Progress Report

Haven't done a whole lot, but things are coming along.  I planted a series of 34 cm pots with mustard and lettuce, and one 57 cm with radish greens.  I figure the greens are the most important nutritionally, so they come first.

The lettuce only went into the pots from the seedling trays recently, Nov. 18-21, yet they're ready for a little picking today on Dec. 1.

Here's what the mustard looks like, even though I've been picking leaves from the plants regularly.  They just keep on growing like crazy.

And there are loads of sweet potatoes ready for harvest from the containers too.  Here's a typical Hannah potato.  Time to harvest them and plant new crops in those pots they're in.  They can actually keep going year-round here, but it's best to rotate them with something unrelated like beans.

I'm still getting hot peppers from my plants, but I just started new seed in wet paper towels.  My current favorites are Jwala and Caribbean Red.  And the seedlings I started a while back are ready to separate now...turnip greens, radish greens, onion, tatsoi, chard, etc.

Out of 25 carrot seedlings I separated and planted in individual 8 cm pots, I currently have 24 still doing fine.  So the maxim that you can't transplant carrots is definitely bad info.

We're into what's looking like a potentially horrendous fire season...no measurable rain in well over a month...and this isn't the real fire season yet, that starts in February.  I've got a lot of brush I need to clear out and run through the shredder, so the gardening might not get my full attention this cool season.  And it's been hot, well above average.  Today was warm, half-cloudy, and muggy.

But I'm not complaining, I figure any day where I can still get out of bed in the morning and get some things done is a good day. Today I cleared some brush and sickled some tall grass and weeds. Got to keep moving.

For the metrically-challenged, my pots where all that mustard and lettuce is currently growing are a little over a foot and a half wide. The bigger mustard leaves are about two feet long and about half that wide...doesn't take many to make a pot of soup at that size.  I figure if my plants are just growing slowly but not thriving, something is wrong and I try to fix it.  Never settle for less than thriving plants in your garden, they're far more nutritious than half-yellow, sickly ones.

Growing in pots doesn't mean you're settling for less, necessarily. Eight of those 57 cm pots I use holds a cubic yard of potting soil, that's a lot of soil.  And in the pots, you don't have to contend with ground-dwelling animals like moles or rabbits because you can move them around and elevate them out of reach.  This time of year it takes a lot of water to hydrate a garden if the underlying sand is all bone dry.  Growing in nursery pots avoids all those troubles.

If we get a little rain now and then, maybe the planting beds make more sense.  But so far it looks like we're going to stay really dry.

New Plants Growing

Lots of new seedlings coming along, I've got lettuce ready to plant, carrot seedlings separated into individual 8 cm pots, and all kinds of seeds germinating...Lacinato kale, chard, turnip greens, tatsoi, etc.

I've always followed the gardening books and planted my carrot seeds in the beds or in large pots, but last year I tried treating them like any other crop...germinate the seed in a small pot, separate the seedlings, get them to a decent size, then set them into the beds and large pots as hand-high plants.  It worked just fine, so I'm doing it again this year with more plants.  Yesterday I separated 25 little carrot plants into 8 cm pots of nice rich soil mix and they're still on the makeshift table on the carport where I do this kind of work.

So far so good, no wilting at all...I'll leave them protected from full sun for another day to give them time to set new rootlets.  Those two pots with the tags in front are some germinating seed pots...Lacinato kale and Italian style parsley.  Maybe the gardeners who failed at transplanting carrots didn't take sufficient care...I'm always very gentle when untangling roots of seedlings, I don't expose them to sunlight, I use a rich mix of compost and potting soil, and I let them grow their roots before I set them out in sunlight.

Once they're well set in their little pots and actively growing, only then do I put seedlings in planting beds or large pots...haven't lost one yet with that method.  Last year each carrot weighed a pound or so...I don't need more than 25 pounds of carrots that's for sure. So we'll see what happens this year with them.  The variety is Muscade from north Africa, it's a very fine-flavored carrot that does well in my climate.

Here's the rest of the seeding flats and some mustard plants...

As you can see, the lettuce seedlings are ready to be transplanted into larger pots.  I was going to set up a few today, but I got a late start this morning and I had other things to do.

I find the gardening difficult physically at times, but it always relaxes me and makes me feel better mentally.  I also enjoy grounds maintenance on my hectare of land, that will be competing with the gardening work as these cool-season months progress.  We've been exceptionally dry here since October when the rainy season ended abruptly.  So I need to get into some areas near the house and clear out dead palmetto fronds and fallen pine branches.  I figure keeping a buffer area near the house where the fire fuel has all been cleaned up and shredded for compost is a priority in the cool season if it's been dry.

