The only thing we at Little River Cooperative love more than growing vegetables is growing flowers! We've always incorporated flowers into our gardens and as most of you probably know our nursery stocks a healthy selection of edible and cut flower starter plants. Over the years we've also had the opportunity to plant purely flower gardens! For example these raised beds we installed and planted with cottage style cut flowers. 

Flowers add so much value to any type of garden. They attract pollinators and wild life like bees, butterflies and birds. Native flowers have the added benefit of providing food and habitat for native species which is always a good thing for the environment. In the cut flower garden pictured above we incorporated our state wildflower Coreopsis as well as one of our native salvia varieties, Scarlet salvia. In the small raised bed pictured below you can see a sample of flowers selected for attracting pollinators. They include a mix of native and non-native plants, annuals and perennials. A flower garden like this will go through many phases of blooming, attracting different pollinators at various stages. The perennial plants will most likely be part of the garden for a few years, needing to be pruned here and there. The annual flowers like zinnias and sunflowers will last for one season and then their spot can be replanted with something different. The beauty of growing flowers is seeing all of the changes and evolutions of their arrangement. 

Some of the beauty in growing flowers also lies in their fast changing life cycles. Most annual flowers produce seed pods pretty quickly and then reseed quickly too! Their blooms are incredibly beautiful for a fleeting moment, then transforming into something else. Seed pods are often fascinating in their geometry and engineering. Sometimes their sheer numbers are what impress us the most! As gardeners we are amazed by every step of the plants life cycle, from seed germination to blooming and back to the seed itself. Wild cosmos, pictured below, is one of our favorite wild flowers. They are prolific in many ways; one single plant can get as tall as 4 or 5 feet, blooming profusely for a short period of about a month and making enough seeds for the whole neighborhood! When they are planted very close together (which is what happens naturally when the plant is allowed to drop seeds into the garden) they remain a bit shorter and more compact, which is kind of nice too. Just a few weeks later and the volunteer plants are blooming again for an almost continuous year round flower display. 

Flowers add bursts of color and beauty to all types of gardens, wether they are dedicated to native plants or vegetables. Mixed into veggie and herb gardens they break up the sea of green created by things like tomatoes, kale and arugula. They not only break things up for our eyes, but also for insects. It is common practice to use certain flowers to disturb the spread of pest issues. For example, marigolds, nasturtiums and calendula have a strong smell and can be used to "confuse" or "distract" insects that are targeting the leafy greens in your garden. Many flowers are not only beautiful and beneficial for insects, but also useful in our kitchens and medicine cabinets. 

Many of the medicinal plants commonly grown in a home garden are annual flowers and can easily be incorporated into an herb or vegetable garden. Tulsi, lemon balm, anise hyssop and chamomile to name a few, are all easy to grow annual plants that compliment veggie gardening. One of our personal favorites is calendula. Calendula is pretty compact plant in the daisy family, easy to grow from seed (p.s. they have the coolest looking seeds ever). They are fast growing and when the flowers are harvested regularly can be extremely productive. One plant alone can provide a handful of blooms every day for a period of 2-3 weeks, if not more! PRO-TIP: to keep any flowering plant in bloom longer you should prune spent flowers on a regular basis. Pruning flowers encourages the plant to continue producing more fresh blooms. We've been growing calendula and drying flowers for many years. The flowers contain a healing oil with many medicinal uses related to the skin. Muriel first started making a coconut oil based salve to use on her baby's booty for diaper rashes. It is great for sunburns, tattoos, dry lips and many other common skin discomforts. Her salve recipe is simple to make at home. Flowers should be harvested daily and set out to dry. You can lay them out to air dry in a single layer as you collect them; when you have enough to make a batch of oil put them in the oven for 15 minutes at the lowest setting (or even just a warm oven after turning it off) to finish drying them completely. A batch of oil can be any size. Choose a jar to use and fill it with dry flowers, then pour coconut oil to the top to cover the flowers. You'll let it sit in a warm place like a window sill anywhere from 2-6 weeks before straining the oil. Giving a jar a gentle shake (flip the jar unside down a few times gently) every once in a while will help to coax the natural oils in the calendula flowers into the coconut oil. Over time the clear coconut oil will turn yellow or orange. Strain the oil using a tea strainer or a piece of muslin or cheese cloth. The strained oil can actually be used as is, but in order to make it easier to apply, store and carry around it is mixed with a bit of beeswax to get a salve consistency. It's always best to use local organic beeswax which you can find a local farmers market. Put your oil in a small sauce pan on very low heat and add chunks of beeswax, stirring and allowing them to melt, lift your spoon from the oil periodically and allow it to cool so that you can test the consistency of your mixture. When you get a consistency you like stop adding beeswax and pour into a jar or small tins. Your salve will keep for months and makes sweet little gifts for loved ones. 

Flowers in the garden provide endless possibilities for crafting! Flowers that dry well such as Celosia, Strawflower and Gomphrena are great for making flower crowns. Flower crowns are probably the simples craft project ever and can be done with literally zero materials. Flower stems can be loosely braided or woven together for an impromptu flower crown moment right in the garden! Of course you can always get more involved in making them a bit more "professional" by using floral wire, tape and ribbons, but there's something very satisfying about the ephemeral nature of a 100% garden flower crown. You can add it straight to the compost after wearing for a little while. Doing these types of activities is amazing with kids because they can see the awesome potential of making something out of "nothing". Showing them the cycle of harvesting and composting in one activity is also pretty cool :) 

Last but not least is the vast world of edible flowers, probably the category we have explored the most in our nursery and farm. We eat flowers because they are cute and sometimes add a bit of flavor, but lets face it, flowers have very little nutritional value. Don't underestimate the value of cuteness though! Most of us eat with our eyes anyway. Edible flowers will brighten up a dish and turn it into something special. For example, take a salad which has a hard time competing at a holiday table; sprinkle brightly colored petals on it and peopel will be taking pictures of the salad instead of the turkey. Flowers are an inspiration for decorating cakes and cookies, they can really dress up a charcuterie board and pizzas! Some of our favorite varieties for decorating food include violas, borage, dianthus and citrus gem marigolds. 

Hellooooooooo December! How we gardeners (who work outside year round) missed your short cool sparkling days and slightly cooler breezes. This time of year most of our big garden projects have been planted with fall crops and the heavy work has been accomplished. If you planted some quick growing crops in October then they are likely ready to harvest, and we know that harvesting is a big sticky spot for beginners. We wish there was an easy answer to “how do I harvest things” but every single plant requires a slightly different harvesting technique. While we cant show you how to harvest every single crop you might have planted we do have a few general tips to help you get comfortable approaching your new garden with a pair of snippers.


All of the veggies in this bountiful photo were harvested using different techniques, from pulling or cutting the whole plant to picking ripe fruit & using cut-and-come-again for flowers & leaves. 

This is a harvest from a maintenance visit of a large garden in fall. We removed the sweet potatoes & turmeric that were growing all summer and gave their first round of greens & herbs a big haircut. 

Our first tip for learning how to harvest is “google it”. Now, we know that doesn’t sound as helpful as we mean it to be, because like, you know you can google it. But seriously... use the internet wisely and look for easy to understand resources including the websites of seed companies that have things like maturity date for all of their varieties and videos of people doing exactly what you want to do. Let’s use French Breakfast radishes as an example. According to Johnnys Select Seed, these radishes are ready to harvest at 21 days old. Make sure you also notice the photos of the variety and any other listed info, like maybe how big they are supposed to be at maturity (for this radish it says 2” long and finger thickness) because you can also just use your eyes many times to compare what you have in your garden to what you’re used to seeing at the store, on your plate or online and using that as a cue that your crop is ready. After reading about the variety on the Johnnys website we googled “how to harvest radishes” and found this cute video of a home gardener harvesting his radishes. Now, after watching this you might be thinking like, it wasn’t very technical and he didn’t do much more than pull it out. But guess what?! That’s how easy It is to harvest a radish… you just determine wether or not you think its ready, and then pull it out! Also, for many crops there isn’t a moment that the plant becomes “edible”… Its always edible, so really you can harvest it anytime. Radishes are a perfect example of that, because people eat radishes as micro greens at 7 days old and they eat them fully grown at 21 and every day in between.



At the farm we love growing french breakfast radishes. This is what they should look like if they were appropriately thinned and harvested at the right age. 

Now... this is what "french breakfast" radishes look like after 21 days of growth in full sunlight with proper spacing. But that doesn't mean all radishes look the same or grow as fast. Daikon radishes are much larger, need more space per plant (thin to 4-6 inches) and about 50 days to reach maturity. When they are fully grown they are about 8-12 inches long! Every variety is going to have different coloration, dates to maturity, and growth pattern depending on their size and other genetic traits, so make sure you make note of what varieties you are planting, either on tags in the garden or in a notebook. 

Mature Daikons after 50 days of growth, harvested and washed. 

These are all different radish varieties! Cherry belle in the top left, french breakfast on the right. The lavender ones are purple daikon, and the electric pink in the lower left are shunkyo. 

