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! 

As many of you know we moved to a property called the PLK Estate in the Redland last summer. We did this in partnership with AgriTrace Institute, a local non profit that aims to protect historic farmland by partnering with organic farms to rehabilitate and activate them, and our old friend French Farms, who is farming the land around our nursery. This unique piece of property is technically located in "Silver Palm" which is an older historic district built around Andersons General Store (currently derelict and for sale) and Silver Palm Schoolhouse, both located on the corner of 157th Avenue and 232nd street. 



Our nursery is open to the public every Saturday and we are always shocked by how many people come visit us and tell us that they've either never been to the Redland or haven't come down to explore in years. Even when our farm was in Little River or Allapattah we would come to this area often to source plants, pick fruit, visit other farms and buy supplies, so we have always nurtured a connection to this unique and beautiful agricultural area. Now that we are located down here and we seem to be acting as a draw for city folks to come down for the day we thought we would put together a list of some of our favorite neighbors for you to visit and explore. 

Little River Coop Nursery

The Fields of French Farms 

Little River Coop & French Farms at AgriTrace Institute
is located at 22305 SW 157th avenue, and we are open every Saturday from 10am - 5pm. We sell edible plants & farm grown produce. please note, we are not a U pick farm, we are a working farm thats quite primitive. Dogs are welcome. 




Patch of Heaven Sanctuary 
is our neighbor just across the street at 21900 SW 157th Avenue, and its an absolute hidden gem. It's a non profit dedicated to preserving hammock forest, supporting wildlife diversity and so much more. The property, open to visitors every Thursday - Sunday from 8am till 4pm boasts 16 acres of hammock preserve, multiple historic homes, a zen garden, an impressive collection of antiques, horse stables, butterfly greenhouses, and one of the most impressive grottos we've ever seen. And they have jade vines, which flower in the spring... read more about this amazing jewel here. 

Castellow Hammock Preserve & Nature Center
22301 SW 162nd Avenue. Our farm is actually surrounded by this incredibly special wild nature preserve, which has a visitor center and half mile interpretive trail on 162nd Avenue, just a few blocks east of us. The Castellow Hammock is a rare 112 acre preserve that shows us what this area of South Florida used to look like before we came along and had our way with it. Its full of unique geological formations like solution holes and beautiful forest trees. The nature center also does lots of family friendly programming. 

Isaac Farms & Succulent World are two nurseries owned by the same family and they are the masters of succulents and cacti growing. Isaac Farms (18800 SW 177th Ave) is where you'll want to go for small plants, and Succulent World (23650 SW 177th Avenue) is where we source nice large pots for various projects, but they are getting into selling more hanging hoya vines, agaves and more there too. Both properties are really decked out in decorative and ornamental accents, water features and Koi ponds, and inspiration for working on your home succulent garden. 

While succulents are cool our favorite type of plants are natives, and theres a handful of cool native nurseries down here that are growing beautiful plants that are native to South Florida and are thusly low maintenance, pollinator and habitat friendly, and climate appropriate. Heres a list of our favorite native nurseries. Make sure to check on their opening information before heading out to shop since many nurseries have quirky opening hours (just like us!). 

Silent Native
Plant Creations
Vebers Jungle Garden
Caseys Corner
Muni Farms (not regularly open to the public)
Native Tree Nursery (not regularly open to the public)
Doug Ingram & Sons Nursery (not regularly open to the public)



For buying locally grown produce even though Homestead & the Redland are agricultural areas it can be quite tough. Many of the farms grow tomatoes, zucchini, green beans and tropical fruit and send them straight to distributors who put them on trains and 18 wheelers to be distributed throughout the northeast. Even smaller diversified farms tend to take their product into the city to sell it because the customers are more densely populated. If you stop at a roadside attraction selling produce the likelihood that it was grown here is slim (especially if its selling things like haas avocados and oranges!) and the likely hood that it was grown organically is even lower, so always make sure to ask where the produce is from and consider going out of your way to shop from one of these smaller diversified organic farms that all offer on farm produce order pickup or the farmers market! 

Bee Heaven Farm
Aloha Redland
French Farms 


Aloha Redland is a magical female owned farm just south of us in the Redland and they have just started hosting lots of weekend yoga and meditation retreats. The property also boasts a gorgeous natural aquifer-fed grotto pool that you can only swim in during one of their retreats, so consider signing up for one asap!



