Spring in My Central Florida Garden and the Office Courtyard Tomatoes

If you are anything like me one of the  most difficult gardening areas I find is with getting a new, fresh twist on a tried, but true gardening favorite.

"What are you talking about, Peg," I hear you say....

You know how you Love, Love, Love the idea of a lush and sumptuously planted terrace or deck (maybe your own little Secret Garden Room)?

This little pic is just outside my office window. Now it's a smallish courtyard, but to be able to look out the window and see flowers and Life, just makes my heart flutter.

And now I'm thinking of all the pictures I've seen in my gardening books, magazines, TV shows (...it IS spring here in Central Florida, you know....) and how I can reform the courtyard just outside my window that I've struggled with for so long now.

So now I've ripped out the St. Augustine grass - although it is the go-to lawn for residences around Central Florida and the mandated lawn type by most Home Owner Associations, it's listed as an invasive species by the County Extension Service, go figure! And don't even get me started on the fertilizers, insecticides, and WATER this type of lawn requires to maintain the minimum aesthetic green color.

Sorry, I got sidetracked. Back to the courtyard.... So the grass is gone and the wire baskets on the left brick wall are still there, but a bit worse for wear. I need to freshen the plantings and soil. The drip irrigation on them works for most types of plants except those plants that like to dry out between waterings. I have the drip set for 1/2 gallon an hour for 30 minutes each day (that's a quart of water per day) and have found that's the minimum I can set it to because of the hot afternoon sun. Any less water and I have crispy cultivars.

So anyway, no grass, just mulch and a quite prolific grape tomato plant - the indeterminate type - that is sprawling around and producing boatloads of awesome-tasting, luscious fruits. What is surprising to me about this tomato plant is that it is a volunteer plant that grew from a dropped seed from last season's grape tomato plants that were growing in containers, since as we all know, tomatoes can't thrive in the native sandy soil, in large part, due to the nematodes that infest the soils.

I don't know how this little trooper made it, but I and my family is really happy it did. It's been a long time since we were successful in bringing that impossible-to-replicate, vine-ripened tomato flavor to the table, even if it is a small bite at a time from My Central Florida Garden.

Fall in My Central Florida Garden

Well, I've gone and done it again... not posting regularly as I promised myself that I would - since February! Yikes.

This time, it has to change. Why, you ask? Well, I've left my full-time day job, although I'm still teaching classes at the college in the evenings. But without the 8 - 5 (or 6 or 7-ish) grind, I am hoping to spend time on my real love of tending the "yarden."

Looking around the ol' Ponderosa, I see so many deferred projects that I can't imagine having time to do what I love which includes not only creating and growing, but then taking pics to share and writing about the experience, whether good or bad.

The kitchen court yard, once green and flowery, and herby, with occasional containerized tomatoes (nematodes, you know), is now mostly barren - it is almost November, after all.

But this year it was rather cute during the summer with zinnias, foxgloves (which never did really do well this year), pentas, annual dahlias, angelonia and torenia. Had some nice color for a while, but lots o' rain, then DRY, then RAIN, then dry, didn't do any of the plants any favors.

The cute whiskey barrel planters from, oh, I think 2006, have finally given up the ghost and rotted through, so I need to plan for replacements/reconfiguring those areas for next spring.

For now, I'm going to concentrate on the cool season and the opportunity for salad greens like arugula, mesclun, spinach, kale and various lettuces for the cooler season. Also got a tomato plant (yeah, I know, not from seed) to hopefully augment the salad bowl.

I still hold out hope that THIS year (like all the past) will be THE year that I finally am able to grow and play and LOVE My Central Florida Garden!

Free Veggies in My Central Florida Garden

FREE Veggies in My Central Florida Garden

I like to buzz around on the ‘net looking for creative ways to grow things and save $$$ while I’m at it.

I came across some ideas that seem to be SO-O-O easy, I can’t believe I hadn’t read about them or thought of them myself before this!