Our second tip for figuring out harvesting is if you want to eat it, just do it! Like we just said, many plants are edible at every stage of their growth, so if you use proper harvesting techniques you can really eat things anytime. Kale is a good example to use here, because you can eat kale at any point from micro greens to baby leaf to mature, but if you snip the whole growing tip off of your plant when harvesting it then its done, no more kale no matter how old the plant is. Heres a detailed and clear video of a gardener harvesting his kale properly that we found by googling “how to harvest kale”.



In this photo the yellow arrow is pointing to the growing tip of a young kale plant. If you think of the growth pattern of the kale as like an ornamental fountain shooting into the air, the growing tip is the center of the it where the water is shooting up in a concentrated stream. All of the new leaves start as tiny leaves in the center and get larger as they mature and become the outer leaves. 



In this copy of the same photo the yellow arrows are pointing to the most mature leaves. note how they are on the most exterior part of the plant and their stems attach lowest down to the main stalk. to properly harvest this kale you would simply remove the outer leaves by cutting them off at the base. 

This technique, of strategically removing the oldest leaves from the bottom of the plant, is referred to as “cut and come again” and we do it for most greens including baby ones like mustards, arugula & lettuce. Tiffany was just lamenting not having made a video of us using this method to harvest but rejoice! Lots of other gardeners have done that before us, so here’s a great clear video of a home gardener using this method to harvest his lettuce. In this video he shows two techniques, one where you tediously harvest leaf by leaf, and one where you cut the whole head with a knife just above the crown (so as to not damage it) which is how we tend to harvest denser plantings like arugula without having to go leaf by leaf.

 

Mustards and arugula are harvested at about a fingers length for baby salad leaf use. We like to use the messier cut and come again method for them which is basically like giving them a short hair cut to take all mature leaves while leaving the growing tip intact. If you buy arugula and mustard 6 packs from us those plants are 21 days old. Two weeks after transplanting them into your garden they should be ready for their first "haircut". After that you can wait for them to grow back, and 2 weeks later harvest again! So long as the plants remain healthy and pest free you can harvest like this multiple times per season before replanting. 

These yardlong beans are ready at about 1 foot long and need to be harvested every day if you want them all to be tender and crispy. After a few weeks the plants will slow down, make less fruit and we will remove them. 

Fruiting plants, including long term crops like tomatoes and quick crops like cucumbers, zucchini and bush beans needs to be harvested on a regular basis for a good yield. When I say regularly I mean every two to three days! All annuals are biologically designed to make seeds within a short period of time and then die after dropping their seeds for the next generation. Fruits are vessels for seeds so crops like cucumbers, zucchini and beans are basically seed pods that we eat! Once a plant puts on fruit it is triggered to stop making new flowers and new fruit. In order to get a bigger and longer lasting yield we harvest their fruit regularly to encourage new blooms and new fruit. Keep in mind that we eat the majority of these fruits when they are very young because that is when they are edible. A cucumber or bean that has been sitting on the plant for even a few days too many becomes so tough and fibrous that it is no longer edible and the seeds start to mature and become hard. Also keep in mind that quick fruiting plants like cucumbers, zucchini and bush beans not only mature quickly and produce their harvest quickly, they also die early! It's normal for these plants to produce fruit for about 2 weeks and then sort of crap out. In order to make the most use of your garden it is up to you to remove these "spent" plants and add them to the compost. Doing that promptly makes room for a new batch of crops and also helps to prevent disease from spreading which often builds up on older plants. 



This Gretel white eggplant is a great example of how important it is to know what variety you're growing. If as a newbie gardener you were waiting for this thing to turn purple before harvesting you'd certainly miss out on it while its young enough to eat, because its never going to turn purple! This variety is a small white variety that is mature at a hands length.

In this photo there are some perfectly mature white and purple eggplants, and some that were left on too long and now are too mature. All Eggplants go a bit yellow when overripe. The white varieties look practically photoshopped! While the purple ones go a bit warm toned and brown when overripe. 



In this photo there are both mature and immature sugar rush peach peppers. All pepper varieties can be eaten green/ unripe or ripe (red or orange depending on the variety), however the flavor of the pepper really comes in when its allowed to color. Even green peppers like shishitos and cubanelles will color if left on the plant long enough. 

At farms lots of effort is put into “post harvest storage and handling” to keep the harvest fresh for as long as possible, and while that isn’t as important in your home garden because you aren’t distributing a product its still good to know the basics so that your harvest stays crisp in the fridge. First, make sure to harvest either in the morning or the evening instead of during the heat of the day. Plants sweat via their leaves and they are the most dehydrated when its the hottest and sunniest, so harvesting your leaves in the morning when the plant already has lots of moisture within its cells is pretty much the number one key to long term storage success. The second technique for crisp hydrated greens is “hydro cooling” them which is just a fancy way to say “dip them in cool water”. To do this fill a bowl bucket or the sink with cool water and throw the greens in. You can agitate them a bit if they’re dirty but you can also just let them float around for 10 - 15 minutes to cool down and soak up some extra moisture. Once they’re done with bath time they need to be dried or they wont store well. Drying can happen passively (lay out a clean kitchen towel, spread the greens out, let them slowly dry) or actively (with a salad spinner) and once the bounty is ready to go in the fridge it needs to be kept in something that will hold humidity, like a used plastic bag. While we don’t like adding more plastic to the world plastic is the best material for storing green leaves since they will dehydrate if kept bare (even in the crisper drawer) or in something porous like brown paper bags. If you shop at French Farms and buy his infamous salad mixes keep the reusable ziplocks that he sells his product in and use them at home for your veggie storage, they are sturdy enough to be used over and over again and are designed for long term high quality salad storage.

Our pal Chris over at French Farms spent years researching the best bags to sell his salad mixes in and he loves these because they have a little bit of perforation for breathing, are thick enough to reuse and have a ziploc top. If you buy his salad wash out and save your bags for reuse!



Some freshly harvested baby bok choi enjoying a float in a cool water bath. harvested greens and herbs are similar in biology to cut flower stems.... Its a piece of a plant that is full of moisture and has been removed from the main plant so it cant get its own anymore, you need to provide it. giving the cut part access to water lets it rehydrate. Its a good idea to keep fresh cut herbs in a jar of water in the fridge so they can keep drinking from it.

If you have some plants left over from summer like sweet potato, roselle or turmeric now is the time to harvest them too, which is great because it means you’ll then have more space for fall plants when they come out. Roselle is harvested by the branch when the calyxs are nice and plump (see pic below for reference). Once the plant has made a bunch of roselle for you its best to remove it because it’s an annual, so it wont just start over again and keep growing to make you more. Also, it flowers based on day length, so once the day starts lengthening again in January it wont receive the natural trigger it needs to produce flowers and calyx for you.



This roselle calyx is perfectly ready for harvest. 

Sweet potato is another summer crop that might be ready to come out around now, depending on when you planted it. Just loosen the soil around the base and dig around for tubers! The leaves and vines can go into the compost pile and you can either eat the sweet potatoes right away or brush the soil off (don’t get them wet) and cure them in a dark area of your home to let them sweeten up a bit. And finally, if you planted turmeric in the spring you may want to harvest it now. It can also stay in the ground until you’re ready for it, or you can harvest it just a little bit at a time as needed, but your turmeric plant has likely started to die back and look bad and you may want the space that its taking up for other things.

Good luck getting to know the ins and outs of harvesting in your winter garden. While we know it can be intimidating we encourage you to go for it (and make some mistakes along the way) and start eating from your garden. If you leave mature food in your garden we assure you someone else will come along and make a meal out of it. Now is the time to take advantage of all that your garden has to offer, not just in experiences and beautiful weather but also in arugula leaves and zinnia blooms.

(A freshly planted fall garden featuring tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, greens like kale and chard and a slew of kitchen herbs)

In November we typically start seeing a significant drop between the daily temperature and the overnight temperature. Even a small difference in night time temperature can make a big difference for your garden. The humidity in South Florida is the reason such small fluctuations in temperature from day to night are important. When plants are too hot they switch from growing mode into survival mode, pausing their rate of growth and other vital functions and switching to focus on perspiration for increased cooling. Plants perspire via their leaves which is what produces wilting. Sometimes when its extra hot out you'll notice your plants leaves wilting even when theres plenty of water in the soil, which means that its so hot that your plants are perspiring faster than they can drink more water. At night, plants get a much needed break from this stress and are able to switch back into growth mode, even though there's no sun out for photosynthesis. This day to night temperature change is the key reason why it suddenly becomes much easier to make happy plants and grow food in November and the cooler months that follow. 

If you haven't planted your garden for fall yet make sure to read our October gardening blog post which is all about spacing, succession planting, and how to plan your garden. If you've already planted then lets talk about starting a maintenance routine. First you'll want to make sure the basic needs of your plants are accounted for.  Your garden should get 8 hours or more of direct sunlight which can be tricky in an urban environment because neighboring buildings and landscaping will block hours of sunlight from your garden. As long as you have a minimum of 6 hours you should be able to grow herbs and greens successfully. The other thing to check off is proper soil prep before planting. Many beginners buy soil from us or in bags from big box stores and plant right into it without adding fertilizer. We recommend amending your soil with an organic fertilizer like Sustane 464 and compost. Ideally you're making your own, but if not, we sell two awesome locally made compost products. The Worm Whisperer compost and A Zero Waste Culture compost. Lots of gardeners think that once they planted their garden the bulk of the work is "done", but that's far from the truth. Your work is just beginning! 

