by Molly Jameson | Oct 3, 2022
Come on down to the farm! The 15th Annual Farm Tour is October 15 and 16. Image by Millstone Institute of Preservation.
Fall is upon us, and that means it is farm tour season!
The 15th Annual Farm Tour is on Saturday, October 15 and Sunday, October 16, 2022. Farmers and producers in 12 counties in North Central Florida and South-Central Georgia will be open to showcase their various farming endeavors. It is a free family weekend of learning, exploration, and fun.
The Farm Tour has been organized and hosted by Millstone Institute of Preservation since 2016. It gives the community the chance to explore local producers in our area and become familiar with the farmers that make up our diverse local food system.
There are 40 farms, ranches, farm-to-table restaurants, markets, vendors, and gardens (including the Leon County “VegHeadz” Demonstration Garden on Saturday!) participating in this year’s Farm Tour, some of which have never participated in the past.
There is much to explore during the 15th Annual Farm Tour, including heritage breed livestock. Photo by Rachel Mathes.
The sites span nearly 140 miles east to west, from Greenville, Florida, to Chipley, Florida, and about 80 miles north to south, from Whigham, Georgia, to Crawfordville, Florida.
Each farm is open to the public at no cost, providing the opportunity for participants to learn the importance of supporting local agriculture and how they can do so.
There are many different types of farms to explore, including seeing a multitude of processes and demonstrations firsthand, such as honey harvesting, cow and goat milking, sawmill operating, bamboo extracting, horse grooming, compost turning, flower arranging, seed saving, wine manufacturing, sausage creating, satsuma juicing, cheese making, kombucha brewing, and much more.
You can also sample and purchase local products at many farm tour sites, including local honey, beeswax and honey products, local eggs, homemade breads, fresh veggies, various locally produced meats (bring a cooler!), pumpkins, vegetable seedlings, kombucha, muscadine wines, handmade soaps, fruit trees, cookbooks, and more. Many locations will also be serving food for sale, such as falafel and hummus; baked goods; beef, bacon, and pork burgers; ice cream and coffee; satsuma slushes, cookies, jellies, and syrups; and much more.
The Farm Tour Guide includes descriptions and directions to all the farm tour sites. A downloadable version of the Farm Tour Guide is available on the UF/IFAS Leon County Extension Facebook or you can download a copy using this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kJIEUcHh1w55BS9y1fpUjfV5yb-MDMJa/view?fbclid=IwAR2Pt0jdjMmZrc9UaJ0tYn_eGnMkem8DvfjdPbkzsTaF8q7D2bFcFLgsoCs
See you down on the farm!
by Molly Jameson | Jul 27, 2022
The Fall 2022 Leon County Seed Library Kickoff event starts at 11 a.m. on August 13 at the Collins Main Leon County Library.
To kick off the Fall 2022 Season of the Leon County Seed Library Program, UF/IFAS Extension Leon County will be at the LeRoy Collins Leon County Main Library (200 W. Park Ave.) Program Room on Saturday, August 13, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., with information on raised bed gardening, a hands-on seeding activity, an Ask-a-Master-Gardener booth, and a healthy cooking demonstration.
Although we are still in the full swing of summer, gardeners know it is time to start thinking about planning the fall garden. Although pulling weeds and adding fresh compost can wait a little while, gathering seeds for the new season can be something to think about doing now.
Youth creating garden gnomes at the 4-H station during the 2019 Seed Library Program debut. Photo by UF/IFAS.
If you live in or around Tallahassee, the Leon County Seed Library Program can help jump-start your fall garden. Starting August 13, you can go to any of the seven Leon County libraries to check-out three sample vegetable seed packets per month per library card! The Leon County Master Gardener Volunteers are currently busy labeling and packing each of the seed varieties that will be distributed to the seven libraries.
There will be 10 vegetables varieties this season, including a few varieties that have never been featured in the program. If you like to save seeds from your garden, know that all varieties in the Seed Library Program are open-pollinated (by insects, birds, wind), which means if they are not crossed with another variety, the seeds they produce will grow true to form.
