The last cool-weather crops

It's my opinion that the best growing season here in north Florida is the winter because the cool-weather crops that grow right through to late spring. But now that season is transitioning to the warm/hot weather and those lovely crops that we've enjoyed through the winter are ending their cycles. I've loved that my husband and I have been eating from the same six broccoli plants since November! After harvesting the large curds (heads) shortly after Halloween, they've sent up side shoots with abandon--if we don't pick them every second day or so, they'll bloom, which would signal that they can slow down. I planted a second crop of broccoli in January that are now sending up their own side blooms, so we've been eating lots broccoli!

A harvest earlier this week created ...

a whole meal salad.

In the photos above, I created a whole meal salad from this one harvest. Starting with the knife at the bottom and moving clockwise: butterhead lettuce, garlic chives, purple lettuce, curly parsley, chive flowers, come again broccoli. broccoli flowers, and carrots--both orange and cosmic purple. I fried some 7-grain bread in olive oil and wild garlic for croutons and then we created our own oil and vinegar dressing and topped it all off with some Parmesan cheese. Very nice meal. In my presentations, I mention that my husband and I have reduced our food bill by about 15%--whole meal salads are one of our favorites!

I harvested all the lettuce yesterday, because some of the plants were beginning to bolt,
which makes them bitter. Time to take them all in and hope that we eat it all before it spoils.

If I'd harvested the lettuce earlier in the season, I would have left the roots in place so we could have enjoyed some come-again lettuce. But it's too hot now.

A rosy wolf snail found in the lettuces. This is a good snail--a carnivore that eats slugs, worms, insects, and other snails. While the shell was cracked, it was alive. I moved it to the Swiss chard row.

Sweet onion harvest

Sweet Onions!

Yesterday was the day. The soil was dry and more than half of the onion leaves had fallen over. In addition some of the onion were blooming, a bad thing for the maximum bulb size, because the producing the flower uses much of that stored energy in the bulb.

We'll hang the most of the onions on a line in the garage, the ones that were blooming and the smaller ones with no good leaves left, we'll move to the refrigerator to use first.  It'll be months now before I have to purchase onions.

Next, I'll harvest the garlic.

Yesterday's onion harvest. Half of them had been growing in that empty wide row between the parsley
and the second broccoli crop and some carrots. For more information on wide row gardening see my post "Wide Row Gardening and Trench Composting."

Hidden ginger lilies are blooming this year.

The rest of the landscape

While I write a lot about the edible gardening, the rest of the landscape is looking wonderful with the flush of growth due to the recent rains and warm weather.

The previous owners left us with some canna lilies that have multiplied like crazy and have started blooming.  They also had planted some hidden ginger lilies, which took me a while to finger out what the heck they were since they only bloom every other year. See my piece "Hidden Ginger Lilies and other Intriguing Monocots."

I'm off to the Florida Native Plant Society Conference today, which is in Jacksonville this year. If you're free tomorrow, Saturday or Sunday, come on over. Here is all the information you need for registering onsite: It's NOT too late! The FNPS conference is this week.

Hope to see you there!

Green Gardening matters,
Ginny Stibolt 

An Edible Gardening Convert

A nice collection of lettuces.

A guest post by Claudia Graves, a college friend and now a new and enthusiastic gardener.

Zero to sixty in three years

My mother could grow anything. It seemed that her touch could bring a sickly plant back from the brink or encourage a healthy one to thrive. “The greenest of green,” is how I used to describe her thumb, but she passed that trait along to my brother only. His plants thrive. Entrance into my house is the kiss of death. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I kill them with kindness and too much watering. No – I kill them with neglect and abuse. Why use “dirt” other than what lies right outside my door?  Why fertilize except for an occasional blast of some chemical so potent that it produces instant wilting… followed by a high probability of death. And watering? Once every few months should do ‘em. So I have “grown” a lot of lush “plastic plants” in my lifetime and not much else.

Then somewhere along the way I discovered that pencil cactus and aloe could often survive my version of care, so I grasped that straw and grew multiples of each on the porch. They were never exactly healthy, but they didn’t totally die. Just parts of them died. Sometimes big parts.

More Vegetables

However, everything changed a few years ago when my significant other and I began eating a lot more vegetables and started making green smoothies every day for breakfast. I bought organic vegetables whenever possible, but the variety was limited and they were very expensive.

Claudia's array of Earthboxes next to the pool.