Back in 2011 I planted just some generic white Idaho potatoes in the back yard.  You see, they had already sprouted in the pantry and had started to shrivel as I had been derelict (as I am occasionally know to be) in my duty to use before I lose (food, that is).

Well, they DID grow, and I was able to dig up some medium sized spuds for dinner.  Now even though I know I paid for the potatoes initially, it seemed that I was able to grow FREE potatoes, my logic being that if I hadn’t stuck them in some soil, they would have just been thrown away.

Well, back to my buzzing around the ‘net, I read about sticking the root end of green onions, garlic, sweet potatoes, and even celery into growing medium to get in effect a re-incarnation of the original plant.  Now, I know people have been doing this for years, it’s just that I hadn’t so when something like this works for me, I get really stoked! 

My former neighbor used to get pineapples to regrow from the tops, and even though I have tried a few dozen pineapple tops, I’ve just not hit the right culture with them to get those scrumptious tropical babies to regrow for me.  Never fear, I’ll keep trying to get those babies to grow in My Central Florida Garden… along with my green onions, garlic, potatoes, and celery.  

A Series of Small Things Makes a Garden

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent Van Gogh -

Ah, Vincent, truer words were never spoken. Just as the truly great gardens are not built in one day on a whim, my Central Florida garden has been a labor of love over the last 20+years with some years bearing more of a lasting imprint than others.

The last post was about my garden being a passion to which I’ve set my mind.

Now I have a passion to plant a salad bar and that’s totally do-able in My Central Florida garden at this time of year.

We’ve had quite a warm January with some days in the mid- and upper-80’s. Even in Central Florida those are temps you just don’t expect in the middle of winter.

But there are some growing things that will relish the cool temps, namely Salad Bar Stuff.

Those “stuffs” include all types of greens such as lettuce, spinach, onions, peas, sweet peas, you get the idea. Most of these seeds you can plant about anytime during the winter here in Florida since the ground doesn’t freeze, although right about now I’d love to see a heavy frost or even a short-duration hard-freeze to help kill off some of the weeds and unwanted bugs.

Fortunately, as of 1/27, our weather has turned cooler, so these fresh salad favorites should do well for my Central Florida Garden.

Gardening is an insatiable passion, in my Central Florida Garden.

Gardening is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart. -Karel Capek

This time of year, as the Christmas lights go dark and the color-saturation of the holidays dims, I find turning to the garden plan is a most welcome labor of love.

Poring over seed catalogs, surfing the internet for online nurseries, taking colored pencils to the copy of the homestead survey anew absolutely makes my toes curl….

Even as the year winds down and we gardeners take a welcome rest from the riot of gardening to-do’s, the prospect of a new palette, a new layout, and new plants calls to us during the winter season’s dormancy.

As for me and my garden planning process, I have already started a tray of delphiniums seed. Here in my Central Florida garden, we treat these beauties as annuals. The next tray to start is foxgloves. They sometimes reseed (they’re biennials) and regrow, but they’re not reliable as a true biennial here in Central Florida; it’s just too warm for these traditional English Garden babies to take hold and persevere through the summer monsoons and sub-tropical winters.

One of the new entries to this year’s plan is a type of hydrangea that is SUPPOSED to grow here in Central Florida. I ordered 10 baby plants online; they arrived looking rather disheveled, but mostly alive, except for one of the teeny plants.  I potted up the baby plants which were just shipped in liner capsules and then shrink-wrapped with the top and bottom of the “envelope” left open for ventilation. After potting, I set them outside in an area protected from the still-too-hot sun and kept an eye on them so they wouldn’t dry out.

The cuttings started making progress in their nursery location until WHAM!

Something, somebody, some critter ate off ALL the new green growth.

I’ve moved the now-denuded baby hydrangeas, but the damage may be too extensive to save many. The nasty marauder even stripped the baby bark from the plants, so I can only hope that they will survive. But I am one of those gardeners who doesn’t give up, so I’ll keep on keeping on with their care and feeding until the plant-god convinces me they’ve given up the ghost.

