Greens in the Florida Summer

Greens? We know that in the summer we might as well throw in the towel, or a shovel... Nothing grows but cowpeas and okra.

Some months ago I planted, as an experiment, some sakurajima radish. Granted, I planted it a bit late, probably in late March, so when our infamous heat started frying the garden, sakurajiama went to seed. I only harvested maybe some fist size radishes, very short of promised watermelon size. But then the radish plants went into seed - not a bad proposition - I love my seeds, so I collected a few for the nest season's planting.

Well, to be fair, quite a few seed heads fell onto the ground, and now, voila! I have radishes sprouting everywhere, even on the lawn. To my surprise, this is one resilient radish.

And it is quite tasty too, if you don't let it grow oversize. To compensate for the lack of greens in my salads I now add these greens, combined with the still surviving bunching onion, purslane, some amaranth leaves, and still surviving curled parsley. It's organic, it's fresh, and it's free. Can I ask for more! Here's the start of the garden salad from the garden.

 

Note to self: next time collect more sakurajima radish seeds to have on hand for the summer greens.  Highly recommended!

What to do with overgrown okra

If you planted any okra this season, right now you would be drowning in okra pods, and the okra plants themselves would be rivaling your oak trees. Yes, this is how prolific this plant is; once it is established in a reasonably good soil and you give it some water, it will grow to no ends. This summer we have plenty of water from Heavens, so okra should be thriving in your garden.

With that, of course, comes responsibility of harvesting okra pods, and I am not kidding when I say "responsibility". Okra pods can get overgrown in a matter of hours, not even days. So, just yesterday, okra pods were little and did not look like they were ready to be picked, but today the same pods are tough to the touch and are huge. So, what do you do with that overgrown okra?

First, do a "finger" test. Squeeze the okra pod with your thumb and your index finger. Does it give? Meaning, is it soft at all? If the answer is yes, then you can pick that pod and use it in your usual cooking, like fried or roasted okra recipe. If it is too tough to squeeze, leave it alone. Seriously. Let it ripen on the vine and then collect the dried pod for the next season's seed. You can also make okra coffee in a pinch, so, it is a good idea to save dry okra seeds for these two reasons at least. Last, but not least, you can preserve your okra crop by canning, pickling, or drying. Ball book of canning.

If you are a type of a gardener that appreciates home-grown mulch and compost, then okra is your best friend, just like bean stalks, cow peas, and corn. Okra has very fibrous stalks, meaning, that it provides a lot of compost material for the garden. Once you decide that you had enough of okra harvest, pull the plants and shred them into small (about two inch pieces) with your shredder or hand pruner and use in the garden right away - as a mulch at first, and when it is decomposed, as an additive to your soil. Really, you cannot waste any part of the okra plant. It is a simply amazing gift to the garden, both in food production and as a garden soil builder.

Growing Tomatoes in Florida Heat

In my never-ending quest to grow tomatoes year-round in Florida I have embarked on trying them out in our excruciating summer heat. We know that there are two problems with growing tomatoes in Florida summer months: the sun kills the plants, and what it does not kill, the heat and humidity finishes the job by preventing pollinating. Usually, we have the last of our crop in June and then park our garden tools till September.

But this year I decided to experiment and seeded a few grape tomatoes sometime in late May. The seeds germinated and little plantings were replanted into the 16oz styrofoam cups and were kept under the tree in the shade until they were ready to go into the soil.

Now the problem here is that my whole garden is in the sun, there is practically no place where these young tomatoes could have had any relief from the heat and sun rays. I know that the secret to growing tomatoes in Florida summer is to keep them protected from the damaging sun. So, I figured, I will grow them in containers, in one place where I have some shade, by the fence that borders the woods. In fact, this is a very favorable environment because not only the plants would have shade for the most part of the day, but there is also some air movement, which tomatoes love as well.

Here's a picture of the fence and the woods behind it, just to get a perspective:

If I were to set the containers next to the house, even in complete shade, it would not work because tomatoes like a little breeze, but next to the house it would be still air, in addition to the heat emanating from the concrete walls. So this setup next to the trees was ideal.

