What can we plant in March in Florida?

Warm weather is here, and Florida gardeners are preparing for the summer harvest. All main warm weather vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant) should be transplanted now.

Pepper Transplant

Unfortunately, it is too late to start tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant from seed. It usually takes about six weeks from seed to transplant size, and that will bring us to mid-April for transplanting; this is too late because May heat will be too brutal on the young plants. Big box stores carry transplants, these will do the job of providing summer vegetables. Mark your calendar to start the seeds in early August for the second Florida season of warm vegetables.

Tomato Transplant

Some vegetables can be still started from seed, these include cucumbers, squash, zucchini, corn, and beans.

Cucumber two weeks old from seed

Seed these directly into the garden and keep the soil moist all the way until the seedlings get established. Shade off young seedlings of cucumbers, they do not like direct afternoon sun or being dry at the roots.

My addiction to seeds brought upon a strange challenge. I was seeding a lot of vegetables and did not mark some of them. These seedlings came up and looked like a cucumber plant. But now I am at odds. It is quite a strange looking plant, so if anyone can identify it, please let me know in a comment. Otherwise, the mystery plant will have to produce the fruit to uncover its nature and purpose.

Mystery plant - identified! Milk Thistle

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Grow tomatoes, eggplant and peppers over the winter in Florida

Who says we cannot have our cake and eat it too? In Florida we can. With some adjustments, we can grow tomatoes, peppers and eggplant year round, except for the summer season. The only thing we should do is to protect the plants from the frosts. Barring elaborate covering or green house set ups, we can grow these vegetables in containers and bring them inside on frost nights. If you want to venture on to winter growing of these warm season vegetables, you should plant them in some nice containers now:

Here's some eggplant:

Cubanelle Peppers:

and some tomatoes ready to be transplanted.

One thing all these vegetables have in common, they like 65F to 85F degree weather, which can be easily achieved througout the winter in Florida, except for the North Florida. In Central and South Florida we can grow these vegetables in containers and just bring them inside on frost nights. Even in the event they don't fruit in the coolish weather, we can still have an earlier start on the harvest, by probably two to three months by just growing them in this manner.

Update on September Garden

Most of warm season vegetables should be in the ground now. These are tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.



Eggplant and Peppers

  

Tomatoes

   Cucumbers and squash can be still seeded if they are of the early variety, no more than 60 days maturity dates.

Cucumbers

Young squash

Squash is ready to be transplanted.

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.

How to replant pepper seedlings

If grown in proper season, peppers are pretty easy to grow. In June and July we can seed peppers to be set out into the garden in August and harvested up until the first frost, which usually happens in December. I seed peppers in styrofoam trays leftover from mushrooms. They are free and have sufficient depth to start pepper seeds. You will have to poke some holes in the bottom of these trays to allow drainage. After the seedlings come up and show second leaves, they are ready to be replanted:

In this close up you can easily see that pepper seedlings have four leaves, two of the original seed leaves, which are called first leaves, and two of the seedling leaves, which are called first "true" leaves.

I use 16 oz styrofoam cups for my seedlings. Poke some holes in the bottom of the cup for drainage. I use a pen for that:

Fill the cup to about one-third with soil, I use Miracle-Gro potting mix for that. It is pretty cheap, about eleven dollars for a two cubic foot bag, and works very well. Carefully insert a teaspoon into a seedling tray and pick up a seedling from the bottom. Hold the seedling by the leaves, not the stem, and set it into the cup:

Fill the cup with the potting mix up the leaves. Water thoroughly so that some water runs off from the bottom holes:

Now the seedlings can stay outside, preferably under a tree where they will be cool, but still have some dappled sun. When the seedlings are six inches tall, or in about a month, they can be set into the garden.

Not too early to start peppers

This is a second week of June, and not too early to start peppers! I seeded peppers a week ago, and now I have some cute seedlings coming up. I used to plant a variety of peppers, but now I only  plant cubanelle pepper as a sweet pepper and some chili peppers. I had some success with bell peppers, but not enough to put effort into it. Banana pepper was good, but Cubanelle, while having similar qualities is better. Cubanelle pepper is very versatile; it can be eaten green, as we do mostly, as well as letting them go ripe, where they develop into some nice red color and distinct sweetness.

Here's a picture of a cubanelle pepper on the vine. They are very prolific.

Peppers take their time to grow. If you seed now, you can put plants into the ground beginning of August and they will start to fruit end of September. You will have plenty of time to enjoy the harvest till the first freeze! Seed your peppers now.