The Fall 2022 selection includes:
- Common Arugula: Deep green with a spicy, peppery, mustard-like flavor
- Cylindra Beets: Heirloom with long cylindrical roots, good for slicing
- De Cicco Broccoli: Central light green head and side shoots to extend season
- Scarlet Nantes Carrots: Sweet, crisp, bright red-orange, seven-inch roots
- Vates Collards: Slow bolting, large blue-green leaves
- Lacinato (Dinosaur) Kale: Cold tolerant, sweet dark green narrow leaves
- New Red Fire Lettuce: Crisp and flavorful, green base with red ruffled leaf edges, bolt resistant
- Peione Parsley: Large flat leaves with sweet flavor
- French Breakfast Radishes: Mild, spicy flavor with a red top and white bottom
- Bright Lights Swiss Chard: Rainbow stems, burgundy and green leaves, very mild
The vegetable varieties available starting August 13 for the Fall 2022 season of the Leon County Seed Library Program. Image by Molly Jameson.
See you at the Leon County Main Library on August 13!
by Molly Jameson | May 23, 2022
Use traps crops, such as sunflowers and sorghum, to lure pests away from your crop. Photo by Molly Jameson.
To be a successful gardener, it is important to have an integrated approach to handling obstacles in the garden.
Aphids were lured into this sorghum seed head, which then attracted mealybug destroyer larvae, which are excellent garden predators. Photo by Les Harrison.
These considerations include techniques such as planting disease resistant crop varieties, maintaining proper plant spacing, planting at the appropriate time, monitoring the garden and properly identifying insects and diseases, watering uniformly, and many more cultural and preventative measures that will aid in a garden’s success.
As we transition from the relatively mild and dryer days of late spring into the hot and humid punishing days of summer, we often encounter more and more problems in our gardens.
Insects are commonly one of the main challenges we face, as warm temperatures and high humidity promote the growth and expansion of insect populations. To keep pests in check, it is important to consider all our options. If we turn too quickly to chemical controls, we will often encounter insecticidal resistance over time and our beneficial insect populations will be negatively affected.
One alternative to chemical controls to help combat destruction of our crops is by planting trap crops. Trap crops are plants you grow that the insect pest prefers for food and egg laying over the crops you grow that you plan to harvest. These trap crops attract harmful insects, luring them away from your garden veggies.
Sunflowers can attract leaf-footed bugs away from tomatoes. Hand pick and squish any that you see for better control. Photo by Molly Jameson.
One effective trap crop example, which has proven effective in research studies, is using the combination of sorghum and sunflowers to lure leaf-footed bugs away from your tomatoes. If left unchecked, large clusters of leaf-footed bugs will feed and mate on developing tomato fruit, leaving your tomatoes discolored and distasteful. For tomato growers, it is worth the effort to plant both sorghum and sunflowers about two weeks ahead of your tomato crop. The blooming heads of the sunflowers will lure the leaf-footed bugs in. Hand pick and squish both adults and nymphs off of the sunflowers to help cut back on their populations. As the sunflowers die back, sorghum heads start to emerge, giving you enough time to harvest your tomatoes while the leaf-footed bugs feed on the sorghum panicles.
Another effective trap crop example is to grow blue Hubbard squash at least two weeks ahead of cucurbit crops, such as zucchini, summer squash, or cucumbers. The blue Hubbard squash acts as the trap crop, luring cucumber beetles, squash bugs, and squash vine borers away from the crop.
Buckwheat flowers attract pollinators and predatory insects into the garden. Photo by Janis Piotrowski.
Trap crops are also a great tool for drawing in pollinators and natural predators of insect pests into your garden. For example, sweet alyssum and buckwheat flowers attract wasps and hoverflies. The wasps will lay their eggs on caterpillar pests, and when the eggs hatch, the wasp larvae eat the caterpillars as they mature. Hoverflies will lay their eggs on the leaves of the trap crops, which will hatch and feed on mealy bugs and aphids. Additionally, bees will be attracted to the trap crop flowers, introducing more and more pollinators into your garden.
When it comes to being a successful gardener, it is important to have an integrated approach. When cultural and preventative gardening techniques are combined with biological control techniques, such as trap cropping, your garden will be more resilient to pests and diseases, and you will be less reliant on chemical control methods, which should be seen as a last resort.
by Molly Jameson | Apr 28, 2022
While we think of most flies as pests, garden flies, such as Allograpta obliqua species found in Florida, are excellent pollinators and predators of insects. Photo by Jessica Louque, Smithers Viscient, Bugwood.org.
