeds, buy them before June comes around, and store them in the refrigerator. I plan to have: corn, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, radish (in containers), asparagus yardlong beans (pole), bok choi, pak choi, Napa cabbage, spinach, Kentucky Wonder beans (pole), tatsoi mustard, and Spanish onions.
2. If I’m going to add crops to my spring garden for summer, plant heat-tolerant vegetables.  Cherry tomatoes, check. Hot peppers, check. Okra, check. Sweet potatoes, check. Calabaza, hmmm...let me rethink that. The one I had last season didn’t do well. Ditto with the chayote, which sprouted but didn’t follow through on the promise of growth. My bad, I believe, since it’s the first time I tried growing it. (I was thoroughly disappointed, because it’s my favoritest vegetable, too, next to patola — or luffa, in English, heh.)
3. Sow bush beans in the empty space beside the zucchinis.
4. Sow catnip then plant them right next to the vegetable garden. I need an organic deterrent to those pesky summer mosquitoes, ugh!
5. Transplant banana peppers into clay containers and situate them in the vegetable garden.
6. Solarize beds that won’t be used for the summer. I doubt if there’ll be an empty one though. The burning heat didn’t stop me from starting my experimental vegetable garden last year. I don’t think it’ll be any different this year.
7. Mulch beds...and this time, get around to doing it. This task has been in my To-Do list for months now. The leaves for mulching are already decomposing, for goodness’ sake!
8. Thinking about purchasing lady bugs for aphid control. I’ve been nuking these tiny monsters every day with my pepper spray. They positively lurve my asparagus yardlong beans—the type of beans that my family can’t absolutely do without—so I’ve been taking extra care to keep these veggies healthy...no matter what! If I can’t get the lady bugs, well, I’ll have to stick with my pepper spray.
9. Fertilize vegetable beds with organic plant food. Use specialty fertilizer for tomatoes, to keep them productive. And do this ASAP! My problem right now is that I have lush greens but scarce fruits and flowers on my tomatoes. 

Additionally, I have cuttings-in-waiting and other plants so I’ll have to take care of them, too.

1. Once the golden lantanas are ready, plant them out in the front yard, on the Brown Island. (The Brown Island is the barren bed that sits in front of my bedroom window.)
2. Make additional Mexican petunia cuttings for Cousin A for her front yard. She’s seen my robustly growing set and she wants hers, too, heh.
3. Replant Mexican heather, heliconia, variegated sweet iris, and the blue-flowered ground cover according to the new design for the Brown Island. 
4. Repot the avocado into a bigger, wider clay container.

There! I have my May gardening tasks listed down. The next thing on the agenda is the doing. I’ll have to see what tasks from this list will still await me in June. :)

tiny farm, circa 12 april 2012

My tiny farm, taken on Thursday, 12 April 2012 at about 6:00 in the evening...during my daily hour-long walk through my vegetable garden:

My dad would be so proud of me, heh. (Finally, his brown thumb of a daughter isn't killing plants anymore kekeke.)

my tiny backyard farm

What’s in a garden?

Everything green and beautiful...and pesky (snerk!)

What’s in my garden?

Lots of new seedlings, thriving veggies and youngish fruit trees. And of course, the requisite bugs (argh!).

Welcome to my Spring 2012 beer—er—vegetable garden!

my tiny tiny backyard farm, somewhere in orange city, florida.

yep, those are bud lights bottles. frugality ftw!

beer bottles, up close and personal.

my central florida vegetable garden, from another perspective.

growing your vegetable garden from seeds has its
own (geeky) satisfaction, eh?

tomatoes--both cherry and roma--from seedlings now transplanted.
i forgot to label though so i don't know which is which.

sugar peas seedlings heartily thriving in my beer--er--vegetable garden.

garden beans emerging besides the sugar peas. 

planting eggplants for the first time this spring. hope they
fruit well because my family members are eggplant junkies!

asparagus yardlong beans--aka string beans--emerging.

sweet potatoes, grown for their leaves, not for their fruit.
we love camote (sweet potato) salad!