The Fruit & Spice Park (24801 SW 187th Avenue) is the only tropical botanic garden in the continental US, and it's a great place to explore the unique tropical fruits and spices that we can grow in our special climate. Since many of the tropical fruit farms in the area are private this is the best place to go to see a showcase of mature fruit specimens many of which you have likely never seen before. Their general rule for tasting is that if a fruit is on the ground its fair game, so if you go during the summer (beware, its going to be hot hot hot) you will be rewarded with some tropical fruit snacks. 

Fowey Rocks is a newer addition to the area and we couldn't be more excited to watch this inspiring project grow and expand. Hosanna and Michael own a beautiful property that used to be an orchid nursery and is now the magical homebase of their skincare & perfume line, called Fowey Rocks. Visit them to explore their distillery, learn about the distillation process, or purchase one of their skincare or home care items every Saturday or Sunday from 11am till 4pm. (22585 sw 187th Avenue)



Last but not least we need to talk about Mexican food... which is what you'll want to be eating while in Homestead and the Redland. Our favorite spots are as follows: 

Taqueria Las Chavelas (this food truck is the closest one on the list to our farm)
Taqueria Cinco Hermanos (this is our number one, so good!)
Taqueria Morelia (way further south, has the best salsa bar)
Moreno Tortilla (this is a tiny marketplace that sells fresh tortillas and some food) 

Happy New year! And happy beautiful weather, and happy plants! January is a fun month for gardening in South Florida because its mostly successes. The weather is "cool" (and by that we mean averages of the mid 70s) and your garden is mostly planted and just chugging along making you food. In the next few months you'll start to face mounting pest pressure, increased temperatures, and soil thats had most of its nutrients used up by plants already, so make sure you take the time to enjoy the ease and beauty in your January garden. 

As of December 21st our days are getting longer, not shorter, which is a good thing for your garden. It means the sun will start its ascent from its southward pitch further up into the sky and your garden will likely start to get a bit more light because of that shift. Also this means we can plant some plants that are effected by the lengthening and shortening day. This is called "photoperiodism" and its why we don't plant some varieties in the fall, because the shortening day signals to the plant that winter is coming so it needs to reproduce aka "bolt" and make flowers and seeds. Sesame is a plant that we like to grow but we wait until a lengthening day to do so, since it will flower and make seeds very small if we plant it in fall. 

 
A small patch of sesame that we planted in January and harvested on April 27th. 

 Now is also a good time to think about continued fertility. If you planted your garden in October and you used some compost and organic granular fertilizer to amend your soil your plants might be ready for another meal. "side dressing" and "top dressing" are terms that refers to the act of sprinkling compost or fertilizer on the top and sides of your plants that are planted in the ground. When you first plant you have loose soil so you can mix the fertilizer in, but now that you've got mature plants you cant disturb the soil so adding nutrients to the top and side is a good technique. When you water the nutrients will be dissolved because they are water soluble and the water will be pulled into the soil where the plants can drink it and the nutrients its holding. For this you can use your own homemade compost, worm castings, and any organic granular fertilizer, like our favorite Sustane 464. 

Another continued fertility technique that we swear by is called "foliar feeding" and it involves mixing a nutrient solution, compost or fertilizer into water and then watering the whole plant with that. Plants can absorb many nutrients via their leaves, stems and bark so watering them with a nutrient solution will coat those areas with nutrients that they can then take in through those parts, which is super cool! Its especially useful to use this technique in your garden if you're having issues with your soil, or you aren't getting your watering right. Too much water can make it hard for roots to absorb nutrients, plus having balanced and healthy soil is one of the hardest things to achieve in a home garden (especially a new one) so foliar feeding helps you get over any humps and nutrient deficiencies you might be experiencing. We use Neptunes Harvest Fish and Seaweed Blend in most of our gardens once every 2 weeks. 

Fertigating is as easy as watering your garden with a watering can. cause thats all it takes! Just add the emulsion to your can and you're ready to go.

If you are a big salad greens gardener make sure to take advantage of the weather and go hard on things like lettuce and spinach now while you can. We will stop selling lettuce greens during the first week of March. You can also harvest blanche, and freeze your hearty greens like kale and collards, and all of your herbs too. To preserve your herbs for future use in the kitchen you chop them up and add them to ice cubes! 



