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. 

Here we are already in April, where did the season go!? We consider April one of the last opportunities to plant and harvest annuals before the summer comes and wipes them all out with its intense heat and rainfall. April is a great month to also plant transitional perennial crops that will survive into or through the summer if you have some space opening up in your garden. If you planted things like kale & tomatoes in the fall those plants might be nearing the end of their life cycle by now. Many home gardeners get a bit attached to their plants because they've cared for them for so long, so they don't want to pull them out (aka kill them), but annuals are meant to grow, produce flowers, fruit & seed, and then die (or be pulled out). We sometimes get comments from people like "my beans were doing so well, producing so much food for me, but then they just stopped and now they're just sitting in my garden for months not doing anything...whats wrong with them?" to which we respond: "theres nothing wrong with them, they're just done making you food! pull them out already!". So, pull it out already is definitely a theme of April gardening. It's not too late to remove a spent crop and plant something new, especially something quick growing, like asian greens. 

"Asian greens" is a whole category of delicious and super easy to grow heat tolerant crops in the brassica family (the family that includes radishes, kale & broccoli) that we love planting this time of year. Many of these varieties are incredibly popular staple crops in other parts of the world but are relatively uncommon here in America. But remember, our unique climate is much like that found in Thailand and parts of India & Asia, so it makes sense that we would take inspiration from these areas when looking for cool heat tolerant crops. Since you may not have heard of many of these varieties lets go through some of them together. 

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Hon Tsai Tai
Hon Tsai Tai is a delicious and easy to grow green whose flavor profile is similar to broccoli, which is cool since many of the heat tolerant greens are spicy, but this one is sweet. The seeds can be planted in little bunches and the whole plant is edible at all ages so you can harvest the leaves young to eat them raw or let the plant mature and start flowering and eat the leaves, stalks and flowers then. 

   

Tat soi
Tat soi is the closest thing we can grow to "normal" spinach, the arrowleaf kind you get in the grocery store, which hates the heat and does pretty poorly here all year round. Tat soi is technically a loose headed cabbage but it definitely doesn't look or cook like cabbage, so don't let that deter you. Leaves can be harvested at any stage of growth and you can harvest them "cut and come again" or let the whole plant get big and then cut the whole head, like you would bok choi. We grow a savoy leafed variety, which means theres extra crinkly texture, which we think is fun for cooking and for looks in the garden. 

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Tokyo Bekana/ Pei Tsai
Tokyo Bekana is one of our least popular plants but thats just because no one has heard of it before. Once a customer takes the leap and tries it they become a convert and start asking for it season after season. Tokyo Bekana is also a loose headed cabbage but its very very tender, so we like to refer to it as "tropical romaine". The leaves are very light, tender and delicate, but the ribs/ stalk is very crunchy and watery like the center of a romaine leaf, so that balances out the tender green in a really nice way. We definitely prefer to eat this one raw for that reason, and it stays tender even when fully grown. 

Li Ren Baby Bok Choi
All bok choi varieties are heat tolerant and a good option for spring gardening, but over the years we've falling in love with 3 of them and grow them more regularly. Sure, we could stock like 100+ bok choi varieties but then we would need a whole other greenhouse for them! Li Ren is our favorite baby variety. Being a true baby bok choi means that we dont harvest it young, but rather it stays small when mature. So the choi in the photo above is no taller than our hand, but is fully grown and ready to come out of the garden. We plant these puppies about 6" apart since they dont get big, and you can really go for it and plant a whole little field of them in your garden if youd like. These are best harvested whole (not leaf by leaf/ cut and come again) since they mature so quickly. 

 

Joi Choi & Japonica
Joi Choi & Japonica are our two favorite extra large bok choi varieties and while they are similar in size and shape they are pretty different in flavor. Joi Choi is a super traditional mild, watery white stemmed pak choi, and japonica is more like a mustard and can be quite pungent. Both of them can be harvested leaf by leaf as they mature or you can let them become monsters and then pick the whole thing, but be careful cause they definitely wont fit in your fridge! These beauties are best suited to people who eat lots of greens and know how to handle the volume. Sometimes we get questions from customers about "eating leaves", like... how do you do it! We eat so many different leaves that its like... how do you not do it! You can cook any of this stuff like you would kale or swiss chard. 

  
pictured above are green mizuna and mz. america purple mustard greens. 