While our sentiments toward flies usually involve fly swatters, believe it or not, not all flies are nuisance pests! Some types of flies can actually be quite helpful in the garden.
These garden flies are nothing like your typical pesky house fly. While house flies and garden flies are both insects in the order Diptera, they are not in the same insect family, which is the next classification down in Linnaean taxonomy.
The nectar-loving garden flies that specifically visit flowers are in the family Syrphidae and are known as Syrphid flies, hoverflies, or flower flies. Although not as well-known in the pollinating world, there are almost 900 species of flower flies in North America, and they can be very colorful and eye-catching in the garden.
Allograpta obliqua flower fly adults are small and have bright yellow and black crossbands on their abdomens. Photo by Susan Ellis, Bugwood.org.
One of the most common flower flies in Florida is the species Allograpta obliqua. Members of this species, also called hoverflies, are often mistaken as fruit flies, and can therefore be perceived as harmful. But to the contrary, adults cross pollinate many flowers, and hoverfly larvae feed on predators, such as aphids that attack vegetables, fruit trees, cotton, ornamentals, and many wild plants. In fact, when there are numerous hoverfly larvae present, they can reduce aphid infestations by 70 to 100 percent!
Allograpta obliqua adults can be hard to spot, as they are a mere six-to-seven millimeters in length. Although small, they have distinct bright-yellow and black crossbands on their abdomen and become particularly abundant in the spring and summer here in the Florida Panhandle.
So, before you go swatting at any ole fly you see, remember that flower flies are our allies in the garden. Adults will aid in the pollination of our crops and landscape plants, and larvae will help defend our spring and summer veggies from the devastation of harmful insect attacks.
Learn more about Allograpta obliqua hoverfly species at the UF/IFAS Featured Creatures website (https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/beneficial/hover_fly.htm).
by Molly Jameson | Mar 18, 2022
Variegated shell ginger is a good choice for adding color to shaded areas of the landscape. Photo by David W. Marshall.
What to Do in the Garden in March and April
Written by David W. Marshall, UF/IFAS Leon County Extension Agent Emeritus
Except for a couple of freezes, it has been a relatively mild winter. But those freezes were cold enough and long enough to kill many tropical plants almost to the ground. Will we have more freezes? It’s possible, though after we reach mid-March, the probability drops significantly.
Some plants, such as this firebush, had stems killed back to the ground by the cold and will re-sprout from the root system. Photo by David W. Marshall.
So, when can you start cleaning up all the cold damaged plants? You probably have the urge to do it as soon as possible, as the brown foliage and stems are a little depressing. Many of us have lots of cold-damaged plants and we want to get the cleanup finished. First, though, examine the plants to determine the extent of the cold damage. Scrape the bark with your fingernail or use a pocketknife to see if the tissue beneath is still green or if it has turned brown due to cold damage. In many cases, you will find that the stems have been killed back to within a foot of the ground. On other plants, you may find that some of the stems still appear green higher up and you may not have to cut them back quite as far. If that’s the case, you may wish to wait until mid-March to cut these plants back. In case we have another hard freeze, the damaged growth may offer a little insulation to the undamaged parts of the plant. With most plants there’s no real need to cut them back until the new growth starts popping out, probably in late March.
The stems of butterfly gingers can be completely removed now. Many of these will just pop off when pulled lightly. Others may have to be cut, but it won’t hurt them. Variegated shell gingers, in many cases, will still have some undamaged growth mixed in below the brown leaves. You won’t kill a well-established shell ginger by cutting it back now, but because of the insulating effect of the brown leaves, it’s probably best to wait until mid-March to cut them back.
Azaleas and camellias, typical of a North Florida spring, were blooming by late February this year. If you don’t have some of these in your yard, now is a good time to plant. Photo by David W. Marshall.
You may have other shrubs that you wish to prune now also. Wait to prune spring bloomers like loropetalum and azalea until after they finish flowering. Some overgrown shrubs may need to be cut back hard to rejuvenate them, and if you do it now, they will have longer to recover. Before crepe myrtles start putting out new leaves, work on the shape of the tree. Remove poorly placed rubbing and crossover branches by cutting all the way back to the trunk or branch from where they grow. Don’t, however, top the tree unless you are purposely trying to pollard the tree and completely understand how to do it correctly. Otherwise, you will likely end up with a mess.