Unfortunately I injured my back dealing with a big woody Ficus my neighbor disposed of on my property.  People often use my land as a dump, that seems to be a custom here among the less responsible people who live in this area.  So I'm not getting a lot done, but usually these back problems ease up within a few days.

Meanwhile, I'll work with the 34 cm pots for a while.  I've got several of them cleaned out and ready to fill with new potting mix. Those lettuce plants will soon be spreading their roots in new homes and making leaves for me to pick...Romaine is my favorite lettuce, I don't like those flat-tasting types.  So this season I'm just planting Romaine...the leaves will make an outstanding salad when mixed with mustard leaves and freshly picked chives...mmmmm!

I feel sorry for all the people who get by on stale Iceberg lettuce, all full of chemicals and tasting like water.  I guess I'm spoiled now with all these fresh veggies I eat every day.  People often seem to think gardening is too much trouble, but I see what they do with their time and the money they spend at restaurants for substandard food and I wonder where their priorities got so mixed up.  They say that in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

Mustard Ready to Pick

Had some raw mustard greens last night, they grew fast.  If we had some cooler weather, they'd be better, but the little I had was very tasty.  Mustard greens are very high in so many nutrients, especially when you eat them right after you pick them.

If you don't like the spiciness, keep the leaves in the fridge for a couple of days and they'll become milder.  I like the snap of young mustard greens and I also love them in soups.  The aroma of freshly chopped mustard greens in the kitchen always makes me smile. After they grow for a while, especially if the weather is hot, they'll be too spicy-hot for raw munching and I'll just use them in soups and stir fries.  People in the US associate them with southern cuisine, but of course they're actually Asian as gardeners know. 

There seems to be an almost endless variety of Asian mustards.  I grow Florida Broad Leaf, simply because it grows like a weed in my soil and climate.  And it's not too spicy for me.  I have a pill vial crammed with thousands of mustard seeds in the fridge and I just use those in planting.  If you let it go to seed, it will produce a great abundance of small black seeds that last for years and years in the fridge.  They can be ground up for mustard seasoning if you want to do that.  The flowers are also edible, but watch out...they're extremely pungent.

A Little Progress

All I have left of the mowing is the western section near the property line and the road frontage, so I thought it was time to repot some mustard seedlings that are overgrowing their 8 cm nursery pots.  I have a good procedure for setting up pots, so I'll lay it out...see what you think of it.

First I take some pots that are overgrown with grass and weeds and clean them out...dump the contents in a wheelbarrow, sort out the twigs I use for drainage, the weeds and grass, and the old landscaping cloth.  The twigs, weeds, and grass go into the pile for shredding...maybe tomorrow on that.  The old landscaping cloth goes into the regular trash if it's deteriorated, along with any plant markers I run across.  I cut up plastic containers to use for plant markers.

Then the soil gets mixed with a little water, compost, and rock powder.  Mix it all up with a shovel till it's all nicely moistened and blended, then dump it all in a big plastic trash barrel for fallowing. The 34 cm pots get washed with a strong jet of water and some rubbing to get rid of PPN eggs, etc.  Then they're set in the sun for a while.  I got three done this morning, about what I need to pot up the mustard seedlings.

PPN will attack mustard roots, but they much prefer okra and eggplant.  The mustard can usually keep on in spite of them, so I'm planting a lot of it right now...I had a really bad plague of PPN this rainy season in my containers.

All I have to do on those three containers now is to lay some pine twigs in the bottom, put in a piece of landscaping cloth to block the soil from escaping out the drain holes, and fill them up with previously fallowed soil.  Then plant with mustard seedlings and mulch to protect the soil from the sun, record everything in my notebooks, and I'm done.  It sounds like a lot, but gardening relaxes me...and my methods usually work very well.  The mustard seedlings I planted about a week ago will be ready for leaf picking soon.

I'll be planting lettuce, kale, bunching onion, and pole beans in the coming weeks...plus a lot of miscellaneous herbs, greens, and hopefully some carrots.  It all depends on how good the air is, and how I feel.  But I always manage to plant something...been doing that for a long time now.  I'm driven by my love of good food in particular...today I picked some purslane that was growing out of my compost pile and more chilis from my pepper bushes.  The purslane is at its best when you pick it just as it's starting to show a few flowers.  A little parboiling, some oil and pepper vinegar, and you have a nutritious and tasty dish to go with anything you cook. The whole plant is good, except for the roots of course.  Once it gets a foothold in your garden, you'll never have to replant it...it makes incredible numbers of tiny seeds that seem to show up everywhere.  Some call it a weed, I call it a gift....so tasty and soothing to the digestion.  It can be used in salads, soups, and stir fries...or as a side dish after a little parboiling.

Sometimes it pays to appreciate what you already have instead of constantly striving for more of everything.