(a handful of homemade compost, what we lovingly refer to as "black gold")

While its crucial to add organic fertilizer at the planting stage, plant food is water soluble and its also food... the plants will consume it and run out! So we recommend adding a foliar feeding to your maintenance routine once every 2 weeks. Foliar feeding is extra cool because with this type of fertilizer your plants can use their leaves and branches to absorb the food too (usually that task is done just by the root system). We recommend using Sustane Flourish, or Neptunes Harvest fish emulsion mixed with water. Each product has its own instructions for mixing and use, so check the packaging for more info. Once you mix it with water in a watering can you just give your whole garden a good dousing and let the plants drink it up. 

Pests might also start to show up in your garden despite it being so early in the season. That's because summer is our most pest-laden season, since all the buggies reproduce at higher rates when its extra hot, wet and humid out. So, while your garden might have been empty of plants through the summer your yard and your neighbors yard and the whole city has lots more bugs living in it, just waiting for you to plant your tender new tomatoes & kale plants. The little white moths that flutter out of your grass when you walk around will land on your plants and lay their eggs on their leaves, and the whitefly living on your neighbors ficus hedge will drift over on the wind and take up residence on your pepper plant. Don't be tricked into thinking that just because your plants are "new" that your garden is pure of bug! 

(spraying organic pesticides is just one piece of the puzzle, but the most comprehensive way to manage pests is to consider all of the factors that make your plants healthy and resilient) 

Below is our run down of the most popular South Florida pests, so that if you are already battling them in your garden you can get a head start on identifying and treating them organically. Treating pests organically is more of a commitment than just blasting them with toxic pesticides, as you can imagine. IPM is a term that means "integrated pest management" and it looks at several factors that are causing a problem and you should be ready to take multiple actions. Sometimes a good way to get more light and air flow in and around your plants is to prune away some foliage. This might kill two birds with one stone. Pruning away infested leaves is actually the first line of defense against most pest issues, especially insect infestations such as aphids, white fly, mealy bugs and spider mites. All of these insects fall under the "piercing and sucking" category and they tend to cling to the leaves of plants, particularly on tender growing tips as well as undersides of largest oldest leaves. Check those areas first and prune away any plant parts that are visibly covered in bugs. By doing this you've already reduced the pest population by a huge percentage. 

(a squash plant with a virus that needs to be removed) 

One of the most important exceptions to this rule is when you have a plant infected with a virus! Viral infections are typically not curable and plants showing signs of a virus should be entirely removed from your garden and thrown away. Clean your hands and tools with a disinfectant soap before working on healthy plants to prevent the spread of the virus. Leaving a virus infected plant in your garden causes other plants to become infected through your touch or by insects that visit an infected plants and then visit a healthy plant. 

Even in IPM there is room for spraying. We spray with organic products when it makes sense to do so. The key is to use these products wisely and in combination with other actions to remediate the problem in a wholistic way. What happens when someone simply sprays for a pest issue is that the pest problem inevitably comes back again and again, if it is ever solved at all. 

Here's our guide to common garden pests and how to treat them. Our biggest piece of advice when it comes to identifying pests is to use detailed language to seek out information online. Pests are a huge gardening issue so there are TONS of resources online, including forums and groups that exist just to help newbies identify and treat them. Before you reach out to us or your best gardening pal considering hitting the google and seeing what you can find for yourself. As you examine your plant take clear well lit photos (not fuzzy, not at night, etc.) and also write down some good descriptors. Try expanding your vocabulary from something like "big black bug in my garden" to "dime sized beetle on my pepper plant". I promise if you google "thumb sized neon green worm with horn on my tomato plant" instead of "giant gross worm on my plant" you will instantly learn that you have your first hornworm of the season, and there will be many other organic gardener giving you tips on how to manage them. 

In the spirit of writing a monthly gardening blog post we usually start a new one by re-reading the previous months post. I recommend you do the same as a reader to get a full picture of what is going on. In September we did a lot of planning and preparing soil beds, we bought seeds and started them. This month is finally time to start planting your garden. September is a pretty rainy and hot month here in South Florida even though the rest of the country is starting to decorate with fall gourds and sip pumpkin spice lattes. October is when the heat finally "breaks" and things start to cool down a bit, especially at night, and the humidity starts to chill out too, making it overall a more hospitable environments for both plants and the people taking care of them. 

I like to reiterate that fact that vegetable gardens are not projects we put together and call done, a garden is never really "done, especially a vegetable garden. They are a pretty huge commitment, almost like a pet. You have to give them food and water regularly, check for health issues and prune routinely and of course enjoy them, spend time with them. Also, even after you fill your garden with fall plants its not "done" because those plants will be harvested and eaten, or removed after producing fruit, and that space will then become available for replanting. 

The constant replanting of a garden is called succession planting. It helps to think about the fact that the far majority of plants we eat today are annuals. Our ancestors who hunted and foraged ate mostly perennials, which are plants that grow year after year, producing edible shoots, tubers or fruits on a continuous cycle. Those types of plants can be revisited for many years and harvested for edible parts. On the other hand annuals are plants that are biologically designed to have a short life span and produce one main harvest. They are also very delicate because well, delicate plants are more tender and taste better, so they need lots of attention and care from their farmers or gardeners. 

 Succession planting and regular harvesting are the keys to success in an annual garden. Many of the crops people enjoy growing at home are relatively short lived and produce food within 30 to 90 days! Think about how fast one month goes by and then think about how often you should be harvesting and replanting your garden. If you are really into maximizing the yield of your garden you can replant each square foot of it 2-3 times per season. Lets say you have one 4x8 foot garden, which is 32 square feet of garden space. If you plant each square foot 3 times per season now you have 96 square feet of garden space to work with!

Some crops you will probably want to start from seed (like beans, quick growing greens, and roots like radishes and carrots), but there is no shame in buying starter plants to keep the rotation in your garden fresh throughout the season. Starting all of your own plants from seed is definitely a "intermediate" gardener ambition, so if you are a beginner consider buying some of your long season plants from a nursery like us for better chances at success. In our opinion, the plants that are smartest to buy from us are the ones that take the longest to grow, or stay in your garden the longest. So crops like hearty herbs (rosemary, oregano, thyme, sage), tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and big brassicas like kale, collard greens and broccoli. If you do want to start all of your own seeds we definitely encourage you to check out our youtube video on the topic, its super helpful!  

Now let's talk about planning all of your plantings and your successions. New gardeners tend to have a really hard time figuring out the proper spacing of the plants in their bed and also where to put them. We like to suggest the "square foot gardening method" for figuring out how many plants you can fit into your garden. The technique is simple and is based on putting a grid over your raised bed (either a physical one made out of string or just a mental one on your planting chart) and then looking at a spacing chart for the crops they want to grow and seeing how many of that crop fit in one square foot. For example the chart below shows that a bell pepper plant needs one whole square foot of garden space and in the same square foot you can fit 16 radishes. On our website we have the square foot spacing of every plant we sell in the items description, which we think is a very good resource to use when planning your garden out. 

 As for where in the garden to place different crops, our general rule is to plant the tallest varieties in the "back" of your garden, which is the north edge, and then work your way south with smaller plants. So, things that need to be trellised like tomatoes and cucumbers, or tall plants like sunflowers or corn should be all the way on the north edge, with medium sized plants like peppers, eggplants, kales and cabbages next. We like to plant the southernmost edge of a garden with small and quick growing plants like cilantro, dill, arugula, lettuce, and french breakfast radishes. It's also best to keep "mounding plants" like thyme, oregano, nasturtiums, mint and squash on the edges or tucked into the corners so they can spill over the edge and take up some extra space outside of the bed. 

One tip we like to recommend for succession planning is to mark the plants in your garden with a variety name and a target harvest date. All annuals veggies have a "date to maturity" which is usually listed on the seed packet and we list dates to maturity for all of the plants we sell on our website! When you plant your seeds or baby starter plants mark the harvest date on a tag right by the plants in your garden. When the day comes you should feel more confident to get in there with a knife and bring your harvest in for lunch. Days to maturity is also helpful for fruiting plants like cucumbers and green beans, because crops like that are bred to make you food and then stop making you food, so once you reach the maturity date, harvest some beans and then they stop you know to pull the plant out and plant something else. The date marking technique also serves to point out when something has gone wrong with the crop. If it isn't even close to ready on the harvest date it's a sign that there is an issue. Waiting longer will not yield you a harvest. Waiting longer will just waste time and space and you can pull those plants out and plant something else in that spot. 

 

Lettuce up front, nasturtiums in the front corner and scallions in the back corner. Next in line are swiss chard and bok choi that are being harvested by the leaf. then marifolds and the largest crops, eggplants all the way in the back. 