 
On the left is our favorite standard arugula, Astro. on the right, larger leafed Esmee. 

Mustard Greens
Mustard greens is a general term that applies to all of the cultivated greens in the brassica family that come from the wild mustard grandparent. it includes arugula, the most well known mustard green, but also tons of other colors, shapes and textures of mustard too. The leaves all have a spicy flavor, like arugula does, which gets more intense as they mature. A mix of colorful and flavorful baby mustard leaves makes a really cool salad, and if you let the plant get larger youll want to cook, stew or sautee the leaves to settle their flavor down and soften their texture. Mustard greens are even used as a cover crop at some farms, and ofcourse if you let them flower and collect the seeds you can make your very own mustard!



Watercress
When most people think watercress they think it can only grow in moving streams, which is where it grows in the wild. But cultivated watercress will grow in any garden even a super sunny one so long as theres lots of consistent moisture for it to drink up. When things start to heat up it is preferred to plant your watercress in some partial shade, mostly so that it stays nice and moist, and it'll make you spicy delicious super healthy leaves through spring. Watercress is rich in vitamin A (from beta-carotene) and vitamin C, and is a source of folate, calcium, iron and vitamin E. 

Dandelion
We grow dandelion pretty much year round, but it gets more popular in gardens this time of year since the pickings of sweet greens is slimmer. Dandelion definitely deserves a spot in your garden if you consider yourself a healthy eater. Bitter greens are very good for your body and for your digestive system, but people have bred bitterness out of their cultivated foods because they don't like the flavor. In Greek cuisine bitter wild greens are made into a dish called "horta" where they are blanched in water, and then sauteed in olive oil and lots of lemon. The key to making this dish tasty is the blanching part, because it mellows out the bitterness of the dandelion. 

Cranberry hibiscus is known for being a deep summer green but we threw it in this spring rundown because its so fun and tasty and beautiful and theres no reason to not grow it now. This plant is different from all of the above because its a shrub, so itll get pretty big! it also doesnt need to go in your raised bed, you can plant it in your yard like you would an ornamental hibiscus. The beautiful red maple-shaped leaves are not just edible they're also tasty! they have a tart lemony profile and the tiny ones can be thrown in salads whole, while the large ones might need to be chopped up. This plant will thrive all the way through fall and it takes well to pruning so you can keep it smaller if you need to by just being agressive with pruning new growth. 

Seed Saving: 

 Another fun garden activity that is unique to spring is the harvesting and saving of seeds from your plants. Many plants that you might not think make seeds will definitely do so if you leave them in your garden long enough, or if you treat them just a little bit differently. Lets take the medicinal flower calendula as an example.... If you're growing calendula in your garden you are likely harvesting all of the blooms and saving them for medicinal use. Well, if you leave a few flowers on the plant then they will get pollinated, die and turn into seeds! Let the seeds dry on the plant (that means they have fully matured and will be the right age for germination when you are ready to plant them) and then store them in a jar in the dark until next season. Saving your own seeds is an important part of becoming a self sufficient and resilient gardener. While we specialize in selling people plants and seeds we are always thrilled to see people move away from relying on us for materials and into relying on nature and their own garden to generate what they need. And then when they generate abundance, especially in the form of saved seeds, sharing it with their community. Miami Seed Share is a local non profit project that collects and gives away saved seed (through seed libraries and different spots throughout the city), check them out on instagram if you have seed you'd like to donate. 

   

If left on the plant many flowers & fruits will make mature seeds, all it takes is some patience. The calendula left will produce way more seed than you'll ever need for next season! The seeds in the palm right are heirloom Datil pepper seeds, which can be harvested from a pepper fruit so long as it matures into a color (sometimes orange, sometimes yellow, sometimes red). Each plant family will make useable seeds in a different way, so the best way to figure out how to save lots of different seeds is to get a guide book, like "Seed to Seed", which is a bit of a seed saving bible. You can also use seeds in a culinary way! The herb cilantro has so many useable parts including its fresh and dried seeds, which are referred to as "coriander" but are just cilantro seeds! Dill seed, arugula seed (which is called mustard seeds, like what you make mustard out of!), and nasturtium seeds are all edible and useful in the kitchen, so you can also stock your pantry during spring before composting your spent plants. 