Several friends had gardens and I began to give that some cautious thought. Knowing my track record as a gardener I wondered if there was any point in trying. But as luck would have it, Ginny stayed with us a few days during one of her book tours and I decided to mention it to her. We walked around my yard and she pointed out a place where a garden might grow. She told me how to proceed and we did everything she said. I couldn’t believe it - things actually grew! Somehow I hadn’t expected that. It wasn’t totally wonderful because there were too many “critters” and not quite enough light, but it was an exciting start.

The next fall I decided to try container gardening inside the screened pool enclosure. That was easier and worked better because there was plenty of light as well as bug and “critter” protection. An additional benefit was that I could move the pots around or even take them inside if frost was expected. We had a better crop that year but it was still a lot of trouble. It didn’t look very good and I had to water, fertilize and weed. Obviously, none of those are my strong points.

Kale growing without weeds because of the
plastic mulch.

Earthboxes to the Rescue

“Get Earthboxes” several people said the next year. I didn’t really believe all that they told me, but we drove to the Earthbox Research Center anyway and attended a demonstration. I was amazed at what I saw there and how foolproof it seemed to be. Nothing is left to chance because in addition to the containers themselves, the right amounts of everything needed is sold in individual packets: soil, dolomite, and fertilizer as well as a plastic cover to keep the moisture in and the weeds out. It would be almost impossible to do it wrong.

I was so impressed that we bought four of them on the spot then returned a few days later for two more. Several weeks later we bought a seventh box. On the second trip we also got an automatic watering system that is controlled by a battery operated timer. Not only does that mean that we don’t ever have to water (sigh of relief from me and the plants), but that the garden is self-sufficient when we are out of town. With the addition of the watering system there is nothing to do after the initial planting except to harvest the crop. And we do just that – big time.

Every day I gather one or two colanders full of vegetables for immediate use and also have extra to share or freeze for later. I am amazed, my friends are impressed, and I have overheard golfers on the course behind us talk about the “garden house.”

I’m actually a gardener now. Who would have thought?

Claudia and I enjoyed a sunset at the beach in St. Pete.

I love that you can read this post by one of my disciples--a convert to gardening. One problem Claudia will have with her screened-in veggies, is that she'll need to hand pollinate the squashes that she's just started. There are male and female flowers and without pollinators, she will not get any developed fruit unless she transfers the pollen.  

I spent three nights with Claudia while I was speaking to groups in central Florida and then participating in the Green Thumb Festival in St. Pete. It was a great way to catch up and one evening we drove a few miles to the west to enjoy a beach sunset. :-)

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

The "flowered shirt" book tour continues...

Vero Beach Book Center display

When I talk to groups or attend a garden event, I wear a flowered shirt, so I think of this book tour as the "Flowered Shirt" tour and try to make sure that if I return to an area that no one will see me in the same shirt twice.

I have one more talk with a Master Gardeners group tomorrow and then I'll be finished with the first month of my three-month book tour. April has been the busiest month with 17 events including four two-day events! Whew!

On Earth Day, I spoke to a nice group at the Vero Beach Book Center. I was pleased that Marjorie Shropshire, the illustrator or "Organic Methods...", was there and I could introduce her to the group.

There are still a number of public events yet to come including ones in Pensacola, Tallahassee, Deltona, and my only south Florida appearance in Lake Worth (Palm Beach County). The Lake Worth event will be the only event where both Melissa and I will be making a joint appearance--so come on over. For all the times and dates see the North Florida Events page.

Earth Day at the Vero Beach Book Center. Even with the drizzly weather we still had a pretty good crowd.

At the Green Thumb Festival in St. Pete. April 27th & 28th. I shared a booth with Kelly Johnson, who wrote "Wings, Worms and Wonder," which has lots of proven ideas for working with kids in the garden and including gardens in the school's curriculum. Wow, what a festival. Thousands of people attended (bringing their garden wagons with them) and we both sold lots of books.  Several people who saw us sharing the booth wondered if we were related. It turns out that our families have connections, but as far as we know, we share no recent common ancestor. :-)

Pittosporum shrubs outside of the south side of the screened porch.

 

Around the garden

The previous owner had planted three Pittosporum shrubs as foundation plants next to the end of the screened porch. After eight years of trimming them back, we decided that they would never look good in this mostly shady spot, so we removed them. There is a fifty-foot wooded buffer between us and the neighbors on that side, so we have plenty of screening and privacy. I have some ferns that I've been holding for just such an occasion and will plant them in this bed instead.