We recommend putting perennial hearty herbs like sage, rosemary thyme and oregano on the edges so that if they survive the summer they aren't in the way of cover cropping the whole bed. 

Here is a bed at our old nursery with a square foot grid in place ready to be used for easy planting. 

And heres a garden bed at our new nursery planted with large brassicas, using 1 plant per square foot planting. In this bed: assorted kales, bok choi, collard greens, broccoli, cauliflower, sorrel. 

Crops like roots, beans and quick growing salad greens can be direct seeded right into your bed. we use long handled tools to mark straight rows (you can replicate that by laying a broom down longways and pushing the long handle down to make a long trough) and then we seed into the line. Cover loosely with soil and most importantly: water consistently until the seeds germinate. Many direct seeded crops need to be thinned when they are 2-3 weeks old, so don't forget to set yourself an alarm for that task and google it if you need help. 

these beds were planted with our traditional spacing, low plants like greens, flowers and herbs in the front, then taller plants in the middle with trellised tomatoes in the back. Remember, the "back" of your garden is the north side. This is because the sun is lower in the southern sky during winter, so shadows are on the north side of objects. Planting your large plants on the south edge of your garden would mean they would create shade for the plants north of them, which is bad. 

another very clear example of the trellised tall plants on the north edge of our bed, and other plants in front. Also note the amount of plants in the bed. 1 square foot spacing is the most typical spacing for plants so we typically tell people to expect to plant around 32 plants in a 4x8 foot garden bed. 

Finally, if we have one big tip for new gardeners during fall planting its "don't forget to fertilize!" One of the main mistakes we see new gardeners make with fall planting is they don't realize that the soil they are buying and putting in their garden and the compost they made and are amending their old soil with, is not fertile enough to support annual plant growth. Veggie plants are heavy feeders with smaller root systems, so they aren't as good at foraging as things like landscaping trees. An organic granular fertilizer with a fairly balanced NPK ratio, like this 464 that we sell, or this 463 Dr. Earth option online are great options. 

Don't forget to come to our fall plant sale October 14th - 16th to stock up on fall plants! And if you want to avoid the crowds or aren't ready to plant our nursery will be open every Saturday and Sunday through the end of the year from 10am - 5pm. If you need more info about visiting us heres all the info you need. If fall is feeling overwhelming already because you aren't quite sure what to do when or how to plant, consider taking one of our virtual or in person gardening workshops. 

September is a big month for our team, we do a lot of "behind the scenes" prepping for the upcoming fall planting season. Since we have a nursery one of our biggest tasks in September is making plants in the greenhouse which is covered and protects baby seedlings from the strong rain storms that are common this time of year. From our experience it is still too early to plant crops out in the field or in raised beds because the weather is still too hot and storms are unpredictable. Starting vegetable plants from seed is pretty tricky, but it's totally something every gardener should at least try. Last year we developed a new workshop called The Secrets of Seed Starting and we are teaching it again this year. We have it on our schedule for September 24th and you can sign up using this link. You can also watch our seed starting video on YouTube for free!

When we first started farming back in 2010 we were planting seeds and raising them under carports and on window sills, but we quickly realized that in order to be successful we needed to invest in some infrastructure. The trickiest part of starting seeds is having the resources to create the right environment for their development, like a greenhouse for example! If you don't have the right set up at home to start most of your seeds we encourage you to leave that part to us and focus on the outdoor gardening part for now. September is a great month to prep your garden so that in October you can hit the ground running. 

Prepping your garden: 

Taking time in September to prep your garden for fall will pay off when it's planting time. There are many ways to prep a garden and some of them are related to what you already or didn't do earlier in the summer. Here is a list of key gardening terms relating to summer garden prep and how each of them works this time of year. 

Cover Cropping: If you cover cropped your garden in the spring or anytime during the summer months you'll want to consider chopping down and incorporating those cover crops now so that they have some time to decompose and compost in place before planting. Cover crops protect your soil from erosion, they help to mitigate moisture, they prevent weeds and they can also reduce pest pressure in your garden, but one of the most valuable things they provide is organic matter to build living soil. Cover crops are usually fibrous plants high in nitrogen so when they are cut down and incorporated into the soil they break down and add nutrients to your garden for building organic matter and micro organism diversity. If you succeeded in growing a cover crop this month is the time to cash in on your rewards! The best way to capture the benefits of your lush green cover crops is to cut them down at the base (leave roots in the soil to decompose on their own), lay  them down on the soil surface and cover with a thin layer of soil and a thick layer of straw. In a sense you are composting your cover crops right in place. When planting time rolls around in a few weeks you will be able to push aside the rough materials on the surface and plant right into the soil underneath. The roots that break down in the soil provide aeration and if the cover crop was sun hemp or another legume family plant they will also deposit pure nitrogen into the soil for your plants in the fall. The materials on the surface provide moist control, nutrients and food for mico organism. It's a win win if you can get it just right!

Lasagna Soil Building: If you used this technique earlier in the spring or summer your garden will need very little attention this month, but if you let the garden get weedy and overrun with old crops you might want to consider using the lasagna soil building method to prep your garden. Early September is probably the last chance to do something like this in order to have enough time for everything to break down before you will be planting fall crops. First you'll want to pull out any diseased or infested plants as well as weeds that have seeds or rhizomes and remove them to the trash. Then you'll pull out healthy plants and weeds that aren't invasive (for example purslane and spanish needles) and save them for layering. Before finishing the lasagna layers you may want to consider double digging, so read the following section and then come back to this paragraph :) After double digging you can begin layering materials on the surface of your garden bed. In the spring we like to add a manure and a straw layer onto of the green layer of old plants that you pulled out. Straw goes on the top. In September you probably shouldn't use manure unless you plan to plant your fall crops late in the season. The rule of thumb specifies that manure should have 3 months to break down before planting. If you plan to use the garden in October we recommend adding a layer of soil over the green plant matter and on the very top a thick layer of straw. 

Double Digging: When we prep a garden for planting we perform a technique called "double digging" which is essentially just loosening all of the soil with a shovel. This aerates the soil, reduces the compaction that likely occurred during summer, and also if you do have roots from nearby trees creeping in this process will kill them if done properly. It's hard to explain double digging because its so simple people tend to think they must be misunderstanding... but basically you just put some muscle into using a shovel to dig up every square inch of your garden about 10-12" deep. If you encounter roots from nearby trees or hedges things will get a little bit harder, but it's important to address this issue now because roots from other plants invading your garden soil will outcompete annual plants (this basically means the annual plants you add to the garden won't have access to nutrients and water because the roots from established plants and trees nearby will take it). Use a sharp shovel to cut through roots and use your hands to pull as much of them out of the garden area. The more thorough you are the better for your annual plants in the fall!

Installing a new garden: 

September is a great time to build yourself a new garden or expand your current garden set up! The most basic raised bed should be 4' x 8' bed made out of pressure treated pine from the lumber store. Why those measurements? Because it the most ergonomic size for the average human body. The average arm length can comfortably reach across a 4' length from either side of the bed and 8' is a convenient length for getting around the bed in any direction. If you prefer a longer bed go for it, but if you are using lumber keep in mind lumber dimensions and try to stick with dimensions that make the most efficient use of wood. The most common lumber lengths are 8', 10' and 12'. Why use pressure treated pine, is it safe for organic gardening? Soft wood like pine is the most affordable wood option, but it decomposes very fast in Florida’s tropical climate. Pressure treated wood has a bad rap because it used to be treated with copper arsenate, which is toxic, but as of 2003 it is commercially treated with copper sulfate which is considered to have minimal risk when in contact with garden soil.
(reference, Are Pressure Treated Woods Safe In Garden Beds by Phil Wood for
finegardening.com) We also recommend reenforcing corners with 4 x 4 posts and carriage bolts to secure it all together. Heres a pic for reference:

After placing your raised bed where you want it in the garden you'll want to add a liner like the one we sell, so that neighboring trees and hedges don't send their feeder roots into your fresh new soil (trust us, they will do it, they can literally smell the new rich soil when you lay it down) to steal all of the nutrients and water that you are setting up for your vegetable plants. We recommend that you don't skimp on the liner because it will save you time and hard work the following year when it comes time to prepare your garden all over again. It also guarantees that your plants are more successful because they'll have the nutrient and water that they need. After the liner you are ready to fill the raised bed with soil! The subject of soil is kind of a wormhole because there are so many contradictory opinions about what you need to have in your soil and what you should buy. Don't let picking the right soil get too daunting. All commercially produced soil is basically lifeless and nutrient-less. For example, when you buy the bagged stuff from a big box hardware store, that material is primarily chopped up woody material and peat moss, and its been pasteurized to be sterile (pasteurizing is required by law so it can be shipped safely from state to state). If you buy soil from a local producer like us its a bit better, because we don't pasteurize the soil and its made from local ingredients, but its still not perfectly balanced, doesn't contain much composted material, and doesn't contain the vital nutrients your plants need to thrive. We like to think of it as a filler, on top of which you add the good stuff to make it alive and healthy. Think of the soil as the flour in the cake, and the microbes, bacteria, worms and other living goodies found in your homemade compost is the yeast. Ok we're gonna run with the cake baking metaphor here.... the last essential ingredient for plant success is a granular organic fertilizer... the sugar! Oh, and then once it's all mixed in, water and bake in the sun! 

Our soil mix is made of composted woody material, humus (thats completely decomposed organic matter), pine bark (thats for drainage) and coconut coir peat moss blend (thats for holding water). The role of this filler soil is to keep the water content of the soil balanced, that is why most of the ingredients are either for moisture retention or moisture drainage. Read more about our soil mix here. 

There are a lot of other options for building a garden space besides the classic wooden framed bed. We love using corrugated metal Vego Garden Beds for gardens where people want the plants higher up (so they don't have to bend down so low to interact with the garden or so their dogs don't jump in them). We also use elevated planters from Gardeners.com for situations where the garden needs to go on hardscaping, pavers, patios and balconies.

One thing we've noticed about gardening in August is that people either think they're too early to start gardening or too late to be planting things. Neither of those statements are true because gardens are cyclical, just like so many other things in nature. That means it's never too late or too early, depending on what you are doing or planting. Is it too early to start your collection of heirloom tomato seeds? yep. But it's definitely not too late to add more fun tropical perennials to your garden. September is our second rainiest month of the year (June is the most rainy) so if you still haven't gotten around to planting more bananas, turmeric and pineapples you can do that anytime through September and they will benefit from the summer rains before our dry season starts. 

We have grown to love the unique selection of culinary herbs and spices that thrive in the summer months, like Dominican oregano, African blue basil & garlic chives, most of which will grow year round, not just in the summer. Plant one of these now and they'll likely last years, just like rosemary and sage, which are thought of as winter herbs but since they are "perennials" they grow for years. Culinary herbs tend to stay small to medium in size and so they can be fit into your raised bed, large terra cotta pots, or they can be planted in your landscaping or built in planters. If you're looking for fun plants to add to your garden this time of year check out our roundup of summer friendly perennial herbs. 



Dominican oregano is in the "lippia" family and is related to lots of other plants we love, like lantana, Moujean tea and Lippia Alba. If you google this plant you'll quickly get overwhelmed or a bit confused because this plant goes by about 100 different names depending on where you live, and many of those names have the word oregano or thyme in them. This plant isn't related to thyme or oregano at all but it earned nicknames like "Dominican oregano" and "false thyme" because of its culinary uses. When used in cooking you wont be able to tell the difference between this oregano and the more popular and well known Italian and Greek varieties. The plant grows upright into a small shrub (similar to how rosemary grows) so its easier to harvest than the other oreganos that spread and crawl on the ground, and it will last years and years when planted here in South Florida. 



Turmeric is a must grow in our opinion, since its a delicious spice, a powerful medicinal plant, plus its absurdly easy to grow in our climate. We plant turmeric rhizomes in the spring and patiently wait for them to sprout out of the ground once it starts raining. Throughout the summer these plants grow like crazy and become big beautiful plants with aromatic tropical leaves you can harvest and use to grill fish or flavor teas. Turmeric can be planted in the ground in compost rich soil or kept in a pot, and they can thrive in full sun or partial shade. While rhizomes can be harvested pretty much anytime (just dig around the base of the plant, find some root and break it off) its best to wait until next spring to harvest the whole plant for maximum yield. Turmerics cousins ginger and galangal also grow easily here in South Florida and we consider them staples in the well rounded culinary summer garden. 

 Garlic chives are the closest thing to garlic you are going to get to grow here in South Florida, and luckily for us they are delicious, productive and can grow year round. When all else fails, garlic chives survive... Seriously! We have seen garlic chives survive in super neglected and overgrown gardens, and we have patches of them that are over 5 years old at this point. Thanks to their incredibly large and ambitious root systems garlic chives are drought resistant and don't need many nutrients. Harvest your garlic chives by giving them a haircut just above the soil line and 7 days later they will be fully regrown, making them incredibly productive as a summer food crop.  

 If prepping for fall is more your August style there are a few things on our fall to-do lists already, like testing our seed stash. At the end of every summer we go through our leftover seeds from last season and test them to see if they are still germinating well. We need our seeds to have really high germination rates because we rely on them to make a certain amount of plants for our nursery. While you may not have such high standards for your leftover seeds its still good to try and figure out which ones will be successful and which wont before fall. To test our seeds we plant 10 of each seed type in one cell of a seeding tray and germinate the whole thing inside. It's important to germinate the tray indoors because it's too hot out for all the varieties to germinate at their peak ability. Your plants will get leggy but don't sweat it, this whole tray is destined for the compost pile, not your garden. 10 - 14 days after you started your tray all of your plants should have fully germinated and you can count how many made it. 8 of out 10 seeds germinated makes the germination rate of that variety 80%, which is pretty good. Anything below 60% and we either compost the seeds or double how many seeds we use, since we know about half of them wont make it. Make sure to make notes about each plant on the seed packet so that when you go to use them in the fall all the information is right there for you. 

When it comes to buying new seeds we definitely have some favorite companies and websites to share with you. Johnnys Select Seed in Maine is our number one most favorite seed company. The main reason why we love them is because they serve farms more than they do gardeners, and so they sell larger quantities and farm friendly varieties too. We also buy regularly from True Leaf Market, Territorial Seed Company, Kitazawa Seed Co, and Wild Garden Seed. When it comes to specialty seed companies we suggest you shop with them with some reserve, unless you are looking to really challenge yourself (and your budget). Our favorite rare seed companies are Baker Creek Heirloom Seed, Strictly Medicinal, and True Love Seeds. Our biggest tip for seed shopping is make sure to choose mostly tried and true varieties for your growing zone and then sprinkle in some wild ones!

Another great fall preparation activity you can undertake in your veggie garden is doing some "lasagna soil building" in it. This is a method where you add layers of organic matter that will compost quickly (like horse bedding, leaf litter, newspaper, tender plant cuttings and kitchen scraps) right on top of your empty veggie bed. Layer the materials like you are making a lasagna, and top the whole thing off with a big thick layer of shredded cheese, aka hay. 

This blog post is inspired by recent visits to some of the gardens we planted with summer crops. Every year in late May/early June the weather in South Florida officially shifts into what we call "the monsoon season". Regular afternoon rain storms, often accompanied by a generous amount of thunder and lightning as well as consistently high temperatures during the day and night define this growing season as the season for only the most hardy, heat loving tropical crops. We tend to have a hard time saying good bye to lettuce, kale and cucumbers. The transitional period which happens mostly in June can be rough. Not only are the plants adapting to the weather, but the gardeners who are also tackling pretty uncomfortable working conditions. 

That said, once we get over the hump and into July, the rewards are incredible!  Summer crops are robust and beautifully abundant. They thrive in this intense weather which provides copious amounts of moisture and sunshine. On a recent visit to a garden we planted just one month ago I couldn't believe how lush everything was. The colors were so vibrant, all of the plants were huge and growing into each other, as if they were having a big plant family hug. The seminole pumpkins were half way up the trellis arch with their dinner plate sized leaves so neatly organized like stepping stones to the top of the arch. Winged beans were forming a tangled mess of tentacles greedily fighting for who would get to the top of their trellis first. Native wild flowers like coreopsis and blanket flower were planted throughout the garden and were poking happy little flowers in between branches of other plants. Pictured above is a before and after of the arch trellis at this garden; these pictures were taken exactly one month apart!

All of this growth and bounty in a month can only mean one thing. We gotta cut back and prune these plants hard, not only to keep the garden some what tame, but also to harvest the edible portions of these crops. A summer garden is probably the most abundant garden in South Florida, we just have to get used to the new flavor profiles. It's undeniable that our palettes are stuck on the things we are able to purchase at the grocery store. We eat things like lettuce, kale and cucumbers so often that we find comfort in their familiarity and predictability. We all have a hard time switching to a salad made with Okinawa spinach, cranberry hibiscus leaves and katuk tips. Am I right? Sweet potato leaves are called Morning Glory in some Asian cuisine because they are in the morning glory family. They are commonly used as a cooked green in curries, omelettes and soups. If you've ever grown sweet potato you know that while you wait the 90-110 days for the roots to develop underground, the above ground portion of the plant is a sprawling vine. Pruning the vine is good because it encourages the plant to put more energy into developing the roots; so when you prune back the armfuls of vines you can bring them into the kitchen and save all of the leaves for a week's worth of cooking. Pictured above is a cranberry hibiscus harvest/pruning and a handful of sweet potato aka morning glory leaves ready for cooking. 

Okra tends to be an under appreciated vegetable, but the flavor profile of okra is so unique and special! As a plant for the summer growing season in South Florida it really can't be beat. Just like there are so many varieties of tomatoes and peppers, there are so many varieties of okra that each bring their own personality and cooking style to the kitchen. The trickiest thing about okra is that the pods mature super fast and most people miss the window of opportunity for harvesting tender pods. From the moment a flower blooms to when the pod is ready for picking can be as quick as 2-3 days! If you wait much longer (like even one day longer) the pods become woody and impossible to eat. That is one of the many reasons we love two particular varieties of okra. Hill Country and Cowhorn okra both grow into enormous and beautiful plants that produce larger than average pods which take slightly longer to mature, giving the gardener a little more time to harvest edible pods. They are more forgiving. Pictured above is a Hill Country okra plant and pod.

