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Hi Everyone,
There is something different about growing a garden in Florida—the majority of it is grown in the fall, winter and spring. We don’t eat salad in the summer—for lettuce doesn’t like heat, and we don’t harvest pumpkins in the fall. While the temperatures are perfect for growing squashes and cucumbers in the fall—I haven’t yet been able to accomplish it for these little green worms come along and devour the plants before they can produce. Therefore, squash, pumpkins, and cucumbers are grown in the spring. The squash and the cucumber die back once the heat arrives, but the pumpkins continue on. This year I grew some small pie pumpkins (like the kind you buy from the store come Thanksgiving) and I am growing the large Seminole Pumpkins. The pie pumpkins were not excellent producers—they only gave me five pumpkins. I am not sure if they will set anymore pumpkins, but time will tell if the worms don’t devour the plants first. The Seminole pumpkins are native Florida pumpkins and they are doing superbly! I do not think that I am exaggerating if I say there are over twenty pumpkins on the vines. I have already harvested two, and many more are ready. Thankfully Seminole Pumpkins store real well—so while they are being harvested in summer, they will still be tasty and fresh come Thanksgiving when everyone is wanting to make a pumpkin pie.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it has been ten years since we started some grapefruit trees from the seeds in the grapefruits that are growing in our neighbor’s woods. They sprouted well, and stayed in little cups forever until I finally potted them up into some little pots. Then they got bigger and stayed in those pots too long, and then I got around to planting them in two gallon pots and placing them in an old water trough beside the milking parlor so that I could keep an eye on them and keep them watered. They are a good six to seven feet tall—and have been root bound in those pots for the last few years. My trouble has been that we have not known where to plant them—so we didn’t plant them. The one that I planted into a big flower pot died—so I didn’t attempt to pot up the others either. When we bought the 1915 house and found a deep sinkhole with wonderful fauna on the back of the property I thought that I would plant the grapefruit trees there—but I was a little concerned that it would be rattlesnake season when the grapefruits would be ready to be picked. Then the hurricanes hit and knocked down a bunch of trees and we cannot even find the path to the sink hole—so they cannot be planted there after all. I was getting tired of tending to these trees and the dumpster was beginning to sound tempting—but I had put so much work into them that I couldn’t just throw them away. So I decided to plant them under the big oak trees alongside the road in our back pasture. Citrus trees in North Florida survive the winters much better when planted under a canopy of oak trees. So last Monday Jessie and I grabbed the five remaining grapefruit trees (some died, and some I gave away), and we headed to the oak tree canopy. We dug holes that were just deep enough to get the root ball buried—for with all the oak tree roots in the ground it was hard to dig a hole at all. I told Jessie that the proper way to plant a fruit tree was to dig a really big hole, add composted manure and organic compost and plant the tree and water it in real good—but we were not going to go through all that trouble. I was planting those grapefruit trees quickly, and if they want to survive they will have to take care of themselves. Just maybe one year I will walk out there and actually find a grapefruit ready to pick and eat.
The new Barn is coming along! The metal siding is installed all the way around the building. They even covered over our old walk-in cooler/freezer with the new metal so that it wouldn’t be an eye sore on the back of the building. They gave it a face lift, and it looks much better. Many of the rooms inside have been insulated and the plywood walls have been hung. Papa is now working on insulating the Milk House walls—and some of them are quite high for we do have a 12 to 13 foot high vaulted ceiling. You can get a sneak peek at the outside and inside of the new Barn by watching our latest YouTube Short “Clothing the Skeleton”
The garden is doing great. I am amazed at the tomatoes. I am no pro at growing tomatoes and because Mom is allergic to them, and I used to be allergic to them we really do not grow them very often—and I hardly ever have any success. This year I planted some Homestead 24 (a slicing tomato made for Florida) and a tomato called Geranium Kiss (a cherry tomato because they do best in the heat). I kept the tomatoes in the greenhouse too long and they got long and lanky—and very root bound. I persevered though and finally got them planted out into the gardens. As the Homestead 24 began to grow Jessie and I spent one day staking them up and weeding around them—then they grew so fast and multiplied greatly. They are covered in tomatoes, but I can hardly get close to the center of the plants—they are so overgrown. I know that you are supposed to prune and train tomatoes—but I do not know how to do either one so I have some very unruly tomato plants. I did learn to harvest the tomatoes when they are just starting to blush, then let them ripen in a paper bag (so the bugs and rats don’t eat them first). This has worked and I have enjoyed some very flavorful tomatoes—but some rats and bugs are getting to some too.
