Florida permaculture for busy people

It's that glorious time of the year when the caring government changes the clocks in order to save ... whatever they originally decided to save. For those of us with regular day jobs this means that we have no time to garden for it is pitch dark at 6 PM.

Joking aside, how do we garden when weekdays are shot, and weekends are torn apart between other responsibilities. I had faced this problem for a few gardening seasons now; summer is dedicated to fighting the lawn, and winter - our best time to garden - is robbed of available light time.

Over a few years that I had the garden at this place, and even four years that I had this blog, my garden had significantly evolved. I started like everyone else, from trying to grow the usual suspects that could be found in the produce isle, to gradually abandoning this time-consuming assortment, and moving towards local, native, perennial, and self-taking-care-of.

With experience, a touch of bravery, and a bit of taste adjustment, food can be grown by itself, especially in year-around gardening season place like Florida. It is scary, from a consumer perspective, to abandon tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, and squash. But with the exception of cucumbers, the rest can be substituted by native self-growing plants.

I created a new label that I'm calling "Garden Evolution". Muses like this one will be filed under this new label to describe the journey my garden took towards self-sustainability. Trust me though, this journey is far from being fully explored.

Today I'll start with the greens. If you read any of my posts, you would know that I am an avid greens grower and consumer. I love my greens, and quite frankly, that's what I mostly eat. From late October till late April greens grow like weeds in Florida, especially non-picky ones like bok choy, collards, mustard, and sakurajima greens. But what if you don't have the time to even put some seeds into the ground and water it once in a while?

Enter permaculture. This native Asian plant is making in-roads in the USA and is becoming more and more known thanks to well loved You Tube personalities (you know who!). This plant is Okinawa Spinach.

Yes, it looks like a big mess of leaves, and that's what it is. This huge bush that is completely overtaking my 4x6 raised bed, started from a little rootless twig that I bought on eBay. I let it establish in a container for a few months and then transplanted it to the garden. Okinawa Spinach, at least in hot and humid Florida, likes shady moist places. It needs regular harvesting of the succulent ends (yeah, eat it!) so that it can bush out instead of crawling far and skinny. 

The beauty of this plant is that it requires no care (other than being planted in a favorable environment as I mentioned above). It suppresses the weeds underneath - another useful feature, and it is tasty. I should admit that it is an acquired taste. It definitely has "taste" for it is spicy, but not hot spicy. It just has much more flavor than any green you can buy in the store. I eat it raw in salads. But it can easily be sauteed, steamed, boiled, made into an omelet, or whatever creative heat processing you can come up with. And it grows by itself. Not only that, it can be easily propagated by cutting the stem and rooting it in the container (no rooting hormone required). 

If you are trying to convert the front lawn into food forest or edible landscaping , take note of this candidate. It can be grown as a centerpiece of a flower arrangement, or as a border plant. It can be grown under the trees, in containers, in lieu of the border shrubs. Anything goes with Okinawa Spinach, but as I mentioned, in Florida it needs shade and moisture. So, plant it on the East or North side of the house. 

Lastly, a close cousin of Okinawa Spinach is Molokai spinach, or Longevity Spinach.

Its leaves are green, as opposed to reddish-purplish color of Okinawa. The taste is milder, but it is not as juicy. Growing requirements are the same. It is also believed to lower cholesterol, hence one of its nicknames, "Cholesterol Spinach". 

Well, there you have it. With just these two plants we solved the problem, at least partially, of not being able to grow greens in the summer, or any time when weather, daylight saving, or job does not permit gardening.

Companion Planting

In my never ending quest to grow more greens and to extend greens growing season I am experimenting with companion planting, and especially with growing dense and mulching heavily.

What tipped me off in this direction was the experience of harvesting sweet potatoes during some dry times of November. As I pulled the vines that covered the ground densely, I noticed that the ground under the vines was wet and cool while the rest of the garden was suffering from thirst. As I harvested all the potatoes and discarded the vines to the compost pile, the soil where the sweet potatoes were dried out within a day.

Usually regular greens like kale and collards are pretty much done by June. They simply stop growing and wilt away. I accepted that fact as part of Florida growing seasons. But this year I am trying to extend my greens well into the Summer.

The idea is to cover the soil with plants having no empty areas so that the leaves would shade the soil and keep the moisture in while lowering the soil temperature. I am diligently mulching the beds with grass clippings and so far the method works.

The bed above has collards, Buttercrunch lettuce, buckwheat, and bush beans growing together densely, and mulched with a layer of grass clippings about two to three inches deep between the plants. Granted it is not July yet, but we had some over ninety days, and the plants did not wilt. It also helps that this bed gets shade in the afternoon.

The curly leaves in the picture above is Russian Kale. I stumbled upon the seeds at Tractor Supply and just had to try them. It is amazingly juicy and tender kale, and now is my favorite. This kale is interplanted with beans, buckwheat, and broadleaf mustard greens. I am very curious as to what will happen to these beds in the mid-Summer. I am seriously hoping to have enough greens for my salads from these beds; it is definitely a worthy experiment.

Sakurajima Radish - a resilient green for Florida gardens

If you are into organic greens, check out this awesome radish that has tasty edible greens. It is called sakurajima radish. It is grown in Japan for the greens and the root, and it is heat tolerant. In Florida it is very difficult to grow greens in the Summer time. After much experimenting sakurajima radish is one green that I grow throughout the Summer. I did try eating the root, but to my taste it was too tough and too dense. It might be good cooked, or fermented like they do in Japan, but at this point I only care for the greens, which are delicious, and did I mention they grow in the heat?

Here's what the root of the plant looks like (hiding beneath the abundant seed pods):

Once you've grown a few plants, they will provide the seeds for you in excess. In fact, sakurajima will re-seed freely if you let it. After a couple of years I have sakurajima sprouting up on the lawn and in garden beds, sometimes very far from where it originally grew.

And finally, here are the greens. Young greens taste good raw in salads, bigger ones are good stir-fried, boiled, or cooked in any way you like cooked greens. They can be seeded throughout the year, but please select a shaded spot for them to hide from the scorching Summer rays.