Composting: 

Spring is a good time to start a compost pile if you don't already have one for two reasons. No, three reasons! Reason one is that many of our local tree species (like oaks and black olives) are losing their leaves now, and leaf litter is a super valuable (but free and abundant) ingredient in compost. Leaf litter breaks down faster than woody mulch, is full of minerals that the tree removed from the soil, and they are a great environment for microbial & fungal life forms to thrive in. Reason two is that as you empty your garden out of spent crops you'll get to make use of them if you add them to a compost pile. Plants added to a compost pile fresh are referred to as "greens" and they contain lots of nitrogen, a key ingredient for plant growth. Layering greens and browns (dried stuff like mulch, hay, cardboard and our friend leaf litter) is how you make a healthy and balanced compost pile, so spring has lots of greens and browns for you to divert from the waste stream and turn into future plant food. The third reason is that summer is the best season for composting because the microbial, fungal & bug life that makes composting happen (basically life forms eating detritus and pooping it out) is at its peak during the hot and sunny months of summer. If you start a compost pile now it'll be eaten and pooped out a hundred times through the summer leaving you with a much smaller but very precious pile of "compost" that will be ready in time for fall planting. See how that all works?! Its the cycle of life in your home veggie garden! 

So get out there and enjoy the new and exciting crops (asian greens!) and yields (saved seed, future compost) that the spring garden has to offer. 

March is a really beautiful month in South Florida (its going to cool down again, trust us....), but it does come with the bittersweet fact that it's the last call for planting some of our beloved winter veggies like kale and tomatoes. We can still grow quick crops like lettuce, arugula, radishes and even cucumbers through May, but since tomatoes and kale take about two months to mature planting them in your garden much later than March is kind of a lost cause. 

This time of year we start getting the "is it too late to plant anything" question more and more, and while our short answer is "NO, it's never too late!" let's dig into our long answer here. We consider our cool weather veggie season to be over by the end of May. So, if you want to figure out if its too late to start something new from seed you'll need to find the "days to maturity" of the variety and then work backwards from the end of may. Let's do this together for Sungold cherry tomatoes. Their listed days to maturity is 60.... but its not as clear cut as that, because thats considered to be the day of first fruiting, so you'll want the plant to be able to thrive for at least a month after its maturity date so you can try to get a good amount of fruit off the plant. so we want the plant to be alive for at least 90 days at the end of may. that means you shouldn't put the seeds in the ground after the last week of February. Because this is all weather dependent and there are so many other variables too it really isn't this cut and dry. There isn't a week every year when every gardener and farmer in miami declares in unison "we aren't planting tomatoes anymore" and one thing we have learned over the years its that EVERYONE has an opinion about stuff like this. For example if a market customer casually asks when we stop planting tomatoes we will say "sometime in March" and the shopper next to them will be like "i grow tomatoes year round and they do great" and then someone walking by will chime in with "i don't grow anything besides everglades wild cherry and i plant them in on December 15th".... Because we consider ourselves a nursery thats good for beginners lots of the info we share is skewed to the easier side of gardening, so we do stop selling tomato seedlings in March because summer tomato gardening, while possible, is more of an advanced gardening move. For the very same reason we don't sell anything during a time when we don't think you should plant it. We consider all of our inventory "season appropriate" so if you come to the nursery and we have it in stock, you can plant it. This time of year we are removing varieties every week as the season progresses, and we are also adding new items that are more heat tolerant and better suited to spring growing. 

Our nursery stocked the last batch of assorted tomato varieties right now and we will be selling them at 20% off until they're all gone, at which time we will declare our tomato season OVER! But wait.. theres one super cool variety that we grow until June.... after March the only tomato variety you'll find on our web store is Everglades Cherry Tomato. This little guy is worth talking about for a bit because we're big fans of this pretty unique tomato variety! Everglades cherry tomatoes are a cult favorite down here in South Florida, and for good reason. Legend has it that these were found "growing wild" throughout the everglades, and after their discovery the seeds were saved and distributed by local gardeners who were looking for a tomato that could stand the extreme heat and humidity of a South Florida summer. Nowadays they're a staple in summer and winter gardens throughout the area. Their tiny size makes them adorable for use in salads, as garnish, and as snacks, and their sweet taste make them irresistible. These wild cherry tomatoes make large highly branched plants that are best grown in a wild and non-trellised fashion. If allowed to grow like a groundcover, left to sprawl and crawl along the ground they can make enormous plants with hundreds of fruit clusters on one plant! 
Allow a few clusters of Everglades cherry tomatoes to stay on the plant and they will happily reseed themselves year after year. If you'd like to save the seeds instead just choose a few very ripe fruits, squeeze the insides out into a jar with water, allow it to ferment for a few days (this simulates the digestive system of an animal and will break down the mucilaginous coating around the seed) and then dry on a towel. 

