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.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Friday, September 23, 2016
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.
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.
Monday, September 12, 2016
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.
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.
Thursday, September 8, 2016
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
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.
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.
Monday, September 5, 2016
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.
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.
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