The variety’s botanical name is Hydrangea macrophylla “Harlequin” which is also in some areas referred to by the common name of Raspberry Parfait. It may be that the varmint that annihilated them heard that common name and decided that it was too good-sounding to pass up! We will see what happens and also see if I can clobber that critter’s appetite for the baby plants in My Central Florida Garden!

And speaking of baby plants, I just received my first seed/plant catalog in the new year. It sets me off on a tangent from what my plan had been – to keep a fairly simple color palette of red, white, and yellow which shows so nicely against the dark brick buildings and dark-stained 6 foot fencing. 

But, it’s only a tangent. I do love the look of a cohesive, orderly, and even logical landscape as the great garden and landscape designers have done in the past. 

So, at least for now, I will continue with my present color palette, even though I will try some new varieties in My Central Florida Garden.

Bloom Time in My Central Florida Garden

No Consistency in My Central Florida Garden

Yes, it’s been another L-O-N-G spell between posts.  Maybe I will get this back on track, finally.

Well, Disney’s plant topiaries may be the rage throughout the horticultural world, but my Central Florida Garden wouldn’t be able to hold a candle to the poorest.  Especially now that we are in what most would laughingly call the winter here in Central Florida.  As our Northern neighbors can attest, this has been a brutal season of ice, sleet, snow, and all forms of frozen inclemencies (Is that even a word???). 

Here in Central Florida, the frost covers saw action only four times, and three of those nights were back-to-back, so there was no running in and out with them, just left them on all day long.

Sorry my old Northern Illinois friends from the land of glow-in-the-dark legs (because they about never get tanned), I was out cleaning a planting bed, laying landscape fabric, and spreading mulch while wearing a tank top and sweatband which did get sweaty. 

The last post referenced that I was trying to grow Daffodils here in my Central Florida Garden. I was so excited, got them in the ground shortly after they arrived, and planned for luscious bouquets scattered through the house.  Well, for all the work first to FIND southern daffodils, and then to PLANT about 200 bulbs, I was mostly disappointed.  I did get maybe 20 or 25 flowers in total.  Disappointing.  I planted them in the fall of 2012, saw the disappointing lack of expected bloom in the spring of 2013, and now up comes the spring of 2014.  We will see if this spring brings more heralds of a joyous season of blooms.

Also planted some Irises that I had ordered very late last fall.  They were stashed in the laundry room until I found them on Valentine’s Day.  They felt pretty dry, but I figured I’d stick them in the ground anyway – just in case. 

When I did live in Northern Illinois, I had rich, dark soil with just enough clay to hold it together and just enough sand to help it drain.  It was about the most perfect soil for everything.  Oh, to have that in my planting beds here! But I was able to grow huge clumps of the tall Bearded (some call them German) Irises from just a relatively small rhizome.  They are easy-peasy, not to mention stately and elegant, with barely any fragrance, endearing themselves to most allergy sufferers.

I should know within about 30 days if the Irises were still viable or not.  Now if I can just keep my eye on where I planted them – with some CONSISTENCY!

Trying for Daffodils in My Central Florida Garden

I've been missing the spring show that most northern gardeners take pretty much for granted. The spring bulb gardens put on a reliable display each spring with very little ongoin effort on the part of the gardener. When I lived in northern Illinois I had a few thousand bulbs in a fairly small front yard that put on such a display that passers-by would stop to take it all in. I have missed that here in the 9s zone.

I received one of the regular emails from a company with a good reputation for providing high quality products. I am a sucker for a pretty picture so I opened the catalog and did a search for bulbs for zone 9s and the search results came back with just a few, but those few are enough to again get me hoping that once again my front yard will garner admiring stares from the passers-by.

Here are the types I ordered that CLAIM to grow here:

• Narcissus Sun Disc
• Narcissus La Belle
• Narcissus Trevithian

I just ordered them a week ago and they've not yet arrived.  I already have begun work on their new home in the front yard since our deer are normally not hungry enough to bother with anything that is not very succulent as I understand that deer, mice, voles, etc. do not especially relish the taste of members of the narcissus family.  I'll post an update as this little project progresses in My Central Florida Garden.