The sweet potatoes are growing nicely, and the okra and the sunflowers are getting taller every week. There are zinnias, cosmos, snapdragons and mullein blooming in the West Garden. The cayenne peppers are producing and starting to turn red, and the Greek pepperoncini peppers are almost ready for pickling. Yes, the summer garden is doing real well—but the time has come to plan for the fall/winter garden. I spent two hours Wednesday afternoon sitting on the wood floor beside my garden desk figuring out what I wanted to grow, when I needed to plant it, and what seeds I still needed to order. I didn’t get to finish figuring out what seeds I needed to order because my brain and my backside were getting sore. I am glad though that I was able to figure out what I was planting and when!
They say that cypress is good wood that will not rot—but that was the old fashioned kind. Today’s trees are grown too fast and they do not hold up as well. We used rough-cut cypress to build our garden trellis over ten years ago, but between the garden water, time and hurricanes they have finally rotted and crumbled. Last Thursday Jessie and I took the tractor to the garden and with the bucket and a chain we pulled the trellises out of the weed mess and carted them off to the dumpster. It is nice to be able to get some things cleaned up.
I made the house stink on Friday! Yep, I harvested the first batch of cayenne peppers Thursday night and put them on the dehydrator—which made the room quite spicy smelling. Then Friday morning I trimmed back the rosemary plant—which to Mama’s dismay I planted in the Courtyard garden next to a gardenia, and the rosemary is doing so well that it is getting too big for the area. My idea is to just keep it trimmed back and have plenty of dried rosemary. After I got the rosemary on the dehydrator I headed to the Market Garden to harvest some sage. Some herbs die back in the summer here because of our rains—but I have them growing under plastic in our Market Gardens and I actually quit watering them a few weeks back,. The only water they get is whatever rain blows in or flows off the plastic—which has not been much of late for the rain keeps going around us. We have managed to get a little over an inch so far this month. I am surprised at how well the herbs are surviving with not being waterlogged. When I got back to the house with the sage the aroma of the house changed drastically. I do not know how anyone figured out that sage was edible—and a great spice for the Thanksgiving turkey and for sausage. Truth be told—fresh sage smells like someone’s dirty body odor. I laughed when I read that sage was one of the ingredients that you can use to make homemade deodorant. We had to keep the laundry room door shut until the sage was almost 100% dehydrated and the oils were not so potent.
Jessie has been helping me clean up in the Cottage Garden. The weeds were turning into forests! My goal was to replace the weeds with flowers just as soon as I could get three of the 10 ft. by 10 ft. beds cleaned out. I found out that it took me 15 minutes to clean out one 4 x 4 section—so I just needed a few hours to accomplish my goal. After a few days of weeding I had all the big weeds out. I just have two 4x4 beds left to weed out—and they are full of coastal grass. Yuck! I recently saw a video on YouTube that encouraged people to waste money on annuals for the flower garden. Perennials are necessary—but they only bloom once. Annuals bloom all spring, summer and fall—then they die back in the winter. That was my plan—but the video gave me the encouragement to do it. Friday afternoon Mama and I headed to town to splurge on flowers. Spending money is not my forte though and I will admit that I just about walked out of the store and gave up the idea. In the end I bought enough vinca, torenias, dusty millers, and coleus to fill 11 beds. I also decided that next year I will grow my flowers from seed in order to save a lot of money. Now I have to fill the beds with compost and get all the plants planted—and that it tomorrows (Monday’s) goal.
Saturday mornings pretty much go the same (to an extent). We sleep in until 7:00, get breakfast done, milk the cows, pack the orders, make a kefir drink for lunch and get Papa on his way to Gainesville for the delivery run by 1:00—from there, no Saturday is the same. There are always odds and ends to do, house work to catch up on; sometimes gardening, customers to take care of, and sometimes we are just too tired to do much of anything. My goal this Saturday was to get the ironing done—there was a piano to practice, paperwork to do, kombucha to make, a bed to wash and make, and other things to do—but I was GOING to get my ironing DONE! To my great delight I did manage—even though I spent about an hour giving a farm tour to four college age young ladies who had spent the day at the river and then decided to stop by the farm for some milk. We talked for a little bit, and when they asked if there were any young calves on the farm I couldn’t resist offering them a tour. They were very excited and we all loaded into the Gravely and headed out to pasture. We didn’t get very far before it started to rain—but they didn’t mind getting wet (hey, they just came from the river). We sat and talked to the Jersey milk cows, and then we drove past the meat chickens, and the egg layer chickens. There were heifers and sheep to see, and dogs to greet. We were heading back up when I thought to walk through the milk cow field to see if I couldn’t find the day old bull calf. I found him next to the lane, so the girls walked back to the lane and I pushed the calf under the hotwire fence so that they could pet him to their hearts content. One of the girls dreams of living on a farm with her fiancé. They have chickens now, but her big dream is a milk cow. They all had a blast, and I do believe that their time on the farm will be the topic of conversation with many of their friends for a long time to come. One girl said that it was the best time ever. I had a blast sharing my life with these young ladies who were so excited about everything on the farm.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare