Tomatoes, Peppers and Squash... Oh My!

This weather seriously needs to warm up...right now! I have a greenhouse full of veggies ready to go in the ground. And my beds are cleared, prepped and ready to go. All I am waiting on is to get past the last threat of frost. To be honest, I am probably just going to take my chances and plant out the majority of my veggie babies this weekend. If we get a late frost, I'll end up doing like I did last year. Rush home from work, pick up frost covers and run around the garden in the dark covering up all the babies, with my husband standing nearby saying 'I told you so'.

Right now in the greenhouse I have several varieties of tomatoes ready to go: Chianti Rose, Beefmaster, Wapsipinicon Peach, Bush Big Boy, San Marzano, Coure de Bue, Roma, Pink Brandywine, and Black Krim. I also have the 'Vermont Cranberry' Beans, 'Pike' Muskmelon, 'Seminole' Pumpkin, 'Fancy Crookneck' Summer Squash, and 'Cossack Pineapple' Tomatilla.  I typically grow everything from seed to reduce disease introduction, except for the Bell Peppers. For some reason it takes too long to grow peppers from seed. Therefore I cheat and buy starts to grow out in the greenhouse for a few months. This way I'll be eating peppers by May.

Bell Peppers and Tomatoes

Tomatoes and Muskmelon

Vermont Cranberry Beans and Tomatillas

Tomatoes in the foreground

Messy Greenhouse                                        

                                           
My other motivation for planting out some of my stock is to free up some room in my tiny greenhouse. I mostly use it for storage during the warmer months because it does not have ventilation fans and gets HOT. But then during the winter when I am doing all my starts to get a jump on the spring/summer garden, I end up running out of room.

Taking Care of My Pollinators

It's difficult this time of year to have flowers to support my pollinators, to keep them interested enough in my yard to hang around until my Spring garden. The winter garden does not have many vegetables that require pollination, mostly greens and  root vegetables. And most flowering plants cannot survive both the occasional frost as well as the typical central Florida heat and humidity. But I do have a couple of species that work, and are low maintenance.

Borage grows great during Florida winters, I love the beautiful purple blooms and even the hairy leaves have visual interest.

Surprisingly the African Bush Daisy was not even fazed by the worst of the frosts in the 20's this winter.

But my best flowering plant for keeping the pollinators around is Broccoli that I let bolt and go to flower. I discovered this last winter unintentionally. I tried a sprouting variety of Broccoli called 'Pericicaba'. A sprouting variety does not put out just one big main head but several smaller sprouting heads. Unfortunately the 'Pericicaba' variety is not good for eating here in Florida as it bolts quickly in our warmer winters and goes to flower. So last winter I was just too lazy to pull them and discovered that the bees love the flowers and these plants were continuously covered in flowers.

Spring Seeds Ordered

I'm getting restless for my spring/summer garden and the seed catalogs have been showing up in the mail, one a day, for the past week. So I gave in and placed my first order. I may have to expand to plant all the stuff I've got coming in, and I don't know who is going to eat it all since it's only the two of us.

Pinetree Garden Seeds and Accessories:
Vermont Cranberry- dried bean variety, I haven't grown dried beans before but it would be nice to grow something that is easily stored. I just don't have time for the whole canning thing, and am so-so at freezing my excess veggies.
Yard Long- Asian bean that is also referred to as Asparagus bean. Very heat tolerant and productive, which would be great to have in the garden in the middle of summer when everything else is burned out. And you can never have enough fresh eating bean varieties, so easy to harvest and cook.
Painted Serpent Cucumber- this is odd as it is sold as a cucumber but is really a type of melon, but tastes like a mild cucumber. It's a snake shaped Armenian variety and supposed to be a prolific producer and I am always curious to try new varieties (besides if I don't like it I can feed it to the chickens). I'll also be planting my usual cucumber variety 'County Fair' which is incredibly resistant to powdery mildew and produces good amounts of tasty fresh eating and pickling cukes.
Pepino- I am so excited to try this melon. It produces 2 - 5" fruit that taste like a pearish melon.
Minnesota Midget- a small early variety of muskmelon that grows on compact vines. Since I am always battling powdery mildew on my cucurbits I seek varieties that either have good resistance or are early so as to beat the heat and rains of a Florida summer.
Strawberry Spinach- a variety of greens that grow during the heat of summer and taste like spinach. How awesome would it be to have spinach tasting fresh greens to make a salad with my summer tomatoes.
Wapsipinicon Peach Tomato- a small sized tomato that is supposed to be fruity tasting, with a peach fuzz skin.

