Florida Urban Homestead

Yesterday was a day of sweet sorrow. Two of my tomato beds died out and I was forced to pull them out. With the pulling, I also had a glut of tomatoes bot green and red. I did what any tomato lover would do, make a tomato sandwich with my favorite mayonnaise and make a big pot of pasta sauce for dinner. Now is my time to replenish the beds that gave me so many great tomatoes. I have my compost ready, later this morning I will go get my rock dust and some composted cow dung and perhaps some mushroom compost if I can find it. Some of my new crop is already growing. I have some Roma, Maroglobe, and Rainbow Mix tomatoes growing in the Florida room as well as some peppers, eggplant and some papaya and cucumbers. Over the next two weeks I hope to have three new beds installed and stuff growing in them. It can be disappointing to see a bed of toms die, even when you are expecting it like I was because they were determent tomatoes; however, I will be exciting to start anew with young healthy plants. And I still have two beds of Beefsteak tomatoes growing and flowering.  So to my dead tomatoes and cucumbers, may you compost in peace.

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It’s the middle of June now, and here in Central Florida, the highs are way up into the middle to upper 90s and the bugs are ever-present.  I had trouble with my tomato plants for a time, but after trimming the bottom leaves off, the are pasted that now.  My peppers are doing very well, what pests do attack it stopped after the application of compost tea.  I have talked about compost tea before, but for my new viewer it is simply compost from your compost pile, or from the store, made into a “Tea” by stuffing it into a sock or stocking and brewing it in a bucket of water.  The tea is then poured into plants as a fertilizer.  So what’s bugging me?  Well right now it’s cucumber worms, the Pickle Worm (Diaphania nitidalis) to be exact  who like to make a home in my cucumber plants or their fruit.  The first sign is a small section or branch of the vine will droop, vine and leaf, but not the whole plant.  This is due to the fact that the worm as drilled himself into the plant and the part that has drooped has been eaten from the inside out.  The worm will also get inside the cucumber fruit itself and ruin it.  split open the cucumber, or the drooped part of the vine and you will find a small worm that is green or white.  It is the larva of a moth that laid her eggs somewhere on your vine.  The eggs are amber to golden in color and in a cluster located on the base of a leaf.

Pickleworm

These little buggers have done more damage that any other pest in my garden.  I have tried my homemade spray and some organic spray I picked up from Ortho, but it only works if you hit them directly.  My only true means of control has been removing the effected sections of the plant quickly as I find them, along with the fruit that I find their little homes in.  I mean, all I want is some nice, fresh, cucumbers, only problem is that so do the pickleworms!  I try to respect all of nature and get along, but I will admit to some pleasure as I burn the effected parts after they have destroyed some beautiful cucumbers.   If you too have been under the air assault that the adult moths bring and have found an organic solution I would love to hear about it but if not, take heart, in a few weeks their breading season here in Florida will come to an end, and with it the damage to our pour cucumbers.  So keep cool as a cucumber as you fight these worms, better days are ahead.

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Lots of people ask about starting a urban raised bed garden. They often don’t think they can afford it, or don’t have enough room, so they put it off. The truth is that anyone can do it with the space, money, and time they have. My first bed was just that, a bed! I reclaimed an old water bed frame that was being tossed out, put it out in the back yard, lined the bottom with newspaper, filled it with my dirt mix and started planting.  My dirt mix was 10 bags of topsoil, 3 bags of composted cow manure, and 1/2 a bale of peat moss.  (it was a big bed)  right now you can get top soil for under a buck a bag at Wal-Mart and Lowes.   Cow manure is under a buck fifty, the peat is six bucks.  That is about $25 including seeds because the wood was free!  You can also use 5 gallon buckets, cheep kids swimming pools, and just about anything that will hold dirt in.  In some places I understand even the compost is free or very cheep from the city or county.  So, how do you start your urban garden?  Anyway you can!

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I was all ready to make a new video this morning but we woke up to loud storms this morning.  My dogs didn’t even want to get up.  I could be upset that my video will be postponed a bit but I’m not.  Why not? Because there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING like rain for a garden.  I know that when the rain clears, and the sun starts shining, my plants will explode with growth!  The water that come out of the faucet does not compare to rainwater because it has to many chemicals like chlorine that your plant don’t like, plus a lot of minerals and nutrients are stripped out during filtration.  I have started to save rain water now for this very reason.  For now,  in 5 gallon buckets, but I hope to get rain barrels soon.  You know, even dogs will drink rain water over tap.  Now I don’t drink the rain water, and I keep it covered when it’s not raining to stop bugs like mosquitoes from using it to raise young vampires in  it, but the plants simply love it!  So I started saving rain, and why not?  It’s FREE!  Nothings better than free, right folks?

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