Planning a Vegetable Garden

Archive for the ‘Your Garden’ Category

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.

It’s easy to learn how to grow cucumbers, if you remember they like sunshine and moist soil.  Here are some tips on growing cucumbers with abundance.

Starting Cucumber Seeds

Depending on your climate, you can either start cucumber seeds inside, or you can plant them directly outside. 

If you want to plant them directly outside, make sure the soil is warm — at least 75 degrees — and that the ground is damp, but not wet.  You can plant in large containers, in rows, or on “hills”.

If you start cucumber seeds inside, I’ve had good luck using the jiffy peat disks.  That way, once they have sprouted and developed their first true leaf, I can plant them, jiffy disk and all, into the garden.

Either way, cucumber seeds generally sprout in around 3 to 7 days.

Spacing in the Garden

When it comes to spacing cucumber plants in the garden, I like to plant in hills, 2 plants to a hill.

“Hill” is kind of a strange term.  It can mean an actual mound of soil…or just the spacing of the plants.  I personally don’t mound my soil.  I just put 2 plants about 12 inches apart, and keep the “hills” 4 feet apart.

If you want to space cucumbers in a traditional row, try putting the plants 2 feet apart, with 4 feet between rows.

Cucumbers in Containers

You can indeed grow cucumbers in containers!  I grow them in 5-gallon containers myself.  Just remember to keep the plants watered and fed more often than if the plants were in the ground.  Containers dry out faster, and the more frequent watering leaches the fertilizer from the soil.

The photo shows on of my “baby” cucumbers from one of the container plants.

Sunlight and Soil

As I mentioned, cucumbers like warm feet — warm soil, that is.  They also like plenty of sunshine.  But also give these plants room to roam — the vines can grow mighty long.

I like to grow the cucumbers in soil that’s been heavily amended with compost.

Growing Cucumbers Vertically

After an interesting experiement I had with growing cukes and zucchini upside down, I’ve decided it’s not for anyone who regularly gets winds more than 10 miles an hour.  Well, not unless you have a sheltered spot that has a windbreak.

Unfortunately, my cucumbers and zucchini got pretty beat up from the wind, so I had to pull them down and plant them in the ground (where they are much happier).

However, if you do have a spot in the garden that doesn’t get a lot of wind, it’s very much worth growing your cucumber vines on a trellis or upside-down.  Your cucumber fruits will grow straighter as a result.

How to Grow Cucumbers – Variety

The cucumber variety ““ is easy to find and is a great open-pollinated seed variety.  Another popular open pollinated variety is called ““.   And if you’d like to try something a little on the unusual side, try ““.

However, I am trialing the variety “Sweet Success” and so far, I am very impressed.  And will probably drown in cucumbers before very long!  I planted 4 seeds, and in reality, I could easily have gotten by with planting just 1 — the plant is that prolific!

Sweet Success has only female blossoms, so every flower bears a cucumber.  And my plants have a flower at every leaf node.  The first of the cukes will be eating-size within a week, so if they taste half as good as they look, these plants will have a permanent spot in my garden. 

Here’s the link: Sweet Success hybrid slicing cucumber.

Enjoy growing, harvesting and (especially) eating your cucumbers!

Update

I’ve picked 3 huge (around 14 inch) Sweet Success cucumbers so far, with a 4th ready for plucking. The taste is mild but good — no bitterness at all. Nice and firm throughout; no watery texture anywhere. Tiny undeveloped seeds, so it would be great for anyone who doesn’t tolerate the seeds well.

So I give this cucumber 2 thumbs up and will keep it ongoing in my garden.