by Molly Jameson | Apr 15, 2020
During the COVID-19 crisis, many of us have found that we have more time for activities at home. One activity that can be beneficial to your mental and physical health is gardening. Not only will gardening get you moving physically, but simply being outdoors can help you feel more relaxed during these stressful times. By vegetable gardening, you get the added bonus of becoming more self-sufficient by growing your own healthy food.
You can still gather your gardening supplies at local garden centers during COVID-19. Photo by Brenda Buchan.
To grow vegetables successfully, you will need some basic gardening supplies. This includes seeds or seedlings, fertile soil, gardening tools, and irrigation materials. If you are an avid gardener, you may already have these items at your house. But if you are new to gardening – or if you are simply missing an essential item in your everyday gardening arsenal – where do you go?
Thankfully in Florida, industries regarded as essential during these tough times include food, agriculture, and infrastructure support services. This means farmers, farm workers, farmers’ markets, produce stands, food banks, agribusiness support services, and landscaping services can continue to operate.
But for these essential services to operate safely, they still need to follow social distancing principles to protect the health of both their customers and workers. Therefore, many of our agriculture and horticulture industry personnel are finding ways to adapt. Although this involves making many adjustments, operations such as garden centers and plant nurseries are changing how they function to meet the demand of their customers while remaining safe.
Become more self-sufficient by growing your own healthy food in your backyard. Photo by Molly Jameson.
For example, Native Nurseries in Tallahassee has temporarily closed its doors to the public, but they offer pickup and delivery options that are consistent with social distancing guidelines. Customers can either email or call the nursery and provide their contact and billing information, their purchase requests, and specify either pickup or delivery. Pickup orders are placed in a labeled designated parking space for the customer. For a fee, Native Nurseries also offers delivery of purchased items.
If you plan to make a trip to a garden center or plant nursery, call ahead or check the company’s website to learn about its social distancing policies, pickup and delivery options, and any potentially reduced hours of operation.
By continuing to support our local agriculture and horticulture businesses, we can ensure that they can weather this storm and continue to provide us with their essential services long into the future.
So, gather your supplies, stay home, and get your spring and summer vegetable garden growing!
For more information about essential services in Florida, visit: https://www.floridadisaster.org/.
by Beth Bolles | Apr 8, 2020
Success in the garden can occur with proper watering. Learn several ways to water to your vegetables In the Home Garden with UF IFAS Extension Escambia County.
by Beth Bolles | Apr 1, 2020
Bush beans are an easy and enjoyable plant to grow in the home garden. These particular beans do not require a trellis and will be ready to start harvesting in about 50 days. Learn more about growing your own bush beans with UF IFAS Escambia County Extension In the Home Garden.
by Mary Salinas | Feb 18, 2020
Florida is home to some amazing and gorgeous plants that are underused and underappreciated in the home landscape. One such plant is an evergreen and easy-care large shrub or small tree known as black titi or buckwheat tree, botanically known as Cliftonia monophylla.
Pink-flowered variety of black titi, Cliftonia monophylla. Photo credit: Mary Salinas, UF/IFAS Extension.
Black titi or buckwheat tree. Photo credit: Chris Evans, University of Illinois, bugwood.com
Black titi is commonly found in wet areas and at the edges of swamps in USDA hardiness zones 7B through 9A from Louisiana through the Florida panhandle and into South Carolina. This is a perfect plant for those areas of your landscape that are low and consistently moist.
Early spring brings clusters of small white flowers at the tips of the branches. Occasionally one can find the pink-flowered variety of black titi in the native nursery trade. These fragrant flowers provide an early season nectar source for bees in February and March. The flowers give way to golden-amber seed pods that resemble buckwheat. The seed pods turn a pleasing orange-brown and persist on the plant through winter. The shiny dark green evergreen leaves along with the seed pods provide an additional ornamental quality to the tree in fall and early winter.
