Florida Urban Homestead

It has been a cold bitter winter, well, for Central Florida it was.  No it’s not spring yet, but I was able to go outside today without a jacket for the first time in months.  Normally,  we don’t see too much frost here in the funcoast, but this winter has been like the last, lots of below freezing temps.  My peppers held out as long as they could gave up the ghost by the end of October.  I had some seeds in the ground for the winter, cabbage, bok choy, ect, but I got the seeds of eBay trying to save some bucks and was disappointed, not even one came up.  My carrot seeds from Baker creek and some radishes seed I saved, both like 2 years plus old, were the only ones to pop up.  Oh well, lesson learned.   My planting season starts in a couple of weeks and I placed my order today with Baker Creek.  This weekend I will be out with my rock dust, cow manure, and compost getting the beds ready.  Look for new and improved videos coming soon, I got a Flip camera for Christmas:)

See y’all soon.

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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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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 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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First off I would like to say that I love compost, and compost tea has been a blessing to me and my garden.   I have always know that plants couldn’t get everything the need to be healthy from just the three elements in most fertilizers, (NPK) Nitrogen Phosphorous, and Potash (Potassium), but could there be more?  Could there be something to add to my composting routine?   I have been hearing stories for the past few months about something new, or old depending on how you look at it.

It’s called “Rock Dust” and as the name implies it is rock that has been ground into a powder.   You add rock dust to your garden by sprinkling and, for some people at least, covering the soil with the dust and working into the soil.  Rock dust’s purpose is to add back into the soil the minerals that have been lost over the past several hundred years of gardening and only adding back NPK.  The stories of huge vegetables and wild growth abound from the users of this stuff.   It makes sense, the glaciers once moved across the  plaint, grinding rock into the soil as it went, but it never made it this far south.  And we have all seen the gigantic cabbages and pumpkins grown in Alaska where there is a lot of minerals in the ground.  Well, I aim to find out!  I am going to be checking tomorrow to see if I can find it locally, and if not, I will get some online.  Is it real?  Well, if someone told me a year ago I would be making tea from compost and pouring it on my garden, I would have wondered what the heck they were talking about.  So I intend to give it a try.   And hey, if you guys out there have tried it, let me know how it did.  Rock on dudes!

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