The beauty of summer gardening extends far into the fruit realm in our lush tropical climate. You'll need to be just a bit more patient for fruit crops, although there is a juicy list of crops we can grow that will bear fruit within one year. Our favorites are bananas and plantains which will require a large space, but can also serve a double purpose if you plant them in a circle to create what is known as a "banana circle". Banana circles are commonly used in Permaculture design and food forest designs as a composting system. Bananas and /or plantains are planted in a large circle, an average of 10 feet in diameter is typical, and the space in the center is used for piling up garden debris, grass clippings, kitchen waste, mulch and other biodegradable materials like cardboard. A banana circle is a great way to divert waste from landfills and grow a fruit crop at the same time! Some of the other one-year fruit crops we like to recommend are pineapples, papayas, passionfruit, Barbados cherry, mulberry, guava and starfruit. 

Sure, most of the country gets to enjoy apple trees and blueberry shrubs, but we have the privilege of plucking pineapples and bananas from our backyards! You loose some, you win some :)

We are a female led team of farmers, growers & educators, a.k.a. “Plant Nerds”, focused on sharing our love of and passion for useful plants with our community. Over the last 7 years we have become a central resource for all things relating to growing food in South Florida. We strive to be examples of how individuals can make a difference in their environment by sharing resources on composting, suburban backyard food gardening, growing & making plant medicine and becoming more resilient community members in the process. 

Our business is focused on three main activities: nursery plant production & sales, garden installation & maintenance, and education. Nursery plant production takes place at a small farm property in the Redland, and our garden installation & maintenance happens throughout Miami-Dade (and sometimes even Broward) and is based in Little River. We do our very best to provide our team with a positive work environment and the training & tools they need to efficiently and happily get the work done. We work hard in all types of weather, but we do it as a team, in beautiful gardens all over town in harmony with nature. 

Positions Available:

This position has been filled Garden Team Manager - Part time (Approximately 3 days a week to start with potential to grow into a full time position)

If you’re comfortable working independently and tend to be organized and prepared, like to apply common sense and past experience to find practical solutions to problems, then you may be the perfect new team member we are looking for.

The garden team manager is a new position for our team and we’re hoping to teach someone the inner workings of what keeps the business running. We are looking for someone who can bring their own insights to the administrative tasks and organizational systems we have developed. There is going to be a lot of room for learning, rethinking and executing your own ideas. It’s a multifaceted position because it involves a lot of computer work as well as driving a large van to our nursery in the Redland and packing plants for garden jobs. Our ideal garden team manager will be comfortable leading group meetings, communicating with clients regularly and keeping their profiles up to date. They will take our inventory system to the next level and generally make sure the gardeners are set up for success every week. 

Requirements:

• Excellent communication, writing and organizational skills
• Strong interest in horticulture
• A computer and smartphone you can use to access our client and invoicing platform (Jobber), organizational tools (Google Sheets and Docs) and communication tools (Whatsapp).
• Valid drivers license, reliable transportation and the ability to drive large vehicles (or the willingness to learn)

Ideal Candidate: 

• Has prior experience with managing a small business 
• Has prior experience with sales
• Has basic plant knowledge, particularly with edible plants
• Available Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays, but is also available for communications daily
• Is comfortable driving a large vehicle 
• Is comfortable using Quickbooks, apps like google sheets and has the ability to use their computer and phone for work 

What we offer:

• Access to free plants aging out of our nursery on a weekly basis
• Free participation in our educational workshops
• Access to fresh organic produce from our family garden and neighbor farm (French Farms)
• Opportunity to advance with pay increases to match increase in responsibilities

This position benefits from a person who is familiar with the gardens we install and maintain so it will involve visits to job sites periodically. You may even be part of the garden team for large installations where extra hands are needed. You’ll be in charge of our plant mobiles and it will be important to know how the team uses supplies and tools. Our mission is to help people grow food for their families and your job includes meeting clients and getting to know their needs and preferences so that we can build the garden of their dreams. 

Lead Vegetable Gardener in Training - Part time (Approximately 3-4 days a week to start with potential to grow into a full time position)

If you are a great team player, a good listener and speaker, enjoy helping others achieve goals and aspirations with warmth, empathy and understanding and you can create stability under pressure, then you may be the perfect new team member we are looking for.

The Lead Gardener in Training position is for a person with either substantial or very little edible gardening experience. We will be training you on the job so that you grow into the Lead Gardener position. The Lead Gardener role is in charge of installing new raised bed gardens and other types of edible gardens such as food forests and container gardens in our clients homes. The Lead Gardener also does simple drip irrigation installations and routine maintenance visits for our clients. It requires a knowledge of basic edible garden requirements such as optimum sun exposure, watering needs, plant spacing and plant succession, organic pest management and harvesting. The Lead Gardener will be communicating with clients on a regular basis and driving to clients homes to install new gardens or do maintenance visits on a weekly basis (in our company van). They must be able to drive a Sprinter van, use the client tracking app used by our team on their smartphone and take clear photos of job sites for posterity. The

Lead Gardener will sometimes work alone, but most of the time works in a team and would be performing a leadership role and managing their coworker(s) when in a team.

Requirements:

• Strength, good physical condition. Ability to work in all kinds of weather
• The ability to lift 50 pounds regularly throughout the day
• Strong interest in horticulture
• Ability to follow instructions and lead a small team
• A smartphone you can use to access our organizational tools (Google Sheets), communication tools (Whatsapp), organizational platform (Asana) and job tracking app (Jobber)
• Valid drivers license, reliable transportation and the ability to drive large vehicles (or the willingness to learn)

Ideal Candidate: 

• Has prior experience with growing edible plants or at least a strong interest to learn 
• Has a flexible schedule and can be available Monday through Thursday as needed
• Is comfortable driving a large vehicle 
• Is comfortable using apps like google sheets and has the ability to use their phone for work 
• Lives in the North Miami/Upper East Side area because of the close proximity to our HQ in Little River

What we offer:

• Access to free plants aging out of our nursery on a weekly basis
• Free participation in our educational workshops
• Access to fresh organic produce from our family garden and neighbor farm (French Farms)
• Tools provided by company
• Opportunity to advance with pay increases to match increase in responsibilities

This job is an amazing opportunity to gain an extreme amount of hands-on experience gardening. Within a couple of months you will be able to identify all of our plants by sight, understand proper plant spacing, harvesting techniques, plus you will be able to identify pest and nutritional issues. Every day on the gardening team is different which is why we love the work so much. We work all over Miami-Dade county planting fruit trees, Florida native plants and vegetable gardens. We joke that this job is like “gardening cross fit” because it is very physical, takes place outdoors in the elements, and requires more physical fitness and endurance than most other jobs. That being said we work as a team to get the job done and do our best to enjoy ourselves and be present in the beauty of our gardening surroundings every day.

This position has been filled Nursery Retail Manager - Part time (Monday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday with additional days as needed especially in fall season)

If you are someone who can begin and follow through on projects to completion, set and achieve high standards of conduct and are alert and sensitive to problems, you just may be the perfect team member we are looking for. Small scale agricultural work can be physically challenging but also requires attention to detail, initiative when working independently and on a team, and an engaging level of focus on the task at hand.

Our Nursery Retail Manager position is one focused on growing someone with little to no plant or gardening experience, and some retail experience into a team leader position at our nursery by September of this year. Our nursery performs two main functions: one as a retail garden center, the other as a production facility that makes plants. This role is focused on the retail/ sales and organizational side of our operation. We sell plants in person at our nursery Saturdays & Sundays and we have two e-commerce platforms where people purchase plants for local delivery pickup & mail order. We also operate one farmers market booth per week. The Nursery Retail Manager will be in charge of organizing all of these sales streams including performing routine inventory, scheduling employees for weekly retail shifts, setting up and organizing the nursery space, packing orders, ordering plants from other nurseries and working as retail sales associate on Saturdays & Sundays when we are open to the public. Outside of routine work there is plenty of room to be creative and bring your own inspiration to the job. We love team members who are crafty and want to improve on our space by doing things like creating new educational garden spaces, making new signage for our customers, or improve on our current systems and routines. Through your experience as our nursery retail manager you will learn to be able to identify all of our plants by sight, will learn tons about gardening in South Florida, and will be a part of a fun team and thriving plant community. 