Despite its tolerance of the tropical heat Everglades cherry tomatoes can be grown anywhere where all other tomato varieties are. A tip for harvesting the tiny sweet fruits: instead of picking fruit by fruit, cut the entire cluster off the vine when all the fruit is most of the way ripe. Alternatively, break the fruit off of the vine one by one with their little green hat on (the technical term is "peduncle") since the fruits skin tends to rip when its removed hastily.

Ok, so what crops should we be focusing on in our March gardens? We have 2-3 months of cool weather left which actually lets us plant a pretty very wide range of veggies and herbs at this point. I like to look at categories of plants one by one to keep my list organized. Let's start with greens because this category has the most potential for late season production. Greens, especially cut-and-come-again greens produce the most food in the shortest amount of time in the smallest amount of space! Lettuces are an obvious choice, not only because most of our palettes are happily adjusted to lettuce so we should take advantage of growing it for as long as we can in the home garden, but also because they are highly productive and the benefits of home grown lettuce are huge. The benefits I'm referring to are freshness, quality and variety. Tender leafy greens are extremely perishable and when you buy them at the store they are typically already days, sometimes weeks old, which means you not only have just a few days to consume them, but their quality is already diminished. When you have lettuce growing in a home garden you can literally harvest on demand for each meal and you'll notice the difference in texture (crispy!) and flavor (bright green flavor). At this point in the season you can still start lettuces from seed or plant starter plants for a little head start. Not at all lettuce varieties respond well to our unique climate so we recommend either buying the lettuce varieties we have at our nursery, or you can use our list as a guide for what to look for elsewhere. We've spent many years of trial and error to select the varieties we currently grow and if you take a look, it's a seriously fun assortment of colors and textures! 

Other worthwhile greens to include in a March planting include dandelion greens, French sorrel, arugula, bok choi and collards greens. Arugula, mustard greens and baby bok choi are crazy fast growing so you'll have an opportunity to plant them 2-3 more times before the end of May when the growing season makes a drastic shift to tropical crops. Collard greens, French sorrel and dandelion greens are all more long term crops that you may even keep in the garden further into the summer months. They are somewhat heat tolerant and have a naturally bitter or sour flavor profile so they hold up better when the weather in South Florida starts to get hot. Planting any of these greens in a March garden will yield good results and make yummy food for your family. 

Another major category of plants to be focusing on right now is culinary herbs. Most herbs can make it through the summer, or at least make it deep into the summer months. The prerequisite is that they are well established by the time the weather gets extremely humid. For example, the hardy Mediterranean herbs like rosemary, oregano and sage will actually thrive and get huge over the summer if the plants are well established early on. March is our last change to get these kinds of plants into the garden safely. That also applies to Thai basil, dill, parsley, scallions, mint and lemon balm. Some of the herbs that definitely won't make it through the summer, but are good to plant right now because they are quick growing and will be harvested before May include Italian basil, cilantro, thyme and cutting celery. Another group of herbs to start taking seriously this time of year are the more tropical herbs like lemon grass, garlic chives, Jamaican oregano, Costa Rican mint and culantro. In a nutshell, March is a great time to plant the widest variety of herbs imaginable! 

Moving on to a more colorful group of plants, hot peppers and eggplants! Did you know that these also grow and produce year round in our sub tropical climate? Certain varieties, especially Asian eggplants and most of the hot peppers, actually thrive stronger during our long hot summer days. They like heavy rains, increased sunlight and they aren't heavy feeders (summer soils usually hold less fertility because the heavy rains was away fertilizers and organic matter at a faster rate). That said, we like to warn people of the pros and cons of growing these crops in raised beds during the summer months. Both of these crops are in the same family as tomatoes and ALL of these crops are nematode magnets :(  Nematodes are the scourge of South Florida gardening. They are present in all types of soil, and thrive here because they like sandy low-organic matter soil. They are an invisible ringworm that feeds on the roots of plants causing a general weakening of the plant and sometimes death, depending on the density of nematode population. Its hard to tell if you have nematodes or not until you pull the plant out of the ground and inspect roots; nematode affected roots are dark or muddy looking, brittle and thick, covered with many small nodules and bumps (compared to healthy roots which are usually white or light colored and fine like hair). Since nematodes are usually present in most gardens it is super important to manage them. There isn’t an easy solution for nematodes which is one reason why they are such a problem.


the roots on the right are infested with nematodes. compare them with healthy roots on the left. 