 Tomato Growers Supply Company:
Black Krim
Pink Brandywine
Jubilee 

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange:
Pike Cantaloupe- produces large fruit, and has excellent disease resistance.
Seminole pumpkin- highly productive heirloom native pumpkin variety with incredible resistance to everything that afflicts cultivated vegetables in Florida.
Ground Cherry Cossack Pineapple- yellow, fruity tasting tomatillo.
Monarda- great flowering herb for my pollinators.

Ode to Rutabaga

I just had to write some more about growing Rutabaga in Florida.  The variety I grow is 'American Purple Top', which is probably the most popular and widely grown. Most people are turned off by Rutabagas in the grocery store because they look so much like Turnips, which is a valid concern. I have grown two varieties of Turnip that were purported to be non-bitter and  delicious and it was a lie, Turnips are gross. But I was pleasantly surprised by Rutabagas. Their flavor is very mild, and they are an excellent replacement for potatoes.

Peeled Rutabagas ready for the cook pot

Rutabagas in the Florida garden are very easy to grow during the winter season, they can take unseasonable heat as well as our brief cold spells and frosts. I barely even fertilize them, and they are unfazed by too much or too little rain/irrigation. Most often I find half of the Rutabaga above ground as the root swells, but they are not tender and do not need to be covered with more soil.

Fresh Rutabaga just pulled from the garden

They do not split or get get pithy as other root crops will often do, so they can be left in the soil until you are ready to eat them.

They produce a copious amount of foliage, which can be eaten as greens, but I haven't tried this as I already have so many other varieties of greens in the garden during winter. However, my chickens and compost pile do appreciate this abundance.

Small Harvest

Since I usually only harvest what I plan to eat, I don't take the time to photograph actual harvests. Today I pulled more than usual and had them drying out from washing, so my husband convinced me to post a picture of my veggies.

The description is clockwise: The radishes I usually don't eat, I grow and cut the greens for my chickens. However, today I pulled a handful to eat with a salad. The small pile of ugly peas are the only crop of English Peas this winter, they were NOT happy with how warm this winter has been. Under the English Peas are a few stalks of the sprouting Broccoli, 'Apollo'.  Then the last of the Sugar Snap Peas from the existing vines.  These will be pulled shortly and I will re-seed for a second crop, the peas are so sweet and delicious that I have no idea why I even tried with the English Peas. And finally, the first carrots of the winter garden, including a few of the famous purple carrots. 

Garden Update

Just an update on the status of the winter veggie garden. The main heads of the 'Apollo' Broccoli are ready for harvest! The seeds were put in around the middle of October, and grew very well, probably the best Broccoli variety I have planted yet. My other Broccoli varieties are nowhere near ready to produce heads yet. Flavor is really good raw, and from what I've researched the side shoots that the plant will keep producing will be even better tasting.

'Apollo' Broccoli

The greens are growing faster than we can eat them. It's my first year growing Kale and it has been very successful, pest and problem free with great flavor. We have only eaten them as cooked greens, so we will have to try making Kake chips this weekend.  And the Spinach Mustard has exceeded my expectations. Soft, prolific growth that is excellent as a cooked green, even if it is just a mite bitter as a raw green but good on sandwhiches. Cooler weather may even sweeten up the flavor enough to use it for spinach salad.

Spinach Mustard in the garden

Carrots are growing like crazy and I should be able to start pulling some by January, can't wait to see the purple variety!