Requirements:

• Strength, good physical condition. Ability to work in all kinds of weather
• The ability to lift 35 pounds regularly throughout the day
• Strong interest in horticulture
• Ability to follow instructions and lead a small team
• Reliable phone and email access (for training and routine communication)
• Valid drivers license and reliable transportation 
• Available to work Friday - Monday schedule

Ideal Candidate: 

• Lives in south miami or near the nursery property (located in the Redland)
• Available for work Monday, Tuesday, Friday & Saturday year round
• Has prior experience with retail, sales or shopify e-commerce platform
• Can start in August in order to be ready for our busy season by September 2022

What we offer:

• Access to free plants aging out of our nursery on a weekly basis 
• Free participation in our educational workshops
• Access to fresh organic produce from our family garden and neighbor farm (French Farms)
• Opportunity to advance with pay increases to match increase in responsibilities
• Potential for on site housing in a shared home 

This position has been filled Nursery Grower Position Part time (Approximately 3-4 days a week to start with potential to grow into a full time position)

As a Nursery Grower your main responsibility will be seeding & up potting our inventory of organic seedlings and maintaining the health and organization of our seedlings and our greenhouse. Seeding is the starting of seeds in trays, and involves attention to detail and comfort in doing meditative tasks with their hands and body. Up potting is the process of taking the baby plants from the seeding tray and putting them in larger pots so they can mature and then be sold. While it may sound simple theres lots to learn about making healthy plants and keeping plants happy organically, so we will train you how to properly water, fertilize, manage pests and organize the greenhouse. You will also be expected to participate in general maintenance of the potting area including clean up after work days, weeding our common areas, maintaining the exhibition gardens, organizing the materials we use and emptying out used or bad trays of plants into our farm compost. We also pack plants for local delivery, pickup and for mail order. 

Requirements:

• Strength, good physical condition. Ability to work in all kinds of weather
• The ability to lift 35 pounds regularly throughout the day
• Strong interest in horticulture
• Ability to follow instructions
• Reliable phone and email access (for training and routine communication)
• Valid drivers license and reliable transportation 
• Available to work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Friday schedule with opportunities for additional weekend hours. 

Ideal Candidate: 

• Lives in south miami or near the nursery property (located in the Redland)
• Has prior experience with plants or working outdoors/ physical labor 
• Can start in August in order to be ready for our busy season by September 2022

What we offer:

• Access to free plants aging out of our nursery on a weekly basis 
• Free participation in our educational workshops
• Access to fresh organic produce from our family garden and neighbor farm (French Farms)
• Opportunity to advance with pay increases to match increase in responsibilities

How to apply: 

All positions pay 17-20$ to start based on experience. Send us an email to mail@littlerivercooperative.com with your contact info (name, phone number, email address). Copy and paste the following questions and answer them. Please include a resume. 

1. Which position are you applying for?
2. What area of South Florida do you live in?
3. What is it about this advertisement that made you think this position was for you?
4. What are your 3 strongest attributes?
5. Why are you well suited to this position?
6. What is your biggest success?

June is the true start of the rainy, humid & extra hot summer here in South Florida. It rains an average of 6” during the month of June, with average temperature highs of 88 and solid 100% humidity day and night. This is an incredibly challenging environment for plants that aren’t used to it and aren’t meant to grow in humid and wet climates. Luckily for us there are a bunch of cool plants, and in particular perennials, that thrive in this climate. We think June is the perfect time of year to plant new tropical fruit trees, because you get them in the ground right as the rain starts up. Tropical climate plants love rain and they love the humidity, so if planted now they will grow so fast through the summer you’ll be amazed!

Our favorite trees to plant are ones that produce fruit within the first year and also don’t get so big that they become the only thing in your yard 15 years later (hello mango and avocado, we see you being huge trees all over town). These fruit tree specimens also act as a great “canopy trees” if you’re hoping to plant yourself a Food Forest Guild. A food forest is a perennial planting that mimics the way nature designs a forest but uses all edible or useful plants. And a guild is a grouping of plants using that design system. Heres a diagram to help explain what a guild looks like. The idea is to choose plants that need different space in the air and on the ground so that they don't have to compete for those resources as they grow. These plantings are low maintenance because most of the plants are perennial (that means they grow for more than 1 year) and so they grow slower than veggies and require little inputs outside of regular fertilizing, mulching, and weeding.

Drawing courtesy of: https://midwestpermaculture.com/2012/07/hugelkultured-swale-with-linear-food-forest/

Here in these drawings Muriel made for our website you can see that the largest plant in the system is not a "overstory" tree but rather a "midstory" because we want to be able to produce food quickly and also keep the biodiversity of the other layers for years to come. The easiest way to create yourself a guild is just to go through and pick one plant from each category that you want to grow and then go for it! Once you become more experienced you will realize there are other nuances to consider, like watering needs or fertilizer requirements, but to get started you can use "what do i want to grow and eat" as a good decision making factor. 

Heres a few examples of fun and easy to grow perennial plant guilds. Note I focused on EASY TO GROW, so im choosing low maintenance, fast growing, less rare items here, because its great for beginners to start with easy stuff and slowly lean into the harder more rare items as they gain knowledge. 

MIDSTORY: Guava
Guavas are one of our favorite fruit varieties to grow for home gardeners. They are easily grown, delicious, and a high yielding small tree; a two year old tree potentially producing hundreds of fruit per season. Pink fleshed guavas are incredibly floral, pungent and aromatic. These trees are in the myrtle family and produce beautiful flowers and thick leaves. Guava remain quite small and should be considered a “lower canopy” food forest tree. Beware worms in the growing tips of your trees (if they show up and do damage simply spray with Organic Thuricide) and fruit flies laying their eggs in your immature fruit (commercial guava groves put mesh bags on all fruit to avoid this pest issue). 

UNDERSTORY/ SHRUB LAYER: Roselle & cranberry hibiscus 
Both of these beautiful shrubby plants are in the mallow family along with okra, ornamental hibiscuses & cotton, and they love the summer. Roselle is the source of hibiscus tea, and produces beautiful seed pods called "calyxes" that have fleshy petals around them. Thats what you make the tea out of, or you can just eat them fresh in salads, preserve them in syrups or jams, use the stems as cut flower branches... they really are the most amazing plant with so many uses. Its cousin, cranberry hibiscus, makes beautiful red maple shaped leaves that are tart and high in vitamin C. 
 

HERBACEOUS LAYER: Hot Peppers & Lemongrass
When it comes to hot peppers, the hotter they pepper the easier the plant to grow in heat, for some reason. I think it has something to do with the pests not liking the flavor/ amount of capsicum in the leaves, but thats just a guess. Your main issue with growing peppers in the summer is spider mites, but as i said they tend to leave the super spicy ones, like scotch bonnet, datil, and thai chilli alone. Peppers are actually perennials but if you live somewhere with a frost it will kill them, which is why theyre treated like annuals all over the country. Here in South Florida they will become perennials and can sometimes last years and years. Lemongrass is a great herb with many uses, both culinary and medicinal and its super easy to grow down here. It also adds a fun texture and shape to your garden since its a grass. 

GROUNDCOVER: Cuban oregano & sweet potatoes
Cuban Oregano is a super easy to grow and cute low growing plant that is very well suited to a perennial plant guild. It can be pruned and shaped into whatever form you'd like based on where your other plants are growing, and its easy to cook with. Sweet potato is a great ground cover for a food forest because it makes you two harvests: the leaves and the root. The root needs like 4-5 months to grow but you can harvest the leaves and use them to cook with anytime. The more you harvest your leaves the better for root growth actually, since it discourages leaf growth and forces the plant to put some energy into the more challenging task of making root tubers. 

This is a small guild in my backyard consisting of bananas, lemongrass, datil spicy peppers, ginger, rosemary, cranberry hibiscus, and sweet potato. 

Now you may be thinking…. Fruit trees are cool but what about my veggie garden beds? What the heck do I do with them during June and through the rest of the summer!? there are a number of options for you to consider in how to manage your raised garden bed during the summer.

One option is to plant a summer garden. This option is awesome for people who will be home most of the summer and want to keep experiencing their garden. In South Florida we can grow some pretty fun crops during our tropical monsoon season which are considered exotic and rare in other parts of the country. Things like ginger, lemongrass, Asian eggplants, hot peppers, roselle hibiscus, taro and sweet potatoes! A lot of common kitchen herbs grow during the summer as well, for example rosemary, thai basil, garlic chives and mint. There are some challenges to growing a summer garden, like keeping it weed and pest free. Pest pressure increases during the hotter and more humid rainy months because they reproduce faster, and the same can be said about weeds.

Another option is to put your garden “to bed” using the lasagna technique, which refers to adding layers of organic material to your garden that will break down over time, resulting in nutrient-rich compost that will help your plants thrive in the following growing season. We suggest layering the fresh plants that you are removing from your garden with horse manure, top soil and finally a layer of straw to cover the surface of your garden which will keep it weed free and pest free for the long summer months of June-September. Through the summer the material will basically compost on your garden bed and will slowly decompose, turning into new compost & soil right on the spot. In October your garden soil will be richer and more pest free than before for even better Fall crop results. One key to making this technique work is making sure that the top layer of straw (coastal straw can be purchased at any local feed stores) is super duper thick so that it doesn’t decompose and instead acts like a weed barrier to keep the garden weed free while it sits.