My husband stands outside of the hedge for scale. I'll retake this view when the ferns are in place.

A small crop of sugar snap peas this spring was appreciated.
It looks like the vines are pretty well done as it gets hot.

 

Edibles on parade

As part of my booth display, I've been showing off my various crops as part of show and tell. The purple carrots are one of the ways I slow people down, especially if they have kids.

Our veggies are for more than just Show 'N Tell, they play a large part in our diet. When you grow you own edibles, it's like printing money! I hope you're growing food in your yard.

The new broccolis are now producing come-again crops.
Add these to the original plants from last fall & we have a broccoli bounty.

Tonight we'll have a lovely whole-meal salad using these
beautiful late lettuces.  I'll also fry some bread with olive oil
and garlic for croutons. Yummy!

This evening's harvest of parsley, 2 types of lettuce, Swiss chard, purple & orange carrots, wild garlic, come-again broccoli, Greek oregano, sugar snap peas, and an early-blooming onion, which turned into ...

... a lovely dinner, which except for the 7-grain bread (for the croutons), olive oil, vinegar, pepper, and Parmesan cheese, was made from the garden. To make the croutons, I browned the bread with chopped wild garlic in olive oil.

Be sure to come out and see me at an upcoming event soon, because the "flowered shirt" tour is over in June.  Thanks for reading!

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

#1 in Southern Garden Books

Tuesday morning, this happened!

While the "Organic Methods..." book has been hovering in the top ten for Southern Garden Books on Amazon, this is the only time I caught it at the #1 spot.  Yay!  Thanks to everyone who is buying our book.

I'm having a great time talking to people about organic and sustainable gardening on my tour. This weekend, I'll be in St. Augustine and next weekend I'll be in St. Petersburg. Check out my public events calendar: it all ends in June.

Green Gardening Matters!
Ginny

A book review from Tallahassee

A book review from Tallahassee Writers

Here's another excellent review of our book. Reviewer Jenny Crowley ends her review with this:

Stibolt and Contreras have constructed a book that appeals to all who wish to grow and produce organic foods in Florida. It is also a book that will interest those who care about our planet and our environment.

Florida Gardeners, the authors want you to “…have fun eating from your landscape.”

Read this book and rejoice!

Cool! I love it when someone appreciates not only the good information, but also the spirit of our book.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

Spring's in the Air

Our pinxter azalea finally is blooming.
It's late this year.

Normally, here in northeast Florida, our springs are too short and summer comes too soon.  This year has been different. When the hummingbirds arrived a couple of weeks ago, we thought they might freeze their patooties off in the chilly night temperatures that reached down into the 30s. But they have continued to visit the coral honeysuckle flowers (Lonicera sempervirens) each day, so I guess they are tougher than they look.

Azaleas

Our native azaleas (Rhododendron canescens) are blooming a little later than normal this year, but the Japanese azaleas bloomed early and their flowers were ruined by the late frosts. I'd like to start replacing the aliens with natives--maybe this is the year to start the process.

Mining the lawn

Because we have a "freedom lawn," which is free of pesticides, fertilizers, and over-watering, there are many types of plants other than St. Augustine grass that grow there. Some of these volunteers are desirable plants that I transplant to non-lawn areas of the landscape.

Blue-eyed grass in the lawn

Both the native blue-eyed grass (S. angustifolium)
& the yellow non-native (S. rosulatum) look the same
in the lawn.

Both the native blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) and the non-native (S. rosulatum) look pretty much the same when embedded in the lawn, so I'd transplanted some of the yellow ones to a mulched area, which became obvious after they bloomed. I removed them after I snapped the photo and replaced them with the blue natives. Now that they are blooming, I can tell the difference. :-)

Rainlily (Zephyranthes atamasca)

The other obvious lawn volunteer right now is this native rainlily (Zephyranthes atamasca).  This was growing in a wetter area of the lawn where I also find soft rushes. I transplanted this beauty to the mulched area that you can see at the top of the photo. It's near the blue-eyed grasses that I'd also removed from the lawn. They often grow together in the wild.

There are a few other lawn treasures, but I'll talk about those in a later post.