In mid-March, be prepared to plant warm-season vegetables such as tomatoes, snap beans, pole beans, lima beans, sweet corn, southern peas, squash, and watermelons. So, make sure you have the garden tilled before then. If you wait until April or May to plant, your harvest will be later and the insect and diseases will get much of the crop. Warm-season herbs can be added after mid-March.
Don’t be overly anxious to fertilize your lawn, especially if you have centipede grass. Wait until at least mid-March. Make sure the lawn has been fully green for three weeks before fertilizing. If this pushes you into April, fine. It’s better to fertilize too late than too early. Centipede lawns that are fertilized too early often have spring yellowing problems. St. Augustine grass is more forgiving, but don’t fertilize it either until at least mid-March. Use 6.7 pounds of 15-0-15 fertilizer per 1,000 square feet of lawn area. If the fertilizer doesn’t contain at least a third of its nitrogen in a slow-release form, though, cut the application rate in half.
Most of the weeds in the lawn now are winter annuals that will die out as the weather gets hotter. Just keep your lawn mowed regularly until they do. If you usually still have problems with weeds in the summer, though, you could use a pre-emergent herbicide to reduce the emergence of the summer weeds.
To keep fire ants out of your yard, broadcast a bait formulated product over the entire yard, according to the label directions. Plan to treat again in fall. You can quickly apply the bait using a small hand spreader available from your garden center.
Now, before it gets hotter, add some colorful camellias to your landscape. Photo by David W. Marshall.
Now, before it gets hotter, add some colorful azaleas, camellias, roses, and loropetalum shrubs to your landscape. Also consider fragrant plants such as tea olives, banana shrubs, and sweet viburnum. The sooner you plant these in the spring, the quicker they will get established and grow.
Lavender trumpet vine (Clytostoma callistegioides), crossvine (Bignonia capreolata), coral honeysuckle, and Confederate jasmine are vines that flower during this period of the year. Now is a good time to plant them also.
Don’t forget groundcovers such as liriope, Lomandra, Mondo grass, Dianella (New Zealand flax), African iris, or any of a variety of ferns. Groundcovers planted now will have a full growing season to get established. Groundcovers are often a good choice for plantings in front of the house where you don’t want tall shrubs.
Add some long-blooming seasonal color to your yard this spring. Once we reach mid-March the nurseries will be loaded with many possibilities. Petunias will give you a lot of color in sunny areas for about three months. After the summer rains start in June they normally decline. Pentas will hold up on through the summer and into fall. They prefer full sun but will take a little filtered sunlight too. Sunpatiens® will work in sun or shade and should hold up through the summer. Melampodium will give continuous yellow blooms in sunny areas through summer and into fall. Torenias, especially the trailing or vining types, are excellent for providing low-growing color in areas that receive morning sun but not so much harsh afternoon sun. But there are many other options, too, so visit a full-service nursery with knowledgeable employees that can guide you.
Pentas can be planted in mid to late March and will give color until late fall. Plant in full sun to light shade. Photo by David W. Marshall.
Also, later in the month, start planting perennials such as firebush, angel’s trumpet, cigar flower, and Turk’s cap so you will have color later in the season that will last into fall. These perennials will return each year, even if the tops get frozen back.
There’s no need to fertilize mature trees and shrubs that are growing well. But young plants which you’re trying to encourage to grow will benefit from an application of fertilizer now. The same 15-0-15 that you used for the lawn can be used on trees and shrubs, provided it’s not a weed-and-feed product with an herbicide. The exception would be with palms, especially if you’ve noticed that your palms haven’t been looking that healthy. Use an 8-2-12 or similar palm fertilizer that has four percent magnesium and micronutrients also. If you have a lot of palms in the lawn, just use this palm fertilizer on your whole lawn.
If you didn’t get around to fertilizing fruit plants in February, do it now. After mid-March is also a good time to plant new citrus trees such as satsuma, orange, or grapefruit. You have a full growing season ahead!
Anything that you plant now will need regular watering. That’s what they were receiving in the nursery. Remember that for several months, at least, all the roots will still be in the root ball that was in the pot, even after you put the plant in the ground. So, soak this root ball at least every other day. Don’t rely on a sprinkler system that only comes on once or twice a week. That’s not enough water for the limited root systems of new plants.
Written by David W. Marshall, an Extension Agent Emeritus with UF/IFAS Extension Leon County.