Check out this blogpost that gives general rules and ideas for preserving herbs. 

So yeah, that blog post was a little bit all over the place. but thats January i guess! Theres a little bit of harvesting, a little bit of fertilizing, a little bit of new plantings, and a little bit of preserving to be done. January and February might be our most "normal" months of the gardening season but dont dare call them boring or else the pests will hear you and theyll come running to spice up your garden life! haha! 

Hellooooooooo December! How we gardeners (who work outside year round) missed your short cool sparkling days. This past week our garden team has been in such high spirits. Not only do we feel better when working in cooler weather but the plants like it too so the gardens that we work in have all started to thrive and plants are growing so happily and everything becomes so much easier this time of year. So if you are struggling with your new fall garden don’t give up yet, the gardening hump smooths out a bit this time of year and things start to just flow with the plants. If you planted some quick growing crops then they might be ready to harvest, and we know that harvesting is a big sticky spot for beginners. We wish there was an easy answer to “how do I harvest things” because every single plant requires a slightly different harvesting technique but we have a few general tips to help you get comfortable approaching your new garden with a pair of snippers.


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

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



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

Our second tip for figuring out harvesting is if you want to eat it, just do it! Like we just said, many plants are edible at every stage of their growth, so if you use proper harvesting techniques you can really eat things anytime. Kale is a good example to use here, because you can eat kale at any point from micro greens to baby leaf to mature, but if you snip the whole growing tip off of your plant when harvesting it then its done, no more kale no matter how old the plant is. Heres a detailed and clear video of a gardener harvesting his kale properly that we found by googling “how to harvest kale”. This technique, of strategically removing the oldest leaves from the bottom of the plant, is referred to as “cut and come again” and we do it for most greens including baby ones like mustards, arugula & lettuce. Tiffany was just lamenting not having made a video of us using this method to harvest but rejoice! Lots of other gardeners have done that before us, so here’s a great clear video of a home gardener using this method to harvest his lettuce. In this video he shows two techniques, one where you tediously harvest leaf by leaf, and one where you cut the whole head with a knife just above the crown (so as to not damage it) which is how we tend to harvest denser plantings like arugula without having to go leaf by leaf.

 

Mustards and arugula are harvested at about a fingers length for baby salad leaf use. We like to use the messier cut and come again method for them which is basically like giving them a short hair cut to take all mature leaves while leaving the growing tip intact. 

Mature greens like kale, chard, dandelion greens and sorrel are also harvested using that method but leaf by leaf, since its quicker. Take the lowest and most mature leaves first. 

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



This gretel white eggplant is a great example of how important it is to know what variety youre growing. If as a newbie gardener you were waiting for this thing to turn purple before harvesting youd certainly miss out on it while its young enough to eat. This variety is a baby white variety that is mature at a hands length.



Banana peppers, shishitos and most other sweet pepper varieties can be eaten green/ unripe or ripe (red or orange depending on the variety). 

If you have a cucumber plant that’s full of little cukes and you’re wondering when they are ready the best way to know that is to check out info online that’s specific to the variety you are growing. Some cucumbers are ready at 4” long, like our favorite pickler Jackson Supreme. If you leave it on the plant too long it wont get longer it’ll get chunky and the skin and seeds will mature and get tougher, reducing its quality. But if you’re growing a Suyo Long cucumber, they are ready to pick at 9” long, so you’re looking for very different visual cues for that variety even though both plants are cucumbers.

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



Some freshly harvested baby bok choi enjoying a float in a cool water bath. 

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

 

Harvesting turmeric is easy just dig your plant up, break the rhizomes up, wash them off and stick them in the fridge or freezer. 

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



This roselle calyx is perfectly ready for harvest. 

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

A fun sweet potato harvest at the fall planting of one of our gardens.  