The end of the cool-weather crops

The extended cool weather has been good for the cool-weather crops. My second crop of broccoli has produced some beautiful, purple-tinged heads (curds), but if I'd known how prolific my first crop was going to be, I wouldn't have bothered to plant it. The handful of florets (in the left photo below) is probably the 30th harvest from the original 8 plants. As the plants try harder to bloom, they are producing the florets faster and faster, so these come-again broccolis are sweeter than the original curd. Eventually, I'll let them bloom when the second crop starts producing its own come-again florets. The pollinators will like those flowers.

The first crop of eight plants keeps on
giving!

The second broccoli crop.

The onions and the garlic will be ready to harvest soon. Then we'll get ready to plant some okra in those beds. This year, I will be planting a bunch of marigolds in with the okra to try to keep the root-knot nematodes in check, not that the okra cares, but to protect the crops that follow it. To be an effective deterrent, you have to turn the marigolds into the soil at the end of the season.

A green anole keeps watch for white flies and other
evil-doers on our broccoli.

Some of the sweet granex onions are beginning to bulb out.

Lupines growing in our neighborhood. I've tried planting seed over the years, but have not been able to
establish a population on our property. I guess we will just have to enjoy these wild populations from afar.

I have started my book tour so please make an effort to come out and see me at one of my upcoming events. See my event calendar to find one near you. Thanks to everyone for buying my books!

Green Gardening Matters, 
Ginny Stibolt

A review of "Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida"

This thorough review in The Daytona Beach News Journal by Karen Gallagher is five pages long--Karen said it was 34 column-inches. I think it captures the essence of our book. It includes an interview with me, a notice of my appearance in Daytona this Wednesday, and it includes one of the many recipes in the book--Ugly Carrot Soup.

When you grow carrots, some of them may be less than perfect, but they taste terrific when you use them in this unusual soup. I've been using this recipe for years and it's changed with the times.  Now it's vegetarian using an olive oil stock made from scratch instead of chicken broth.

So now that vegetables are more expensive than ever, why not let us help you get started with "Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida"?

Green gardening Matters!
Ginny Stibolt

And so the tour begins...

My vendor display includes a basket of
edible crops and a vase of wildflowers.

My three-month-long manic book tour consisting of 32 events, including 5 two-days events, started this Saturday with the Annual Wildflower Festival in Deland, FL. I'm on tour to promote my new book "Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida." I think people are so ready for this book, that it will outsell my "Sustainable Gardening for Florida" within six months even though the sustainable book has done very well.

It's great to have both books to talk about at an event like this because they each cover different aspects of gardening. I sold a lot of the vegetable book and a few of the sustainable book to folks who were more interested in getting rid of their lawn or building rain gardens.

My best show & tell item was the native wild
garlic. I gave out several of them to people who
bought my new book.

It rained a little in the morning, which probably dampened the crowd somewhat, but most of the day was sunny and quite pleasant.

I love talking to people about gardening and of all the crops I brought, I found myself talking the most about the native wild garlic (Allium canadense).  People already know about curly and flat leafed parsley, Swiss chard, rosemary, white radishes, mint, and Greek oregano.

As the season progresses, the harvest I bring for show & tell will change, but I'll always bring something to demonstrate that I'm a real gardener with real dirt under my fingernails!

If you missed this first event, I hope to see you at one of my other events. See my event calendar to find one near you. Note: the calendar does not include all 32 events because Master Gardener and some other meetings are not open to the public.

Deland is a beautiful historic town and is also the home to Stetson University. There was an art festival on the other side of town with a free shuttle between the two events.

Elephant dill.

Around the garden

I planted elephant dill for the first time this winter and was originally unhappy that more did not sprout. But then the one plant that did grow became huge--it was three-feet tall and almost as wide. Just one plant served us well through the winter months and until recently into the spring, but it had became too large for the stems and fell over.

There are a few other smaller plants around that we can use, so my husband and I are fine, but we'd seen some black swallowtail butterflies hovering around in recent weeks. Now those eggs will hatch on a dead plant, so I stuck the two stems in a bucket of water.  I'll watch for those distinctive caterpillars and when they hatch I will transfer them to the dill & parsley row that I planted for these caterpillars.

The weather has been unusual with really chilly nights. It's great for the rest of the cool-weather crops so they'll get to harvestable size, but not so good for the new warm-weather crops, which would normally be planted now

I dug up the non-native string lilies (Crinum x powellii) that were at the edge of the front meadow and have been replacing them with native bunching grasses, this provides more room for the beautyberry shrub, which has grown a lot in the last couple of years.  Also, I wanted to provide a more native mix to edge the meadow. The grasses I'm using are Elliot's love grass (Eragrostis elliottii), a bluish short, bunching grass, and muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris), a taller grass with pinkish flower heads in the fall.