Perils of an Urban Gardener

Almost done mowing for the season, at least I've got the most important stuff done.  With a hectare of land and just a small mower, it ain't easy McGee.  But my electric mower agrees with me, less maintenance and no exhaust fumes in my face to trigger asthma attacks.  So I should stop whining about the small mower. It's 3.5 horsepower, that's enough to get the work done.  An electric mower is always running at full power, unlike a gasoline mower which gradually loses power as it ages or the plug gets fouled.  And I sharpen it every time I use it, that only takes about 20 minutes with a file and a steel.

The mustard will be ready to start picking soon for salad greens. Mustard greens are so much more nutritious than lettuce and to me they taste a lot better.  But I have lettuce seedlings coming up, Kalura this year...it's alleged to be heat-tolerant and it's a Romaine type which I prefer for taste.

The weather cooled down, it was thirteen Celsius this morning...quite a shock to my system I will say.  But the work was much more pleasant in the cool air.

Unfortunately the air smelled like a smoldering garbage dump, mixed with some kind of chemical odor.  I did a lot of coughing and got chest pain from being outside in it.  Every night it's stunk of smoke outside and I've had respiratory issues from it.  Possibly it's worse at night because of something called thermal inversion.  I recently read that according to a report by the World Health Organization, over 90% of the world's population breathes air that's harmful to human health...and it keeps getting worse each year.

So urban gardening has very serious drawbacks...but I'm hoping that it's an overall benefit to my health.  And I'm also hoping for lots of windy weather to clear the air.  I have a powerful urge to go sling those shovels and hoes around...maybe tomorrow if the air is OK.

Still Here

I see I've been neglecting this blog.  I've been trying to get caught up on the mowing and working on a physical rehab program and I've been neglecting the garden lately.  That's never a good idea, I depend on the veggies to keep my nutrition up.  In my defense, I did cut back the rainy-season overgrowth of invasive grasses in the South Garden and did some work with seedlings.  And of course I always keep my compost going no matter what...I have a couple of piles that are ready to incorporate into either potting or bedding soil.

Today I cleaned out three empty 34 cm nursery pots really well, but I didn't fill them yet with potting soil...that can wait for tomorrow.  I laid in fresh pine twigs and new landscaping cloth in the bottom of each one, being careful not to upset a Cuban tree frog who was dozing in the cart.  Those things are so tame that you can work around them and they don't seem to mind at all.  They're pretty groggy in the daytime I suspect.

I used to have one that lived in my watering can.  He used to sit on the lip of the can while I was hydrating my containers and show great interest in all the greenery passing by.  Finally one day he hopped off into some container plants, I guess he saw a bug or something...or a better place to sleep.  I have a lot of frogs and lizards here...and snakes as well.

I'm looking forward to better mustard greens when I plant those 34 cm pots with them.  The greens I'm harvesting now are getting too far along for salads and I just use a little in soup.  If you pick the leaves in the evening while they're high in sugar, the stems near the base are juicy and tangy like fruit with a complex flavor.  It's a nice taste treat for me now and then.  The swamp rabbits are onto this trick, they like to nibble on the stalks of sedges in the evening when they're sweet...specifically yellow nut sedge, which has edible "nuts" on the root system.  It's a common weed in lawns here, and I have lots of it.  Most people think it's grass, which it's not.

I read some things recently about veganism...the myths about it abound.  But the "bottom line" is that vegans are healthier and have fewer digestive issues than meat addicts.  The meat people warn us about protein deficiency and B12 deficiency, but it's just garbage not supported by science.  There are whole areas of India that are entirely vegetarian and they're not in dire straits healthwise compared to other areas in the subcontinent.  Of course you can find malnutrition throughout India, but that results from class barriers and from poverty, not vegetarianism.  I'm sure there are lots of malnourished people throughout the United States as well...for all sorts of reasons.  Vegetarianism is not one of them, I'm sure.  If a vegetarian eats a very restricted diet, they will get sick, but so will a meat eater.  I really don't like food fads and crazy diets.

Time for the news, I'll write more when I get some hoes and shovels going out there.  I have several of each ready to go, they just need my hands to move them around.

Big Plans

I always make big plans this time of year.  The weather is just starting to moderate a bit, the mosquitoes are winding down, and I've got to get ready for the cool season ahead.  In some years it doesn't amount to much, but we'll have cooler nights for sure and that favors many temperate-zone crops like kale.

My big plans don't usually materialize, things always get in the way.  The biggest problem for me is smoke pollution which is really bad for my asthma.  But I'll plan anyway and hope for the best.