Black Titi golden-amber fruit. John Ruter, University of Georgia, bugwood.org
For more information:
Florida Honey Bee Plants
USDA Plant Database
Florida Native Plant Society
by Molly Jameson | Jan 27, 2020
A raised bed container garden , about 8 inches deep. Image Credit Matthew Orwat
Interested in growing vegetable crops but have limited space for a garden bed? Maybe you live in an apartment, have poor soil, or you can’t find a sunny enough location to start an in-ground garden.
The good news is you can grow nearly any crop in a container! Even crops such as beans, squash, watermelon, and sweet potatoes can be grown to maturity and produce high yields if they are grown in properly sized containers with nutritious potting soil.
The Container Gardening: Recommended Varieties and Spacing chart covers the recommended minimum container volume, container depth, plant spacing, and varieties that do well in containers for each crop:
by Daniel J. Leonard | Jan 23, 2020
Cruciferous vegetables, mostly cool-season annuals in the Brassicaceae (formerly Cruciferae) family, are part of a healthy diet, prized for their high fiber content and unique sulfur-containing compounds known as glucosinolates. This vegetable family includes things many of us love (or love to hate) like Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, kale, mustard, turnips, bok choy, and Chinese cabbage. They’re also commonly grown in Panhandle gardens. However, as anyone who has grown these species knows, some are easier than others. For example, kale and radish are among the easiest of all plants to grow. But get beyond the basics and folks often run into difficulty with species like broccoli and cabbage. The high rainfall/humidity and frequent warm spells experienced here during the growing season often lead to serious pathogen problems, dooming my garden in years past. However, this winter, thanks to a couple of new cultivars, ‘Capture’ Cabbage and ‘Burgundy’ Sprouting Broccoli, I’ve enjoyed a plentiful supply of tasty crucifers!
4’x 8′ raised bed planted with ‘Capture’ on 24″ centers.
‘Capture’ Cabbage, developed by Bejo Seeds of California as a mid-season “white” fresh market cabbage for the South, has been an outstanding performer in my garden this year. Touted as highly resistant to Black Rot and Fusarium Yellows (by far the two most devastating pathogens of Cabbage), I had to try it for myself. I planted seeds 24” apart in my standard 4’ wide x 8’ long x 12” deep raised beds filled with mushroom compost and aged pine bark. Seedlings were fertilized once about three weeks after germination with a general purpose 10-10-10 fertilizer. The plants that developed have been extremely vigorous (I’m glad I paid attention to plant spacing guidelines on the seed packet!) and have not shown ANY evidence of disease, even through an unusually warm and wet winter that would have hammered older susceptible varieties. My plants have begun to develop heads and should be ready for harvest and the kitchen in just a couple more weeks! If you’ve had problems getting a cabbage from germination to head formation and harvest without serious disease pressure, give ‘Capture’ a try next fall!
‘Burgundy’ Broccoli in the author’s raised bed garden.
‘Burgundy’ Broccoli, developed by Elsom Seeds in the United Kingdom, is a unique variety sure to turn heads in your garden. True to its name, the prolific florets are a deep, purple color. Though the central “head” on ‘Burgundy’ is quite small, that’s not the primary feature anyway. Considered a “sprouting” broccoli, this cultivar puts out an abundance of side shoots that make ‘Burgundy’ sort of a cut-and-come-again broccoli, allowing for a long harvest window. Another advantage from a disease avoidance perspective is the short maturity time (the time from planting seeds to having harvestable shoots) of around 40 days! For perspective, a “regular” heading broccoli has a maturity of around 60 day, lots more time for problems to happen. In the same growing conditions described above for cabbage, ‘Burgundy’ performed amazingly well for me, growing strong, healthy stalks, large, unblemished leaves and an abundance of purple shoots with a nice flavor profile!
If you want to enjoy homegrown broccoli and cabbage but disease pressures have made your previous efforts unproductive, give ‘Capture’ Cabbage and ‘Burgundy’ Broccoli a try! These two selections have made it easier than ever to enjoy unique, homegrown, healthy cruciferous veggies. Keep these and other quality, disease-resistant cultivars in mind when planning your winter garden in 2020!