I gave some of the string lilies to a neighbor and the rest I planted on the partly shady south side of the house in a bed with some daylilies. I still have some to plant, so I'll probably put the rest of them in the bed next to the screened porch.

I took a photo the other day of this native blue flag iris (Iris virginica), which was the only flower in whole mass of leaves on the far side of our front pond. Maybe sometime this summer--after the book tour is over--I'll thin the irises to spread them around and to see if I can induce more blooming.

This beautiful blue flag iris is blooming on our
pond out front. Isn't it gorgeous?

String lily bulbs are enormous.

I hope that your spring garden is growing well, and if you're in central or northern Florida, I look forward to meeting you at one of my events!

Green Gardening Matters, 
Ginny Stibolt

Old gardeners' tales

Old gardeners' tales are rampant, even these days.

Companion planting advice as shown in this graphic is freely passed along as gospel of the garden. But most of the companion planting pairings (compatible or incompatible) have not been verified with scientific methods.  Nevertheless, books have been written about plants with human emotions such as "love" or "hate" used in their titles.
  
Don't fall for these old gardeners' tales.

In my research for "Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida," I found that the more important thing to keep in mind is the botanical family of the plants so your crop rotation from one season to the next includes different crop families for at least two rounds. This keeps the specific pests guessing and allows the soils to be replenished.

One of my go to resources for garden myths is Linda Chalker-Scott's website, The Informed Gardener. She's an urban extension agent in Washington State and she has access to the professional journals where she researches various gardening traditions to find if the science proves them to be true or not. She's also published two books listing some of the most common myths.

I planted a row of tall sunflowers away from other gardens.

I planted two seeds in each pile of compost.

Sunflowers are one of the exceptions

Sunflowers (Helianthus spp) are one type of plant that kills or stunts its neighbors. So when you grow them, it's best to plant them away from other plants and dispose of the dead plants at the end of the season so that you can take advantage of their built in herbicide such as using them for a path mulch.

While the danger of frost here in north Florida is not over, it's becoming less and less likely. So I planted two types of sunflowers this week. I'd been piling leaves and other dead stuff raked from the lawn before our first mowing in a line along the back edge of the raised septic drain field. The soil is extremely sandy up there, of course, so I needed the pile of dead stuff to hold the moisture. Then I nestled shovelfuls of compost along the row of leaves. Finally, I planted two seeds in each pile of compost.  These are tall sunflowers with supposedly easy-to-harvest sunflower seeds to eat. The directions stated eight inches apart. I think my planting falls into that range. After the seeds were planted, I covered them with a pine needle mulch.

I also planted some shorter, multi-headed sunflowers at the back of the herb garden for a change. I'll plant basil somewhere else. I'll let you know how they do.  Meanwhile, read my article from a few years back for more information on sunflowers and how this American native became Russia's national flower. Sensational Sunflowers.

Sunrise the other morning from our front yard highlighted a buttermilk sky.

I wish you beautiful sunrises and now that it's daylight savings time, maybe you'll see a few more.

Green Gardening Matters, 
Ginny Stibolt

Is native gardening a fairy tale?

Grassleaf Barbara’s Buttons (Marshallia graminifolia)
are beautiful Florida natives suitable for any fairy tale garden…

Once upon a time, a gardener decided that she wanted more butterflies and more birds in her yard. She read books and oodles of online material and then she attended classes, conferences, workshops, and garden fests. After all this education, she found that she really could make a big difference by installing native plants that attract butterflies and birds with their berries and delicious leaves that caterpillars would eat. As a bonus her landscape would be easy to care for since native plants have lived in the wild for eons with no care at all.

After a great quest* far and wide across her realm, she found a local native plant nursery that had the native plants she wanted. She paid the small bounty for the plants and brought them home and everyone (and every bird and butterfly) lived happily ever after. 

NOT!  Continue reading to find out what happens next...

The other day, my husband cut the lawn for the first time since early November.
I was sorry to see the toadflax (Linaria canadensis) go, but that's what happens in a freedom lawn--whatever is growing gets mown. I did rescue some St. John's wort seedlings, though.  More on that later.

I hope you've allowed your lawn to host natives along with the turf--it's so much more sustainable.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt