Under Pressure

Have you been there? You need to get planting........the season is NOW! You've got a window of a few weeks to get it done so, of course, you lounge around the first week......."I'll do some planting during the week after work, and finish it up next weekend" goes the usual logic.

Then the weekend comes and you forgot you promised a friend you'd attend their wedding. Bummer. Church on Sunday and another weekend is gone.

"I'll do some planting during the week after work, and finish it up next weekend".........again.

Then it rains all weekend. Bummer.

"I'll do some planting during the week after work, and finish it up next weekend"........It has to happen!

Then your Mother/Brother/Sister/Wife/Son/Uncle needs you to (fill in the blank) and thinks it's ridiculous that you'd say no so you can take care of your stupid garden! The pressure builds...........Sorry, but it's now or never Mom!

That's how I've felt the last couple weeks as I've gone from being ahead of schedule in the garden, to barley hanging on as October approaches fast. But I did get some work done during those weeks after work. Check it out............




As the gardens up north start to wind down, the Florida autumn garden is just getting busy. Like these beans...........just ate the first one this morning! Delicious.



68 tomato plants......and they were definitely started on time. I'm continuing to use rebar stakes for my tomatoes, as they worked great during the spring. I buy a 20' piece of 3/8" rebar and cut it in half. I push the rebar in the ground about 2-3 feet deep, by hand, right behind the plant. As the tomato plant gets bigger I just tie it to the rebar. What's nice is the rebar is strong enough & long enough to support the plant without bending, yet light enough to move around to other beds when needed. A great way to pack 17 plants in a 10' x 5' bed.


Cukes.......my first time using a net trellis.



A full bed of onions. A lot of people are surprised that onions grow in Florida, but they actually do quite well during the cool months. You just have to make sure you use "short day" seeds. Because they take a long time to grow (some varieties take 160 days.......51/2 months!), the bed I grew them last year got covered by shade as the winter progressed. So this year I moved them to a bed that gets full sun all through winter. I'm looking to harvest about 200 onions in this 5' x 10' bed. They store.........so I grow.



Hot & Sweet peppers (up top), Tomatillo (bottom left) & Okra (bottom right). All grown in the same bed. I've never grown Okra or Tomatillos before........I hope there's enough hot weather left for them. It's possible it might get a little cool for them by the end of next month. We'll see.


It's Florida......you've got to grow some citrus. My first citrus tree.........kumquat. I love kumquats!


On the left is some squash I think I planted too late.......and on the right some peas that I'm growing for the first time.



Notice the rolled leaf........middle-right?


Well, this is the rascal that wraps itself in the leaf...................


...............and this is the proper pest control technique for the situation. I bet I've squished 75 of these guys over the last couple weeks.



I've still got 4 beds to plant yet...........for the real cool weather crops. Broccoli, Brussels, Lettuce, Beets, Radish, Celery, Cabbage and some others I'm sure I've forgotten. I have been asked about the mulch I use in the beds. I use straw that I buy from a local farm supply company for about $10 a bale. It definitely keeps the weeds down and helps keep the soil from fluctuating wildly from wet to dry all the time. Don't use hay! All it takes is one time and you'll know why............it'll start to grow!


That brings me up to date. Now to get after those cool weather crops...................I've got to get them in this weekend.

Behind The Scenes.

I know not everybody who reads this blog is a full time church goer, but for those of you who are you will relate to my past week, as I had one of THOSE church weeks. The one where all your responsibilities converge at the same time.

To start, my wife and kids are headed to Nicaragua this summer on a mission trip and one of the ways they raised money for the trip was working on a very large church yard sale. One that takes up a whole gym and lasts for 3 days. A lot goes into one of these kind of yard sales, you must set a hundred or so tables out, fill them up with millions of pounds of stuff (organized of course), put sticker prices on all the stuff and then sell the stuff. The good news is they raised over $6,000........the bad news is it has to be split 25 ways. lol. On top of that I wear a few hats at my church like Christian Ed Director, Sunday School teacher, Tenor in the choir, Advisory board member and finally Mission board member. Throw in Plumbing Contractor, Dad, Husband, and my wife and I getting sucked into watching the past 5 LOST seasons to catch up with our friends who watch & talk about it regularly, and it's been an exhausting week. Barely enough time for the garden......but I'm back!

I'd like to thank Margaret at http://life-at-thistlegarden.blogspot.com/ for waking me up to the easy solution to my squash problem. She told me to just take the male squash stamen and rub it on the female flower (or is flour Margaret?). I know it sounds dirty, but as you can see below in just one weeks time I've got some squash! I feel like a dummy!

Above: Magda squash.

Above left: Sweet Lightning, Above right: Spaghetti squash.

Above: Crooked Neck.

Above: The Squash Patch.

In the middle of my busy week I had a disaster in the garden as well........20 pepper plants chopped down like the Amazon Rain Forest by some Cutworms. It's totally my fault. I stubbornly didn't listen to the advise I got to collar the stems of the plants. I guess I though I was Super Conservative Gardener and cutworms wouldn't dare continue to mess with me. I had read somewhere where an old farmer would put nails next to his plants and the cutworms wouldn't hurt the plants because the nails would bother them. Well......take a look:



The above pick shows where there used to be about 15 plants, the rest in the pic are now gone as well. I've got a bunch more under the lights getting ready to come out to the garden. Next time......I've got some Dixie cups going around them. (And yes, that is an eggplant that I mistakenly planted with the peppers)

And of course no blog would be complete without an update on my favorites........the Tomatoes.




I'm excited about the tomatoes.....they look strong! The cutworms did get about 5 tomato plants, but I had some ready to take their place. (btw- you can click on any picture and it will bring you to my Flickr page where you can enlarge the pic if you want. Just don't go browsing around my Flickr invading my privacy......lol, just kidding)


Well that's quick update, I'll see if I can do my next post without letting a whole week go by!