Lo and behold in my adventure the plants are doing pretty good and are already flowering:

Granted, the humidity now is awful and left alone, the flowers probably would not pollinate. You need to emulate the bee - every morning before it gets too hot, shake the stem with the flowers at about the same frequency as a buzzing bee, not very long, maybe 10-20 shakes, if I can say that. This will loosen the pollen, and a little baby tomato will start forming. And no, we don't need real bees to pollinate the tomatoes in Florida heat; tomatoes are self-pollinating, meaning they don't have male and female flowers.

So, if you have a corner on your property where it gets a little breeze and shade for the most part of the day, go ahead, and try a few tomato plants even now. I would suggest growing them in containers so they don't get too soggy from all these rains, plus you can control container placement better than a stationary bed. Growing tomatoes in Florida summers is challenging but worth a try. I would suggest growing only cherry or grape varieties as they are not very demanding of the sunlight.

Grow luffa in your home garden

What is luffa? It is a gourd type plant, also sometimes spelled as loofah or even lufa, and is mostly known for using its mature fruit as sponges. The idea of growing my own organic sponges appealed to me, so I decided to try out luffa this year in my garden. I had the seeds for about two years, just never got around to planting them, so I germinated the seeds in styrofoam cups to see if they even come up. They certainly did, what a resilient plant, and were transplanted into the garden:

I seeded this luffa plant on June 16th, and it is not too late to seed it now, but probably not in August since it requires about 150 days to mature. If you missed this growing season, there will always be spring to try this plant out.

In less than a month the vines covered my six-foot fence completely. These vines love to climb, so the taller the support you have for them, the better:

At a month and a half of its age luffa started flowering. Here's the male flower:

As with any squash-type plant, male flowers come first and in abundance. Many of them will drop off prior to female flowers being ready. But no worry, once female flowers start to open there still will be plenty of male flowers to pollinate. On this picture (in the middle) you can see a young immature female fruit that will start flowering in a few days:



Not every female flower will result in a mature fruit, that's just the rules of Nature. But I already can see that luffa will be a very productive plant, based on the number of female flowers getting ready. Young fruits of luffa can be eaten just like zucchini, and mature fruits can be dried and used as free organic sponges. I am looking forward to update you on the progress of this beautiful plant, I like it already.

How to replant tomato seedlings

It is a third week of July and gardeners are busy preparing for the fall season. If you do not have any seedlings going, seed some tomatoes now. They take anywhere from four to six weeks to mature enough to be planted into the garden, and then about three months to give fruit. Our first frost usually comes around the second week of December in zone 9, and other zones accordingly , so you would want your tomatoes be done fruiting by the frost dates.

I seed my tomatoes in styrofoam "nursery" containers and after they show second leaves which are also called "first true leaves", they are replanted into the individual containers.

You should be careful about not exposing the roots of the seedlings to the sun, so the replanting is done, ideally, after the sunset. Carefully move the seedlings from the nursery container into some sort of a bowl and cover their roots with soil while you are replanting. I just hold the seedlings bunch with my hand while turning the nursery container upside down. Then I lower them into the bowl. Loosen up the seedlings so they separate from the bunch, fill a 16 ounce styrofoam cup with soil up to one-third, place the seedling into the cup holding it by the leaves, not the stem, and fill with the potting soil mix:

The soil should cover the seedling up to the leaves. One good thing about tomatoes is that they grow roots from the stem, so the more length you give them to grow the roots by covering the stem with soil, the better. Even if you have a brand new bag of potting mix and it feels moist, you should moist the styrofoam cup to the top. The best way to do that is to place the cup into some container filled with water and wait until the top of the surface feels and looks moist:

I usually plant around a hundred tomato seedlings of different varieties per season. Of course, not every seedling will survive, but that amount keeps our family well stocked with fresh tomatoes for eating, cooking and canning. Tomato plant produces on an average three to five pounds of tomatoes. To get even production plant different varieties according to their maturity dates; some tomatoes mature as soon as 58 days, others take longer, up to 120 days. Maturity dates are usually listed on a seed packet. Indeterminate (vining) tomatoes produce longer than determinate (bush) varieties.

When the seedlings in the cups are about four to six inches tall, they are ready to be replanted into the garden. From the cup to the garden it usually takes about a month. Set your cups in the dappled shade, preferably under a tree or a shade screen to filter the afternoon sun. The seedlings do not have an opportunity to send their roots into the coolness of the soil as they are confined in a small container. Keep them watered so that the surface of the cup is never dry. It might take daily watering if there is no rain. I normally use a garden hose on "shower" to give them a light bath and water thoroughly. Do not worry about overwatering; excess water will run off from the bottom of a container if you punched drain holes in it.

Grow peanuts from a grocery store bag

It's been just a week since I seeded some peanuts from a grocery store bag. They all have germinated. Granted, you will not always have a successfull guerrilla planting like that, but most of the time seeds saved from your regular vegetables will germinate and grow well. I planted four peanuts in Styrofoam cups as an experiment with growing grocery store peanuts. In this picture you can see that something else came up along with peanuts, it looks like a squash, maybe a sunflower. The reason for that is that I reuse my potting soil, so there could have been some seeds leftover from previous plantings. I will let this seedling grow and see what develops of it.

Now, usually, as in with tomatoes or peppers, I will let seedlings to get their first set of true leaves. I will not do that with peanuts because they have long roots, so keeping them in cups for too long will detriment their growth. So, the day peanuts germinated, they are put into the garden.

Usually, I would seed legumes directly into the garden, but this was an experiment and I wanted to see controlled germination. It worked, so now I know that I can safely plant peanuts from the grocery store directly into the garden.

When to plant cowpeas?

Right now! In Florida, zone 9, we can plant cowpeas from mid-March to mid-September. Southern and Northern Florida gardeners will have to adjust their schedules accordingly.

Cowpeas are excellent source of green beans as well as a cover crop, the plant that can be dug in or tilled into the ground to make "green manure". They are also invaluable as a crop rotation plant, especially to be a successor plant after tomatoes or peppers. I just pulled some tomato plants that finished producing, dug in the mulch that was around the plants and raked the soil to make the bed level and fine:

I usually plant my cowpeas straight from the grocery store bag, but I saw these seeds at Lowes, purple hull variety, and decided to give them a try because they look so pretty.

Make indentation rows in the soil using the rake, something like six inches apart. If there was no rain, sprinkle some water over the bed to thoroughly wet the ground.  Then place seeds into the rows three inches from each other:

Using the same rake, cover the seeds with soil and you are done!

Cowpeas do not need support because they will grab on each other. I put a bamboo stake in the middle of the bed just to mark cowpea variety, otherwise I would not even bother. Keep them watered every day until they come up, and then every day, again (if there is no rain) until they are about a foot tall. After that they will shade the ground well enough to need watering once a week if there is no rain. 

Cowpeas grow very fast; pictured above are grocery store cowpeas seeded just five days ago.

I planted an approximately three by four feet section of the bed and it took the whole package of cowpeas (28 grams). But I expect at least five pounds of green beans from that planting, as well as some seeds for the future plantings. Cowpeas are very productive, plant some now.

What can we plant in July in Florida?

What can we plant in July? Surprisingly, a lot of things! July is one of the busiest months of the year for seeding future crops. We are now officially in a fall preparation mode. Florida has three, or in some sense four growing seasons, and fall is one of the most important ones. Most popular vegetables to grow in the fall are tomatoes, eggplant and peppers. But all these need six to eight weeks from seed to transplanting into the garden, which gets us here, in July, to start the seeds.

If you have never seeded a plant you might feel intimidated. But no fret, it is really very simple. Once you get a hang of it you will never resort to buying plants from the box store again. Plus, did I say seeds are cheap?

First, you need to get yourself some seeds and some "nursery" containers to plant them in. I use blue styrofoam containers that are leftover from the mushrooms you find in a grocery store. If you do not have these, you might look around your house to find something suitable: it has to be at least three inches deep and allow poking some drainage holes on the bottom. Probably glass and metal are not good candidates, but I have seeded plants in cardboard boxes before with no issues.

