Florida Urban Homestead

Fall is here, and for us here in Central Florida,  that means planting time is here again.  I hope we have had the last of the 90s.  I cold front is moving in tonight and cooling things off.  Here at the end of October we have been in the low 90s still.  The forecast is for cooler weather in the 80s and perhaps the upper 70s.  My tomatoes are already in the ground and I have planted my cucumbers and some radishes and carrots.  I can’t wait to get some cool weather crops in as well.  So look for more posts and some cool stuff on YouTube coming soon.  Happy Halloween and good planting!

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I have had a lot of questions about “Organic” foods and what it means. One is am “Are you an Organic Gardner?” The answer to that is yes and no. the yes part is that I raise my food in Organic soil that would meet the USDA standard. I also do not use non-organic pest control or fertilizers. The no part is that I am not certified by the USDA to say that I am Organic if I were sell my crops. A lot of the questions also are about the different terms they see on food packages. Here is the rundown:

100% Organic means that the product is made up of ingredients that were all raised, harvested, and processed in a Organic environment that meets the USDA standard

Organic (or USDA Organic) means that 95% of the ingredients as above, the rest of the 5% must be from a list of nonagricultural substances or ingredients that are USDA approved or be not available as Organic such as baking soda and citric acid.

Made With Organic Ingredients means that the product must contain at least 70% Organic ingredients and will not bare the USDA Organic Seal.

I hope this info will be of help, I tried to condense it down as much as I could from the USDA  guidelines.

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When the Florida summer heat is as bad as it is right now, it may seem like a waist to think about gardening. The truth is that right now is the perfect time to start seeds and even plant a little. Here is a break down of what can be started indoors, or planted outdoors in August in the sunshine state.

Outdoors:

Watermelon

Okra

Peppers

Pumpkins

Southern Peas

Collards

Corn

Eggplant

Indoors: (for September planting)

Tomato

Broccoli

Cauliflower

Celery

Leek

Lettuce

Cabbage

Cucumbers

Now is also a great time to get the soil ready. I am adding compost, rock dust, and other nutrients to the soil and turning it in. A weak solution of about two tablespoons of bleach to five gallons of water can be sprayed onto garden tools, stakes, and cages to prevent spreading any viruses or other diseases from one season to another, I do this in my driveway. I have also employed a large 50 gallon drum, I picked up from a mask making business that used to contain natural latex, in order to mass produce compost tea. It’s also a great time to hatch a plan on where you want to plant things because it can be important to rotate your crops from season to season. When it comes to the garden, there’s no time like the present.

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It’s mid July and the heat is on! Highs are now in the mid to upper nineties everyday along with very high humidity. While my indeterminate tomatoes like the Beefsteak and Beefmaster are still going strong, my pour determinate tomatoes like Homestead are calling it quits having finished their growing and fruiting cycle. The cucumbers are starting to burn in the midday sun, the pumpkins are slowing to a crawl. In fact, unlike my friends to the north, a lot of the garden starts to slow down this time of year, but not me! Mid August is just weeks away, and I have to get ready because mid August starts the beginning of a brand new season here in Central Florida. With any freeze here five to six months away, if at all, there is a lot of growing time left in the year. Already I have some seeds started. In the tomato section I have heirloom Roma, Mariglobe, and Rainbow Mix. I also started some

Mariglobe Tomato

Marketmore cucumbers, Green Zucchini, Round Yellow Zucchini, and sweet peppers. I am looking to get even more seeds in the next few weeks. In September or October it’s time for Bok Choy, and radishes, sugar snap peas, carrots, collards, and more. As I pull out the old plants, it’s a good time to amend the soil. I will be adding lots of compost like I always do, plus something I will be trying for the first time, Rock Dust. As I explained in an earlier post, Rock Dust adds in trace minerals that get lost in the rainy season. I will perhaps add some bone meal to prevent blossom end rot, and Epson Salts to help prevent a magnesium deficiency later on. I will also be adding several new beds before the start of the next season, so I have to get cracking. It’s a lot of hard work perhaps, but well worth it. There is nothing like a home grown tomato, or any other vegetable for that matter, not only because it tastes better, but because I know where it’s been.

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Organocide

What’s So Different About Florida vegetable Gardening? This is a question I get a lot from folks from up north. I have even got that “You must be able to grow stuff without even trying!” statement too. The truth is that we do have more seasons here in the sunshine state, but the heat of June, July, and August is a challenge along with the billions of bugs that thrive here.   We don’t get cold enough here to kill the bug population back, so they tend to build up over the seasons.

Green tomato destroyed by Hornworm

It is all that more important here to use crop rotation methods to keep those bugs in check organically.  I recently used Organocide, an organic insecticide and fungicide I found at Lowes.   I used it to try to control some stink bugs, hornworms and a few pickleworms.  I worked great for the most part.  It’s made up of fish and sesame oils and got rid of those hormworms with ease.  The stinkbugs are gone too, but it was only partly successful on the pickle worms.  I would use it again though.  The  Organocide along with cutting back the vines that are effected (Limp and hanging over) seem to be stemming the tide.  The problem is that the spray just can’t get at the worms embedded in the vines or fruit.  For now, I will add in my homemade spray that includes vegetable oil infused with hot pepper and garlic and a touch of natural soap, mixed with watter and used in a sprayer.  Yes it stinks!  lets hope the bugs think so too.

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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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Ok, it was the week end and my most of my tomatoes are still green.  What to do?  I can work hard in the garden and not sit back with a glass of iced t ea and a tomato sandwich!   I mean I do have some ripe cherry tomatoes that taste great in a salad but a little small for those two pieces of bread with some Hellmanns mayo.  So I grab my wife and off we go to find us some produce and most of all tomatoes.  I don’t want the impostors  from from the supermarkets, you know the ones, they kinda look like a tomato but not quite.  They are like tomatoes from another dimension where tomatoes are hard, tasteless and used as golf balls and for self defense, but never eaten.  But I digress.   We went to one of my favorite places to got for such things, The Vineyards at Holly Hill.  It’s a nice place where they grow Muscadine grapes for wine

muscadines

and some of the best tomatoes iv’e eaten.  To top it off the maters are grown just feet away from the stand!   I got beautiful beefsteak tomatoes for $1.99 a pound and I knew where the money was going, to the farmer!  Oh and do they taste great!  What they do not grow at the Vineyard, they co-op from nearby farmers and I got the sweetest watermelon I have tasted in a long time there. The melons were so fresh that the cuts on the stems were still moist and green.  I also got some great Florida onions and cucumbers to make my special salad.  The salid is a simple one, you just slice up some tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions in a Tupperware type container and fill it up with some juice from a jar of pickled peperoncini and let it marinate for a couple of hours.  Man that tastes great!  Anyway, this blog has made me hungry so I’m going to go grab some of that salad and a hunk of watermelon.  I’ll be doing a garden update soon, Happy Farming!

Vegetable Stand at The Vineyard at Holly Hill

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