I'm thinking lots of Muscade carrots this year.  They did very well last year, even though I only set out a half dozen or so in the planting beds.  I tried interplanting them with kale and other greens, and they really grew well.  Starting them in little 8 cm pots is a bad idea but I did it anyway to see what would happen.  They were all misshapen with multiple branches to the roots, but in the end it made little difference.  I just broke them up before peeling them for the soup pot.  The important thing...they were BIG...at least a pound apiece.  And they tasted fine in soup.

Modern carrot varieties are way too sweet for me, they test as high in sucrose as strawberries.  But Muscade is a very old variety from north Africa, so that's all I'll plant this year.  I just use them in soup, which I make every other day now.

The other two big crops I hope to plant are White Half-runner beans and kale...probably Vates and Lacinato on the kale varieties. The Vates is what I usually plant, they're very heat-tolerant and RKN resistant.  Those three...pole beans, carrots, and kale...are also very tolerant of the calcareous sand in the South Garden.

I pulled out a sweet potato for soup the other night and it was terrible...totally covered in RKN galls and rotten at the core.  The variety was Hannah.  So things don't always go well for me here....got to get the RKN under control in the 57 cm pots.  I'm hoping plantings of Allium will rehabilitate them for me.  I'm going to use lots of onion seedlings and leek seedlings to suppress them and starve them out.  I've never seen RKN (root knot nematode) infest Allium roots, not ever.  Cyst nematodes will attack onions, but haven't seen them in a while.  This property used to be part of a commercial vegetable farm, that's probably why I have every parasitic nematode known to mankind living here.  But I manage somehow, even when I'm not entirely sure how I'm doing it.

They sprayed for mosquitoes again last night, so I hauled my containers of Malabar spinach indoors to protect them.  I do love my hand truck, one of the best purchases I ever made in my life.

Brief Update

Not much to report, but here goes.

I pulled an okra plant that wasn't making pods.  Normally they have an extensive and tough root system that makes them hard to detach from a container.  But what a surprise...no roots, none.  It came out like a stick somebody had poked into the soil. What it did have was galls, so I knew what had happened...the RKN had destroyed the entire root system.  That stands for root knot nematode.

I have fresh onion seed in transit somewhere, hope to get it today. And my older seed finally did germinate in vermiculite, so here I go with lots of onions.  They're totally immune to RKN, so they're going in all the containers that showed signs of root galls.  It's not what I'd like to plant, really.  But as they say on the TV dramas...sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

They won't fail me, onions always do very well in my containers...at least the bunching onions do...they're more subtropical.  Bulb onions can be hit or miss at this latitude...around 26 degrees north.  This year I'm trying a variety that's popular in the Niger valley...called Violet di Galmi.  Bulb onions are Allium cepa, bunching onions are usually Allium fistulosum, though lately the seeds being sold as bunching onions are just varieties of bulb onions, like White Lisbon.

I'm trying four varieties this season....White Lisbon, Ishikura, Violet de Galmi, and White Spear.  The Violet di Galmi is the only one that's new for me, I've grown the others for years.  But this time I'm going to be more careful about my record keeping...for a while I had no idea what variety I was growing in the garden.  Things just got mixed up.  I tend to be that way, hence the record-keeping.

You have to test varieties in your garden, never trust the catalog promises or the gardening books.  White Lisbon is supposed to be good for cool conditions and not bulb in latitudes with shorter days in July and August.  Yet mine have grown through July and set perfectly nice bulbs...so you just never know.   As they used to say on X-Files..."Trust no one".

The Malabar spinach, Basella alba, is going crazy in the 34 cm pots right now.  So I have my greens and lots of hot peppers too...and a little okra and purslane as well.  There's even a mustard plant that made it through some tough times and now has nice leaves on it.  So I've got veggies to eat, which is of course the whole point.

Better News

1938 UTC

I'm feeling more optimistic about the gardening today.  The decline I saw in the newly planted Malabar spinach hasn't continued.  It may be due to waterlogging in the the containers, it's been raining a lot lately and the soil in those pots is fairly heavy.  I have them in a sunny spot and the recent clear mornings have perked them up. 

I am losing a lot of plants around the container gardens to PPN, but that will pass eventually as the weather changes and I start rotating crops better.  I have a lot to contend with here, so it's normal to get discouraged at times.  I've had some nice meals with the Malabar spinach and the peppers.  Both have very high levels of nutrients, especially vitamins A and C.  Hot pepper fruit has more beta carotene than carrots and more vitamin C than oranges...and I've got a lot of pepper bushes maturing and bearing fruit right now.  I picked a handful of Jwala peppers just this morning.  Since I'd locked the plants away indoors during the pesticide spraying, they're contaminant-free.