If you know you have nematodes, the last thing you want to do is plant crops that attract nematodes during the "off-season". If you aren't sure if you have a nematode problem, but you know you really want to plant tomatoes in the Fall, avoid these crops during the "off-season" because you'll most likely develop a problem by the Fall. Another pest problem to look out for with this family of plants is white fly. If your garden is prone to white fly outbreaks it might be a good idea to avoid these crops during the hottest months of the year, although white fly is much more manageable than nematodes ;)   

March is for sure still a month during which you can plant new plants in the garden and continue harvesting food for yourself. Our Spring plant sale is scheduled for March 25th, 26th and 27th this year, which is about 2 weeks later than last years spring sale. Thats because last year we felt like we called it a bit too early and it ended up staying mild and plant-friendly way later than we imagined it would. Lets see what this Springs weather patterns have in store for us! 

February is a fun gardening month in South Florida because its a bit of a sweet spot. Most of your garden is planted, the weather is cool, the pests are manageable, and the harvests are happening. We can tell when everyones gardens are happy and full because we see less customers come through the nursery! Bad for our bottom line but good for the gardeners... it means that the plants they've bought or started from seed are happy and making food and things are just cruising along, which we love. We don't mind the lull, we actually take advantage of it to prepare for our big summer inventory switch. While it might seem crazy to be thinking about summer plants already we have to start thinking about them so we can propagate the slower growing plants in time for them to be happy well rooted plants come May when we start selling them. We thought it would be fun to have this months garden blog post focus on some fun stuff you can do with and in your garden to take advantage of the bounty and beautiful chilly weather of February instead of talking about practical stuff like harvest techniques and pest identification. 

An edible garden isn't just useful for cooking theres lots of other fun activities that a thriving garden can inspire. Last weekend we hosted our first ever plant dye workshop with local herbalist Sun Sister and it was super fun! We did a simple immersion dye bath made with fresh marigolds and a bundle dyed scarf that we used all sorts of materials for. Bundle dyes are direct pigment transfers so you use super saturated colorful material and the color basically bleeds onto the fabric you are dyeing. We gathered all of the ingredients for this from our family garden like marigolds, turmeric, cranberry hibiscus, purple cabbage leaves, violas, begonias, geraniums, and even red lettuce! Plus we foraged for some wild ingredients like brazilian pepper and bouganvillea blossoms. If you want to join us for the next workshop we still have seats left for the February 26th date, but also heres a step by step tutorial to do this simple plant project at home. 

Now is a great time to tackle an edible flower project too! If you follow us on instagram you might have seen the beautiful creations of farmer Tiff and our team member Ale, who made these absolutely magical edible flower cookies as a side hustle last season. They started that project based solely on the desire to make use of an overabundance of edible flowers growing at the nursery. People have been decorating baked goods with edible flowers for as long as we've known which flowers are edible however flower adorned food is definitely having a hip moment thanks to creators like Loria Stern who is making the most beautiful edible flower creations ever. Check out her website or instagram for inspiration... she's making raw pies covered in flowers, cinnamon buns stuffed with rose petals, seedy crackers covered in herb branches, chocolates with rose and lavender on top, tons of different edible flower cookies, plus she makes gorgeous wedding cakes with dried flowers that she grows herself and presses in books. 

For these cookies we used a super straightforward sugar cookie recipe from the food network. As you can see in the process photos we completely cover the cookie in flower bits and they shrink a bit in the cooking process. The dough is easy to work with when you keep it nice and cold, so we roll the cookies out, then chill them, then decorate, then chill again, then bake. You can use anything thats edible and growing in your yard... on these cookies we've used salad burnet, chervil, thyme, mint, rosemary, bronze fennel, marigolds, citrus gem marigolds, nasturtiums, pentas, begonias, borage, geraniums and pansies. If you want to tackle a baking project that requires more bake time then you'll want to press and dry your flowers and use them to decorate after baking. The key to using them fresh is a quick bake time, otherwise they'll shrivel up into boring brown clumps in the oven. 

Other flower based creative crafts that we've tackled over the year include egg decorating and dyeing, flower crown making, raw cookie decorating, sun printing, and making and painting with plant pigment. And paper making! Oh, and soap making! There are tons of resources online if you want to try your hand at getting creative with plant material, and with lots of blooms & herbs in your garden most of the material you need is free and right there waiting for you. 

If you are more info food projects we indulge in lots of those thanks to the bounty of the winter gardening season. This time of year farmer Tiff is making all sorts of preserved goods for our farmers market booth, like sauerkraut, spicy pickled carrots, fennel & cherry tomato confit and her famous kimchi. Lacto-fermentation is a great technique to learn for preserving all sorts of veggies like cucumbers, radishes, turnips, green beans and cabbage. Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz is the bible of lacto-fermentation and a great place to start if you are a newbie. Once you master a few simple techniques you can really start to get creative with whatever your garden is making too much of. Confit is a cooking technique that is basically super slow poaching something in fat. The most famous type is duck confit, but you can use olive oil and confit lots of vegetables too. Tiffs favorites are fennel and lemon confit for which she uses this recipe (ignore the terrible photo this stuff is delish...) and a simple sungold cherry tomato confit that she found in the Gjelina cookbook many years ago. The process of removing all of the cherry tomatoes skins is tedious but worth it, since you end up slow cooking the flesh and juices with thyme, oregano, lots of garlic and olive oil. If you submerge the solids in the fat then you can keep this stuff in the fridge forever and use it as a flavorful base for cooking or something to pour over crusty bread when you've got visitors to impress. 

Spicy taquiera style pickled carrots from Kevin Wests, Saving the Seasons. 

A simple sauerkraut with turmeric juice added for health, flavor & color. 

Kimchi made with purple napa cabbage from the farm using this classic recipe. 

 

If you need some fermentation inspiration these are Tiffs favorite resources that she turns to again and again for inspiration and recipes. While recipes are great they oftentimes call for lots of unique ingredients that you have to go hunt and shop for, so once you have some basics down get out there and freestyle with whatever you have in the garden. Slugs got your swiss chard? pickle the colorful stems! Arugula got too big and spicy? Add some kale to tone down the spice and make a pesto. green beans really pumping? Add some dill and lacto-ferment the suckers! or quick pickle them with garlic and apple cider vinegar. Wind knocked a bunch of unripe starfruit off of your neighbors tree? pickle them umeboshi plum style! ok, ok, we'll stop. you get the point. Gardening can be so rewarding as a hobby on its own but its also a great inspiration point for branching out into new creative endeavors. 

If those aren't enough ideas to get your creative juices flowing we wanted to quickly mention easy to make items that use medicinal plants and herbs. A tincture is an alcohol or glycerin based botanical extraction that people have been using as medicine since well... medicine began! Heres a super thorough explanation of the basic process from a very reputable herb company for you to check out. typically different types and strengths of alcohol are used for different types of material (like, fresh leaves versus something hard like a resin or wood) and you can use fresh or dried herbs. Oil is another substrate that can pull aromatic, flavor and medicinal qualities out of botanicals, and typically one uses dry herbs for that since oil and water don't mix. Fire cider is a popular herbal concoction used for general health and immunity building that uses apple cider vinegar as a base and it has lots of tropical garden goodies in it like ginger, turmeric, spicy peppers, rosemary & oregano. 

dried calendula soaking in olive oil so it can be strained and mixed with beeswax to make salve.

an herbal glycerin based tincture being made using fennel seeds, mint and other medicinals used to soothe the digestive system. 

The most inspiring book we have found for gardeners who want to get into preserving and using what they grow it Self Sufficient Herbalism by Lucy Jones. This book is full of information about the herbs she uses but she lives in England which is a very different growing environment, so don't get too hung up on using the exact same plants that you read about. Easy to grow beginners medicinals that you might already have in your garden or neighborhood down here in South Florida include tulsi (aka holy basil), chamomile, turmeric, ginger, barbados cherry, lemongrass, aloe vera, calendula, yarrow and spilanthes. And don't forget that most culinary herbs also have strong medicinal properties, like thyme, oregano, sage & rosemary. 

If you'd like to learn more about using medicinal plants we have three workshops scheduled for the spring with tropical herbalist Justine Hazelcorn. We also still have spots in our February 26th plant dyeing workshop with Nikki of Sun Sister!