Planning a Vegetable Garden

Posts Tagged ‘Planning a 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.

So what’s growing in the garden now?  I’ve pretty much finished my modified raised bed main garden (just a tiny bit more to go), and most of the seedlings are in place.  Here’s what I’ve got so far.

Tomatoes, Tomatoes and More Tomatoes

I tend to grow lots of tomatoes as I am fascinated by their different sizes, shapes, colors and flavors.  As a result, I have plenty to share, as well as plenty of fruits from which to save seeds.

In the main bed, I have the following tomato varieties:

• Kellogg’s Breakfast (large orange beefsteak)
• Brandywine (large pink beefsteak)
• Loxahatchee (medium round slicer)
• Mr. Stripey (medium striped red and yellow beefsteak)
• Black Sea Man (medium black slicer)
• Tomatoberry (red cherry-sized fruit, shaped like a strawberry)
• Druzba (medium to large red slicer)

And that’s not counting the tomato plants I have growing in containers or the front garden!  (Told you I had a lot.)

Peppers (Sweet)

In the main garden, I have the following sweet peppers growing:

• Aconcagua
• Parks Whopper (sweet banana style)
• Corno di Toro

I also have in containers Purira, Pretty Purple Pepper and a jalapeno.  Lots more are in my “staging” area, just about ready to move into the main garden area.

In Praise of Bush Beans

I decided to plant bush beans instead of pole beans.  For me, it makes more sense, since I plant them in waves.  I planted a whole bunch, but some animals decided to dig up some of the seeds.  So for the moment, I only have about 10 or 12 plants growing.  More will some later!

Soybeans

I prefer to call them edemame, but in essence they are soybeans.  I started some seeds inside (oh-so-easy with this veggie), and planted them out…then we had some night temperatures gow down into the 30’s and I lost half of them.  Ah well, our cold weather should be in the past now, so I’ll have to start more seeds.

Anything Else?

Now that you mentioned it, yes, I have some other plants growing in some of the side gardens, containers and…bags!

In containers I have Sweet Success cucumbers; two are planted, and I am getting ready to start more seeds.

In the front garden I have some yellow straightneck squash (variety unknown).  All three plants are blooming now, adding a very bright yellow against the green of the leaves.  Also present are three cantaloupe plants (“Hale’s Best”).

Hanging from a bag (you read that right) I have two zucchini (“Contender”) plants.  They seem to like it, because they are growing to beat the band.  The bag is actually designed to grow strawberries, but I decided to see what would happen by growing zucchini vertically.

And finally, off to the side of the compost heap are two volunteer curcubits.  I think they are yellow squash…but I’m not positive.  I found them growing in the main compost bed and decided to save them and see what happens.  Who knows — I may discover a new taste sensation!  But it will be interesting to see what these plants actually are.

So that’s what I have for now.  I was going to include lettuce, carrots and radishes, but they like the cooler weather — and it’s in the 80’s now.  Well, there’s always the fall for them.

So that’s what I have growing in the garden, although I’m sure there’s more to come, given that I have a long growing season.

What about you — what are you growing, or planning to grow this year?