My Caribbean Red plants are definitely perennial, I can't even remember when I planted them.  Right now they have loads of bright red fruit on them.  They're very pungent, but I'm well enough used to them now that I can dice them and sprinkle them on top of my food as seasoning without cooking them.  I do love the flavor and spiciness of fresh ripe peppers.  But as they used to say...don't try this at home, kids.  These peppers are extremely pungent and it takes time for the digestion to acclimate to them.  Before they fully ripen to a deep red color, the orange peppers are hot enough to strip paint off walls.  They're very closely related to the infamous Habanero pepper.

The pungency of these particular peppers is notorious for having a delayed reaction.  You can munch on a piece of one and think there's not much to them, then have it suddenly hit you with a sensation like your head is exploding.  I only eat them as a garnish with other food, not by themselves.

The rainy season will wind down soon, or at least it usually does. Lately the weather here has been filled with record-breaking extremes...like the hottest November ever recorded in Southwest Florida.  But I'm probably going to risk planting some pole beans soon.  I might hedge my bets by planting both pole beans and cowpeas.  The former can't take too much heat, and the latter enjoys the heat.  That way I'll be covered no matter what...unless of course it freezes solid in November.  That can happen too.

Gardeners always think a couple of months ahead.  We plant for the weather at harvest time, so it's always a guessing game.

Crisis Continues

Gloomy news to report...all the Basella alba aka Malabar Spinach is getting sick.  They're probably all succumbing to RKN...Root Knot Nematode.  This was supposed to be my main crop for greens.

The molokhia looks sick too...signs of deficiency in all the new growth.  It's probably all due to RKN.  The Gold Coast Okra is still looking OK, but there are very few pods now.  They've been going for too long I guess...I started the seedlings in May.  So I'm in a jam for things to eat.  The only plants that are still doing well are the peppers...Jwala and Caribbean Red.

I started some mustard seed, maybe that will save me.  Normally I get all my veggies from the garden but things like this happen once in a while.  I have some potting soil in some barrels that's been just sitting there for years.  I plan to dig that out of the barrels and fill some containers with it...after I mix it with compost and rock powder.  I'll get by...I have some greens in the fridge that I pickled for times like these...and I can always go buy some kale or something to keep me going for a while.

Best not to underestimate the toughness of PPN...plant-parasitic nematodes.  They can really wreak havoc on a veggie garden in the rainy season, especially if your soil is sandy like mine.  I thought a month of fallowing all my potting soil in barrels would decimate them, but somehow they survived that unscathed and attacked my plantings in large numbers.

I'll also switch to the planting beds now.  They've been growing nothing but grass for a while.  RKN doesn't like grass at all.  I'll admit, I'm discouraged.  But this often happens to me in September, it's a tough month for gardening here...and crop failures are nothing new.  Everyone who gardens in Florida has them...commercial farmers too.  Farmers say that planting crops here is like going to Las Vegas...except that with Florida farming you don't know what the odds are when you put your plants in the ground.  Sometimes you lose no matter how smart you think you are.

PPN are the number one problem for Florida gardeners and farmers.  Once you get them, you never get rid of them...all you can do is reduce their numbers long enough to get a crop to harvest stage.  We have RKN, sting nematodes, cyst nematodes, and many others I'd rather not think about.  I've seen them all in my garden. They're harmless to humans, except for taking the food out of your mouth.  One year I found three different kinds in one planting bed. Needless to say, nothing would grow there...even the weeds got sick.

Welcome to Paradise.

On My Way

Just a short update...the onion seedlings are starting to emerge, more each day.  Onion seedlings are the easiest of all to transplant, so when they get a little bigger I'll start setting them out in all the containers I rework.  I'm not going to keep planting crops that get sick from RKN, that's wasted effort.  Onions are totally immune to RKN.

You need to be flexible in gardening.  When trouble comes, as it always does, I change direction.  So from now on I'll focus on onions, several different varieties, and scatter them around in lots of containers.  I do a lot of stir fries, where green onions are more or less required.  And onions are very good for fighting off infections, maybe they'll help me in that regard.

My plan for the South Garden is to finish cutting down all the tall grass, composting it, and use all the compost to amend the soil for the planting beds.  It's probably best to move all the bedding soil from the planting beds to a storage area near the garden, hoe out all the roots and torpedo grass rhizomes, rake it smooth, and move the soil back in batches with the wheelbarrow, mixing it with rock powder and compost as I go.  I'll do one bed at a time, and plant with whatever makes sense at the time of year the bed is ready.

Don't know how things will go, I never do.  A lot depends on air pollution levels...this morning it got smoky around 1000 hours EST, but by then I was about done with my outdoor work anyway. So...lots of shoveling and hoe work...sounds like loads of fun.  I complain about things, but I just love gardening.  Is it possible to wear out a hoe or a shovel?  I suppose it's possible, I'll see if it happens.