Another great option is planting cover crops in your raised bed. Cover cropping can sometimes be confusing to explain but basically you plant a specific plant (in Miami the most popular ones are Sunn Hemp & Buckwheat) very densely in your bed and once its mature (30 - 60 days) you cut it down and compost it in your garden bed. This is also a technique used for soil building, weed suppression, and continued pest management. If you’d like to try cover cropping we sell Sunn hemp & Buckwheat seed per pound on our website where you can also learn more about each type and how to manage it. The bonus to using sunn hemp is that is sequesters nitrogen in the soil for you, which basically means you are growing yourself organic fertilizer. Buckwheat is great to use because its fast growing and easier to cut down and incorporate into your soil… plus pollinators go absolutely nuts for the flowers. Cover cropping is a big part of organic soil based farming practices so we love to encourage home gardeners to give it a try on a smaller scale. 

So wether you cover crop your garden, replant it with summer crops, or choose to plant yourself a perennial food forest guild, theres plenty to still be done in the June garden! 

Storm clouds, blisteringly hot days, and humid evenings... welcome to May in South Florida. May is our most transitional month here for gardening. Its the last chance to plant some heat tolerant annuals, and also the first chance to go ahead and replant your garden with summer loving longer term perennial food crops. We've noticed over the year that the main reason why people decide to stop gardening altogether for the summer is the big learning curve with getting to know all of the new and unusual varieties that like the summer. So this blog post will focus on our top 10 most beloved summer perennial veggies and herbs. 

May is basically like, the most transitional month between the last of the annual vegetables and the beginning of the perennials & fruit trees, and the below varieties kind of symbolize that hybrid of seasons for us. Some of these are annuals, some are perennials, and all of them are perfect for May. All of these varieties should last through the summer if treated properly and they can be planted in your raised bed or your landscaping depending on how much space you have available. If you've only ever grown in a raised bed consider adding a "food forest guild" to your back or front yard landscaping to provide a permanent home to some perennial food crops. 

Check out this article about food forest guilds & the accompanying diagram which easily helps explain the planting design for a food forest. Basically, gardeners take design inspiration from the way that forests naturally organize themselves so that all of the plants can live harmoniously together in a small space instead of fighting for space in the system. One of our favorite modification to the food forest guild system is to remove the "upper canopy" plant, which is typically a very large fast growing fruit tree that will make lots of shade and requires the most space. Sometimes adding an upper canopy tree to your backyard can be a bit too much, so you can use a mid-level canopy tree like a papaya, mulberry or a banana as the largest specimen in your guild and then surround it with smaller annuals and perennials like the ones in the below list to round out the system. 

Without further ado here comes our top 10 list. All of the plants on the list can be sourced from our nursery in the Redland during our Summer Plant Sale which is happening Friday, Saturday & Sunday May 20th, 21st and 22nd but we will also have them available throughout the summer. Happy planting!



OUR 10 FAVORITE MAY FOOD CROPS: 

1. HOT PEPPERS
Hot peppers are a great choice for a May garden because they love a lengthening day, and they love the heat and humidity. In climates like ours without frost peppers are technically perennials and a good healthy nematode free pepper plant can become quite a formidable presence in your garden, turning into a big bush and lasting years before loosing productivity. The hotter the pepper variety the easier is it to grow in the heat. We're not sure why thats the case but a guess is that the amount of capsicum in the whole plant is higher and the bugs don't like the taste! Bugs are going to be the one thing that might negatively effect your pepper plants health as one of the negative features of summer gardening is that the pest pressure increases. Keep an eye on the underside of your leaves where aphids and whitefly like to hide from your inquisitive eyes, and if the growing tips of the plant get krinkly or shriveled up that means you have a two-spotted spider mite issue. 



2. GARLIC CHIVES
Garlic chives are the closest thing we can come to growing garlic, or something that kinda tastes like garlic, here in South Florida. Garlic Chives are literally indestructible and will be the very last plant standing in your garden no matter what challenges are thrown at it. The root system of this plant is incredibly robust which means it can handle dry conditions and low nutrients pretty well. Cut your clump of garlic chives down to the base whenever you need to use it in the kitchen and two weeks later your plant will be fully grown again! Garlic chives make a great ingredient for stir fries, stuffing dumplings & gyoza. 




3 & 4. LONGEVITY & OKINAWA SPINACH
Longevity & Okinawa spinach are plant cousins so we are including them together in our list. Longevity is a lime green leafed plant while Okinawa is a big more showy with dark leaves and bright purple undersides of the leaves. Summer greens are all a bit weird, and they all have funny names with the word spinach in them, even though none of them are related to or very similar to spinach! They are commonly referred to as spinaches to give people an idea of how to cook them, since they are all a little slimy if overcooked (like spinach is) and are basically mildly flavored green leaves. Okinawa & Longevity are perennial greens and they make low lying shrubs that spread and grow in low branches. they make a great ornamental ground cover in your food forest too. 

5. WINGED BEAN
Winged bean is by far our favorite weird warm weather vegetable. This beautiful bean is scalloped ruffled and winged, and when you cut it in pieces they look like little throwing stars. The plant is easy to grow and the entire thing (leaf, flower, bean & roots) is edible. This is a vining plant so you'll need to make sure to give it lots of space and support from a fence or trellis and keep an eye on the young pods to make sure aphids don't attack them when they are small. Include a winged bean in your summer garden and you'll be harvesting the asparagus flavored beans all summer long. 



6. SISSOO SPINACH
Sissoo spinach is like the kale of summer veggies. Its super easy to grow, easy to cook with, tastes pretty good, and lots of people know about it so its popular with our customers. It doesn't have many pest issues (but worms will eat it. they eat everything....) and it thrives in lots of different situations, from partial shade to full sun. Harvest the first few inches of growth for the most tender leaves and eat them lightly cooked. As with the other "spinaches" if you overcook Sisso it will become gooey and unpleasant. 



7. TARO LEAF
Taro is a really cool and beautiful summer veggie that produces two unique yields because its leaf and its root are both edible. As the plant matures you can harvest the outer leaves for use in the kitchen, and after about 8-12 months you can harvest the whole plant and use its tender tuber too. Most people are like... "what the heck is a taro root" and then they realize... taro chips! those white chips with the little red squiggles in them are made from taro root, and you can use it much like you would a potato... mashed, cubed and baked or fried. 



8. LEMONGRASS
Lemongrass barely needs an introduction since its quite a popular herb in lots of different delish cuisines like Indian & Thai, however did you know that it grows super well down here in South Florida? Or that its essential oils help keep mosquitos out of your garden? Indeed! Besides being a prolific and easy to use herb & tea plant, lemongrass can also be used in natural bug repellants and other body products. Lemongrass is luckily also very easy to propagate, just rip a piece out by the roots, cut away the top of it to leave just a few inches of plant and stick it in the ground. So long as it gets consistent watering until its rooted itll happily make a new plant. 

9. THAI BASIL
While we Americans may not consider something like Thai basil a vegetable there are cuisines worldwide that literally treat it like spinach, or kale! Cake Thai, Miamis most authentic Thai restaurant, has a tofu dish thats literally like 50% tofu 50% Thai basil leaves and its soooooo delish... While Genovese basil (aka Italian) loves the heat it absolutely hates the humidity, so luckily for us its relative Thai basil loves it. Use in herbaceous salads, in Thai stir fries or curries, and as a filling for spring rolls. Allow it to flower and the pollinators in your yard will thank you. 



10. CRANBERRY HIBISCUS
Cranberry hibiscus is another super cool leaf that is really unique to summer and adds a welcome splash of color, texture & tart flavor to an herbaceous salad. The hibiscus family is full of fun summer friendly food plants like roselle, okra, and south sea salad tree, but cranberry hibiscus is definitely the prettiest with its dark purple maple shaped leaves and its baby pink hibiscus flowers. Prune your cranberry hibiscus regularly and it'll get nice and bushy and try to get it a spot in your garden in full sun because the more sun it gets the deeper the color in the leaves. 

If you're hoping to grow summer crops like this in your raised bed make sure you manage the spacing and size of the plants properly or else you'll end up with a messy and non-productive jumble in there. Some of these plants stay small, like the garlic chives. others need to be trellised, like the winged beans, and some can get quite big and will need very regular pruning to stay within a couple of square feet, like longevity spinach or cranberry hibiscus. Also, your soil will be quite depleted if you are doing 4 season growing in a raised bed, so you'll need to make sure you are building soil elsewhere during the summer, like in a compost pile. Summer is the best season to be building soil because everything composts faster when its hot humid and wet out. You can build a finished pile out of leaves, hay, mulch, spent plants and other compostable materials like kitchen scraps and cardboard and then by the end of the summer it'll be perfectly cooked down and ready to be added to your fall garden to replenish the soil. What we mean when we say a "finished pile" is that, instead of slowly building a pile as you eat dinner and rake the yard, you can hoard those materials, go to the park to get leaves, go to a horse stable to get manure, buy a couple bales of hay, steal your neighbors grass clippings, and in one weekend you'll have a big pile that you can stop adding things too and it will compost through the summer. Most people think of composting as something they have to do slowly but many farms (like us) will get huge amounts of material delivered in the spring for just this purpose.