Planning a Vegetable Garden

Planning a vegetable garden for Fall is necessary where I live in South Florida, because in the summertime, it’s just too hot to grow veggies!  When you have days in the mid to upper 90’s and nights around 80 with high humidity…the plants just die off for most mortal gardeners.

However, the nights are back in upper 60’s.  Even though the days are close to 90, the plants can handle it now, because they get a reprieve at night.

So, time to get the garden ready for fall plantings!  It’s the beginning of October, and since we don’t usually get frost until January, we have until then to bring in some garden produce.

Therefore, today’s post is about gardening in South Florida for Fall and Winter.  For the rest of you, I’ll have another post in a few days about making sure your garden is ready for Spring plantings.

South Florida Fall Vegetable Garden

It’s been a brutal summer for us down here; even my hot peppers (which love the heat) didn’t want to thrive, and I lost 4 out of 6 pepper plants totally; the other two are on life support.

The weeds, however, seemed to love it (isn’t that always the case?).  Since this past Saturday was the first day I’ve been able to venture out to work in the garden (too hot or rainy otherwise), it was weed-pulling time!  In fact, to show you what I was up against, here’s a photo of the main garden bed.

I ended up spending around 3 hours pulling weeds from the main bed before I gave out.  I managed to plant 4 plants (1 tomato, 1 pepper, 1 basil and 1 catnip) before the heat got to be too much.  So I still have 4 tomatoes, 1 catnip and around 6 pepper plants that need a home.

So, what other plants might be OK for a fall planting here (from seed)?  A partial list is:

• Lettuce (when it gets a little cooler)
• Radish (ditto)
• Bush beans (early type)
• Spinach

If I had planned better, I’d also have some winter squash on the list — it’s too late to grow them from seed.  Same thing for zucchini and other summer squash; a little late for planting from seeds.

I considered broccoli and cauliflower, but I don’t think they’d be sufficiently ready before a frost hit.

Get ‘Em in the Ground!

So if you’re here in South Florida and you haven’t already grown them from seeds, you need to get out to your local garden center and get some plants.  Reminder — tomatoes need to be early to mid-season in order to ripen before the first really cold snap.  Bell peppers are really iffy — they like warm weather, but banana peppers should do OK.  Jalapenos as well; I’ve successfully grown them in mild winters.

I’ll post a photo of how far I’ve come with clearing out the garden and what I’ve been planting next weekend.

Planting string beans is an enjoyable task.  The seeds are large and the beans grow bountifully!  So they are easy to sow, fun to grow and easy to harvest as well.

So let’s talk about planting and growing string beans (also known as snap beans).

Types of String Beans

First, there are two different styles of string beans — those plants that grow like a bush, and those that grow up a pole.  Both are great to eat, so which type you choose may depend on the space you have available.

The bush-style beans generally grow to somewhere around 18 inches tall, give or take a couple inches.  The pole beans can easily grow 6 feet tall if given the room.

I’ve planted both kinds, and for my personal growing pleasure like the bush-style better.  They don’t produce the string beans over as long a time period as the pole-style beans, but rather have more of a concentrated harvest.

As far as taste goes, I find it has to do more with the variety you choose, rather than pole or bush.

Planting String Beans

Planting string beans is a joy for me — I can actually see the seeds without squinting!  The seeds are large and easy to handle.

You can start your beans inside if you live in a very short summer climate, but I find it just as easy to plant the seeds directly in the garden.  Wait until the soil is at least 65 degrees before sowing the seeds.

Sow the string bean seeds about 1″ deep.  For bush beans, I sow mine closely – 3 inches apart.  For pole beans, I prefer 5″ apart, and a stake for each plant.

Should you use a bean innoculant?   I generally don’t (mainly because I tend to forget it), but I do add a soil activator to the soil before I get it ready to plant.  So if your soil is poor or you have found harvests skimpy in the past, a bean innoculant will probably help you.

Growing String Beans

Growing string beans is easy; in general, they are trouble-free if you have a warm dry climate.  If your climate is humid (like mine usually is), you might want to watch out for fungal and/or rust infections.  Spacing your plants out a little farther can help with the air circulation, to help stave off the fungus.

String beans like warmth, but are fairly tolerant of cooler weather.  They don’t particularly like very hot weather, though (95+ degrees).  In fact, if you live in a hot (and especially hot and humid) climate, I suggest growing string beans on the “shoulder” seasons, so as to avoid the worst Summer heat.

Enjoy planting and growing your string beans!