Under Attack

I've had a lot of failures lately.  Many of the crops I planted in my big containers have stalled or just died.  I'd say it's a combination of constantly wet soil and the high temps...which cause population explosions of RKN, root knot nematode.

I thought fallowing and crop rotation might cure these problems, and I went to great lengths to fallow all my potting soil for at least a month before reusing it.  But it didn't work.  The RKN is attacking almost everything, even vegetable amaranth and mustard, which I thought were resistant to it.  I found an enormous root knot on one of my crop plants when I pulled it, the biggest one I'd ever seen.

So new tactics are called for, so I'm going all-out with onions. RKN can't live on onion roots and I do enjoy green onion in my soups and stir fries.  And I'll probably switch my efforts to planting beds, which are generally drier if well drained.  The South Garden is overrun with invasive grasses, which are also immune to RKN.

So...onions in the containers, and everything else in the planting beds for a while.  PPN problems (plant-parasitic nematodes) are a huge problem in tropical and subtropical gardens.  In northern gardens, there are one or two species of PPN.  Here in Florida we have over a dozen at least.  And we don't have cold temps to kill them off every year.  They survive year-round in our warm, sandy soils.  Most likely the original problem was in trying to grow a garden in burned-out farmland.  PPN can linger in abandoned farmland for 20 years or more.

I've got about a half a pack of onion seed planted in a 12 cm pot, watching it every day for signs of sprouts...only a few so far.  It's hard to germinate onion seed at this time of year, it's probably just too hot for the seedlings.  Next I'll try indoor germination with vermiculite instead of potting soil.  That often works much better in warm conditions, fewer disease organisms in vermiculite.

Nothing easy about gardening in Florida, that's been my experience.  It takes patience and determination for success. Failing that, being bonehead stubborn also works.

Doing What I Can

The air is smoky in the early morning when I get up, so I do my gardening later now.  The sun is starting to lose some of its potency as we move into August.   That really helps me with my sun sensitivity. The grass is growing really fast now, so there's a lot of mowing that keeps me busy...I don't have a rider mower.  But I squeeze in some gardening, got to have things to eat.

This morning I refilled a 57 cm container with pine twigs, a swatch of landscaping cloth, and enough fallowed and amended soil to reach the rim.  Then I hauled it to the container garden north of the house.  I brought along a sickle and leaf rake in the cart, so I could move the block temporarily and clear the tall grass around the area. Then I replaced the block, slid the pot back onto the block, planted a small Basella alba, and mulched it with the grass clippings to protect my moist potting soil from the tropical sun.

Of all the crops I'm growing now,  Basella seems to be growing the most vigorously...so I went for that.  Basella alba is also known as Malabar Spinach...it's the green variety, not the red one you see in most catalogs.  That's Basella rubra.  The other crops that are doing very well are okra, sweet potato, molokhia (Corchorus olitorius). But I'm growing lots of other things like bunching onion (Allium fistulosum), Jwala peppers, chives, oregano, mustard greens, and Red Russian Kale.  Not all of it is doing well, of course.

The best fertilizer, I've heard, is the footsteps of the farmer.  I wish I could spend more time gardening, but there are other things to do. The South Garden is completely fallowed now, I just don't have the opportunity to do much with it.  It's mostly overgrown with Dactyloctenium aegyptium and Panicum repens, two very invasive grass species.  The way I garden, it won't make much difference. My current method is highly intensive, I remove all the soil from the planting beds, then mix it with compost and rock powder before returning it to the beds.  I need to do that to get rid of underground roots from the pines and P. repens, which would otherwise completely take over the beds.

It took a while for me to figure out why nothing would grow out there.  Finally I realized that the pine roots were forming mats of small roots and secreting toxic terpenes to poison my crop plants. The soil smelled like it was contaminated with chemical waste from a manufacturing plant.  Once I ripped out the pine roots, the garden really started producing for me.  Live and learn, they say.

Difficult Times For Me

It's been a while, I know.  I'm still gardening, but I got discouraged about things because I've been limited in what I can do lately.  This is all due to air pollution triggering asthma attacks...we have people in my neighborhood who are doing illegal things and causing smoke and chemical pollution.

I had to abandon the South Garden and let the grassy weeds have their way with it.  That's OK, the plant-parasitic nematodes can't survive on grass roots...so the weedy grass will be a good cover crop through the rainy season.  It's astonishing how quickly grasses like Dactyloctenium aegyptum can take over from bare ground to knee deep once the rainy season is going full tilt.

I've been enjoying lots of okra...variety Gold Coast.  It's my first season growing Gold Coast and it seems to be doing extremely well in the 57 cm containers.  It's an heirloom variety brought here from West Africa, hence the name.  African varieties of veggies seem to do the best for me...far better than the varieties grown for the US market.