Carrots

 Growing Cabbage is an exercise in patience, they seem to grow so slowly that you stop really looking at them. Then one day you look over and see that they are finally forming some heads and get excited. Then you wait another month or two until it's finally large enough to harvest. There is no instant gratification with Cabbage.

'Early Jersey Wakefield' Cabbage

Sugar Snap Peas are about done, but I am contemplating planting another crop of them. They grow so fast and taste so sweet it would be well worth going though the effort. Maybe with the cooler weather coming the new vines will last longer.


Rutabaga is probably the most under appreciated vegetable that a gardener can grow. This is another easy to grow vegetable. If you have Rutabaga seeds, you will not go hungry. The germination rate is 100%, in fact I find Rutabagas sprouting where I did not plant any. There are no pest issues, they don't require any fertilization, and rate of growth is pretty fast. I think the biggest thing going against Rutabaga is the name, people hear the name and automatically think it will taste bad. Then you factor in the appearance, it looks like a turnip. Which everybody knows tastes bad. But Rutabaga are pretty good. I cut them up and use them as a replacement for potatoes in stews, and they are pretty good roasted with olive oil, garlic and onion powder.


It's been a bad winter for lettuce, too warm which of course caused my lettuce to bolt. But even before it bolted the flavor was really bitter so I ended up pulling it all and composting it.

'Black Seeded Simpson' Lettuce

I can't complain about how the winter garden has performed, I wish it was a little cooler but the majority of the crops have produced very well. Nevertheless, I have begun to get seed catalogs for 2014, and am getting excited to order seeds for the spring/summer garden!

Onions in the Garden

Probably the easiest and most utilized crop any gardener can incorporate into their vegetable garden are onions.  Think about it, how many recipes do you use call for onions? I find that most call for them, and I'll add onion to any recipe that doesn't already include it (red bell pepper too, but we'll save that for another post). I usually add onions to my garden in November or December at the very latest. Onions are usually grown from sets or bulbs, these are seeds that are partially grown out. I try to find them locally, mostly because it is cheaper and easier than ordering online and getting them shipped. I have been told that growing onions from seed are not very difficult, just time consuming. Since the sets are so easy to find and grow, I haven't really found the urge to start them from seed. There is so much work that already needs to be done, I generally seek ways to make gardening easier, not more complicated. This year I purchased onion bulbs in early November. To clarify, bulbs are semi grown onion starts with no foliage growth out of the top. These are easy to find in seed stores early in Fall. Most people are tempted to find the largest bulb with the assumption that these are further along in the maturation process. However, I find that the smaller ones usually 'plump' out better in the spring. In December I was also able to find onion sets, these are small bulbs with growth sprouting from the bulb. I find that the sets produce a fully bulbed onion in the spring more reliably than the bulbs, so I generally either wait for these to be available or plant out both. And I only purchase short day onion varieties, the long day varieties will never bulb out in Florida. The Granex is usually the most readily available, which is a versatile, well flavored yellow onion.

You can't rush onions, they are not going to be ready until Spring, no matter what you do. So if you insist on trying to rush them with fertilization, you will end up with incredibly healthy green growth above ground, and but no bulbing to the onion. Since it is going to be a good number of months maturing, I like to plant onion sets and/or bulbs in areas where they will not be in the way of both winter and spring crops. I also like to grow a lot of onions, but I don't want to take up all my regular vegetable garden space with them. So if I decide to plant them in the vegetable garden I space them out so that I can interplant other crops between them. Otherwise I plant them in the bed areas around the garden that I ulitize for flowers and anything else that I'd like to grow out under irrigation.

 Onions coming up in some space between my peach tree and grape vines.

Onion sets in the garden next to the Spinach Mustard (which I am especially proud of).

As far as nutritional needs for onions, you have to try pretty hard to mess them up. The first year I grew onions I fertilized the hell out of them which gave me decent sized bulbs but thick necks and crazy vegetative growth.  Thus I learned, onions do not need or appreciate a lot of nitrogen. Since then, I have been more conservative with my approach to fertilization. Now I stick to bone meal and Epsom salts for supplementation. They really do not need much more.