Poke some holes in the bottom of your container and fill it with soil. I use Miracle Gro potting mix and found it to be very good seeding matter. It is cheap, about nine dollars per two cubic feet bag, which is a lot of soil.

Here's a container filled with potting mix and holes on the bottom:

Next, you want to moisture your soil, even if it came from a fresh bag. Fill some container with water, I use a sink for that, and let the nursery container sit in the water, about half of it's size deep. The water will moisturize the container from the bottom eliminating the chances of having dry pockets that you would have if you watered from the top:

You will know that soil is moist when you see (and feel) the moisture on the top of the soil. It will change color (darken) and will be wet to the touch.

Now you need to make some "rows" where the seeds will be planted. I use a regular pen for that, but any blunt thin object will do. Just make some indentations in the soil about quarter an inch to half an inch deep. In my blue containers I usually make three rows. Put the seeds into the rows. Again, a container like that takes about twenty seeds, but the rule of thumb - the spacing between the seeds should be about a half an inch:

Now cover the seeds with the surrounding soil and you are done. Place the containers outdoors in a shade. A porch or lanai works best, but if you don't have these, just put them under a tree or a bush. Keep the soil moist and in about a week you should see the seedlings coming up. Tomatoes usually come up first; peppers and eggplant might take up to three weeks, so do not give up on them, keep them watered!

In addition to fall planting preparation we can still plant cowpeas, okra and sweet potatoes if you have slips ready.

Too many tomatoes, how to plan tomato harvest

I always overplant, meaning I plant too much of some things that we cannot possibly eat in the amounts harvested, especially tomatoes. When planning a garden, you should not only think of what you want to plant, but also how to take care of these plants as well as what are you going to do with the harvest. Granted, it is difficult to predict if the yield will be substantial or dismal, because it depends on a number of things, such as weather, plant diseases, insect attacks and purely your own time devoted to the garden. Sometimes you end up with too much of a good thing:

These grape tomatoes from Sam's club bought tomatoes that I saved seeds from grew like crazy and the yields were absolutely insane:



When you have that much of a crop coming up all at the same time it might be too much of a good thing if you are unprepared. So, how do we plan for the future harvest in a manner that a certain crop does not overwhelm us, but at the same time providing for a variety of vegetables in a garden?

I imagine, the first thing to think about would be what is it your family likes to eat and in what quantities. If you are buying two pounds of tomatoes per week in the store, then you know that you need that much from the garden. An average tomato plant yields about  four to five pounds of tomatoes, total. That means if you plant one tomato plant you can expect to harvest four to five pounds of tomatoes. Usually, indeterminate varieties will fruit over time, for approximately a month or two in length, but not all at once. So, if you expect to harvest a quarter pound per week per tomato, then you need eight plants to provide you with two pounds per week. This is not an exact science, of course. For comparison, I normally have a hundred tomato plants of various types in the garden per season. You can see now where I run into trouble ... :)

Take a look at this book if you do not already have it. In Vegetable Gardening in Florida James Stephens lists yields for all commonly grown vegetables in Florida, so you could calculate how many seeds or plants you need to put into the ground to sufficiently provide your family with vegetables, as well as not being overrun by them:

How to harvest amaranth

The time has passed and amaranth tassels have grown large and bountiful, and started to show some signs of ripening. Ripened amaranth seeds would be seen on the tassells as minuscule whitish seeds, as well as the tassells themselveses would start to yellow and a bit dry:

Now simply break the tassles off the plant and collect them in some large container. Ideally, you would hang them in a dry place, like a garage, over some clean sheets of plastic to let the seeds fall on the plastic. I do not have such luxury as the garage is full of other "necessary" things, so I simply put my amaranth into a garden wheelbarrow. They will dry in there just fine because the wheelbarrow sits in the lanai, so it is out of the rain.

Now, we have to clean the tassles off the remaining leaves and stems and fluff it up every day to allow drying thoroughly and evenly. The process of drying will take approximately three weeks, or when most of the seeds fall of the stems.