I have one container of Corrientes peas...those are Vigna peas from Mexico.  No pea pods yet, but the vines are extremely stout and vigorous with big leaves.  I'm hoping for a lot of string beans...Corrientes is supposed to be good for string beans.

The air was OK this morning, so I managed to tear down a 57 cm pot and clean it out well.  The eggplant I tried to grow in it died, and there were knots on the roots.  All the soil has been mixed with compost and stored in my fallowing barrels.  After the pot bakes in the sun for a while, I'll put fresh twigs in the bottom, fresh landscaping cloth, and refill it with soil that's been fallowed for 30 days or longer.  I have a small pot with some pea seedlings growing in it, maybe I'll plant those in it.  You have to go with whatever works best in your climate, not try to force things like lettuce to grow in tropical conditions just because you're used to eating it.

The sweet potatoes are growing rampantly in the 57 cm pots, despite having the vine leaders stolen by a chubby swamp rabbit who especially likes them.  I need to cut some poles and trellis the vines up in the air to elude him.  Swamp rabbits don't like to climb.

I'm a vegan, so I'm not going to shoot the rabbit.  It's my responsibility to trellis my sweet potatoes, he's just doing what swamp rabbits do....eat and eat and eat...LOL.  I'm harvesting nice big spuds out of those containers despite his grazing.  He only eats the greens...smart rabbit, greens are really good for you.

I have flooding, but it's not really deep so far.  If it keeps raining every day, the water will build up.  Oh well, that's what boots are for.  And that's why all my containers are up off the ground on concrete blocks.

Finally Posting Again

I see I haven't posted here in a while.  I've been busy in the garden, not sure why I slacked off writing about it.

The pole beans are a huge success.  I wish I'd finished setting up the bed, but I did plant out about a third of it with pole beans.  I'm currently picking pounds and pounds of bean pods for the kitchen...lots of good nourishing food.  I could have used more of them for shell beans or dry beans after I picked enough green beans for the kitchen.  But I never did get back to finishing that planting bed.  It's time to plant long beans and blackeyed peas now, so I guess I'll switch to those for the rest of the planting bed when I finish it.

The variety that produced so much is White Half Runner.  It does climb OK if you set up poles for it to climb...and it gives you a lot more pods that way.  In fact I would say it climbs just as well as Rattlesnake.

I did well with greens too...lots of those for the kitchen.  They're getting a little old for raw eating now, but I got all I wanted of turnip greens, radish greens, and chard.  I grew an all-Japanese greens section this season...Sasai radish, Mino Early radish, Nozawana turnip greens, and Umaina chard.  I like the Sasai radish best for raw snacking, but they're all good.  The Mino Early is too prickly for raw eating...I grew that variety for the roots.

The Umaina chard is really good in soups and stir fries.  Chard can vary widely in flavor and palatibility.  I don't like the kind they sell in most seed catalogues...the Asian and European varieties are so much better.

I've also moved ahead with the 57 cm containers.  Instead of just adding compost and replanting them, I'm fallowing the soil in barrels after mixing in compost and rock powder.  This discourages RKN, which has always been a big problem for me in this warm climate. That's root knot nematode.  They can totally destroy a plant's root system until there's just a useless little club under the surface of the soil.  Okra is especially vulnerable to this pest.

I tried crop rotation, but it didn't work well.  Fallowing seems much superior, but you have to keep the soil moist and well supplied with compost.  That way the parasitic nematodes have to compete in a microbe-rich environment with no roots to feed on.  That really decimates their populations.  I fallow the soil for a minimum of a month...and often much longer if I'm having RKN issues.

I think if you let fallowing soil dry out, the nematodes go dormant as eggs and then re-emerge in large numbers when the soil is hydrated.  So I put the soil in barrels and keep it moist, or water the beds regularly even when there are no plantings in it.  Of course you also have to mulch or weed during fallowing...no need to produce great crops of weed seeds.

I'm also harvesting other crops...carrots, two species of kale, Malabar spinach, mustard greens, etc.  Got to keep planting and growing if I want to keep eating.  I've got some long beans starting to set pods...that's Vigna sesquipedalis.  Those are very tender and good-tasting, much milder than the pole beans.

Beans Are in the Ground

I kept at it, and I've got half the next planting bed mixed with soil amendments and planted.  I'll add a pic to this blog later when I go outside again...assuming I don't forget to do so.

I used a 2/1 ratio by volume of soil to compost, plus a small amount of glacial rock dust in each wheelbarrow load I mixed.  So far I've planted Orient Wonder (Vigna sesquipedalis) and White Half Runner (Phaseolus vulgaris).  This is the first time in my recollection I've ever planted Vigna this early here, but this variety is supposed to be cold-tolerant...so we'll see how this works. If it gets really hot in April, I could be thanking myself for doing it...Vigna loves hot weather.

Mixing soil isn't much fun, for sure.  It's tedious, repetitive work...but it does get results and I'm sold on the method.  I don't have a lot of stamina these days, so it takes me a long time to get a planting bed finished.  But the results have been outstanding, so in the end it's worth it.  I figure it takes me about a month to overhaul a bed between crops...of course I do other things during the process. Someone less impaired could probably do it all in a few days of work or less.

This is the first time my property has flooded in February, it's usually dry at this time of year.  So I'm glad I didn't try planting the low ground, where the soil is possibly better. It's customary to plant low ground in the "winter months" here...it's usually nicer weather to be outside and for commercial farmers it's the time of year when veggies are scarce and Florida fills the void with fresh string beans, strawberries, peppers, etc.

But this year all the rains we've had challenged the gardeners and the farmers alike.  I got away with things by gardening in containers that are raised off the ground and by utilizing the fill in front of the house where there used to be a front lawn.

I've been thinking of buying a roto-tiller and planting the low ground with crops like beans and sweet potatoes.  But it wouldn't have worked well this year, most of the property is all waterlogged. Maybe someday I'll try it, but for now I'll just focus on my little garden next to the house and my containers I've got set on concrete blocks in various places.

I'm open to suggestions and new ideas, always feel free to comment.

Trying to Keep Up

Been a while since I last posted.  I've been busy with a lot of things.

The bed of greens has really filled in...I've got all the greens I could want in the kitchen now...lots of nice soups from all that.  Last night I had a nice kale and bean soup.  By accidentally forgetting to turn off the gas under the pressure cooker, I found out that kale does soften up if you cook it longer.  Kale, kidney beans, onion, and whole wheat spaghetti pieces make a really fine soup.

That big-leafed plant is mustard, and the taller feathery leaves in the second pic are carrots. It's all one planting-bed, but I set it up in two stages. The carrots were a huge success...should have planted a lot more, I suppose.  I can see that the roots have formed fat carrots, probably the biggest ones I've ever grown.

I'm working on the next bed now, it's going to be all beans of various kinds.  The containers are still producing food...a few chili peppers, some eggplant, lots of Red Russian kale, tatsoi.  After I get the bed of beans planted, I'll go back to working with the containers.

We've only had the lightest frost so far, and it's only damaged plants that were well past their prime anyway.  The greens crops seem to have really taken off since the temps dropped.  Today was the first day in a week we hit 70 Fahrenheit.

It's hard to know what to plant...you have to think a few months ahead of today's weather when you're starting seeds.  But this time I guessed right...the unusually warm weather gave way to unusually cold weather and the greens loved it.

Gardening is always a gamble.

Catchin' Up

Haven't posted much here, but I haven't been loafing.  I got one of the planting beds in the South Garden completely finished today and took a pic to show off...

The plants in the foreground where the soil looks darker were all set out this morning.  The ones further back have been growing and supplying me with greens for weeks.

I think my health has improved a bit since I've been nibbling and cooking all these greens.  It's a wide variety of plants...radish greens, pak choi, tat soi, regular kale, Red Russian Kale, mustard greens, bunching onion.  I also have a few carrot plants here and there in the bed for soup.  Here's another shot of the plants that have been growing for a while...

Those smaller plants near the path on the right aren't weeds, they're volunteers...a pepper plant and some purslane.  I use the purlsane in stir fries and soups.  I never have to plant it, it just comes up everywhere on its own.

I'm really pleased with the way the greens have come along. They struggled at first, until I started liquid feeding regularly with an organic blend I make.  My soil is very alkaline in pH, so the roots have a hard time absorbing elements like nitrogen and potash.  The liquid feeding seems to alleviate that problem.  I foliar feed about every other day with a sprinkler can.

It's a lot of work to set up the beds the way I do it, but the results have been so much better than my older methods that I'm sold completely on a highly intensive approach. Every bit of that soil in the bed has been blended with compost and rock powder in a wheelbarrow so it's uniformly mixed with no pockets of barren sand for parasitic nematodes to thrive in.  Whether it's the pH or the nematodes I don't know.  It just works.  I use at least a one to two ratio of compost to soil.

Here are more pics around the garden areas...

 Sweet potatoes in 57 cm pots

 White Beauty eggplant in 57 cm pot

 Pak Choi Shanghai ready for the soup pot

 Radish Sasai

Swiss Chard Ruby Red

I decided to go right ahead with the next planting bed, doing it in sections and planting bean seeds as I go along.  When you find something that works, go with it.  As Yogi Berra famously said..."When you come to a fork in the road, take it."