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

 
(A freshly planted fall garden getting watered in) 

As I write this the daily high is dropping from 81 to an overnight low of 73. While that might not sound "cool" consider the same range for October first... a daytime high of 83 with a nighttime low of 80. The nighttime temperatures make a HUGE difference in plant world. And the humidity in South Florida is the reason why during our hotter summer months we see such small fluctuations in temperature from day to night. When plants are too hot they switch from growing mode into survival mode, pausing their rate of growth and other vital functions and switching to focus on perspiration for increased cooling. Plants perspire via their leaves which is what produces wilting. Sometimes when its extra hot out you'll notice your plants leaves wilting even when theres plenty of water in the soil, which means that its so hot that your plants are perspiring faster than they can drink more water. At night, plants get a much needed break from this stress and are able to switch back into growth mode, even though theres no sun out for photosynthesis. This day to night temperature change is the key reason why it suddenly becomes much easier to make happy plants and grow your own food in November and the cooler months that follow. 

If you haven't planted your garden for fall yet make sure to read our October gardening blog post about spacing, succession planting, and how to plan your garden. If you have planted then lets talk about starting your maintenance routine. Your first key to successful maintenance is having gotten a few key elements right already, one being making sure your garden gets lots of sunlight (8 hours or more is ideal) and the other being proper soil prep before planting. Many beginners buy soil from us or in bags from big box stores and plant right into it, but that stuff is just filler that needs to be amended before planting. We recommend amending your soil with an organic fertilizer like Sustane 464 and compost from your home compost pile. Lots of gardeners think that once they planted their plants they are "done" but thats far from the truth... your maintenance and care for the plants is just beginning! 

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

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

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


(spraying organic pesticides is just one piece of the puzzle, the main way to keep pests off of your plants is to have healthy plants) 

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

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

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

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

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

In the spirit of writing a monthly gardening blog post we usually start a new one by re-reading the previous months post. I recommend you do the same as a reader to get a full picture of what is going on. In September we did a lot of planning and preparing soil beds, we bought seeds and started them. This month we will get into a planting rhythm. 

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. As humans evolved we decided that we preferred annuals. Probably not for their practically, but because we could manipulate and control them. The very first annuls to be domesticated were grasses like wheat, barley and chick peas in the Fertile Crescent region of southwest Asia while in other parts of the world early humans began domesticating root vegetables, beans and corn. You all know the rest from there! Today our agriculture system is based almost entirely on a diverse range of annual vegetables that are replanted from seed regularly for a continuous supply of food. In fact, the majority of the annual vegetable varieties our agricultural system is based on are varieties we engineered. They are distant relatives of the wild plants humans found on earth hundreds of years ago. They are plants we have bread and genetically manipulated to perform within our stringent and fast passed agricultural system. The tomatoes, lettuces, carrots and corn of today probably wouldn't survive in the wild on their own, much like the breeds of pets we've also domesticated.

The trade off for creating a food production system that relies so heavily on human labor is increased yield and tastier plants. If managed properly domesticated annual plants are sweeter, more tender hence easier to chew and can yield a big harvest in a small space year after year. So lets looks at the home vegetable garden of today. In order to reap the benefits of your garden you gotta do a good job at managing your crops, otherwise you might as well plant wild perennial plants like they do in permaculture systems. 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. That's were an edible plant nursery like us comes in. Starting plants from seed is a challenging process and even professional farms struggle with it and usually dedicate a specialized person to that task. Buying starter plants makes a lot of sense especially when you are working with a small garden of 2 to 3 raised beds. The infrastructure, attention to detail and time needed to start certain crops from seed is usually not worth the investment for a small garden. Don't let that stop you from replanting your garden a few times. Some crops you will probably want to start from seed, but there is no shame in buying starter plants to keep the rotation in your garden fresh throughout the season. 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. Its also best to keep "mounding plants" like thyme, oregano, nasturtiums 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 arent 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. 

Don't forget to come to our fall plant sale October 15th - 17th 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 through the end of the year from 10am - 5pm. 

September is another tricky month in our unique South Florida gardening calendar. Fun fact: September is the second rainiest month of the year (the most rainy being June) with an average of 10 inches of rain for the month. Its also still intensely hot and humid in September, despite fall decorations showing up at the grocery store and pumpkin spice lattes being advertised online. We always spend lots of time telling new customers and enthusiastic inexperienced gardeners to "be patient and keep waiting" through the month of September because it still is really quite early to do your fall planting. That being said it's certainly not too early to prep your garden for fall, install new gardening spaces, or start a selection of seeds for your fall garden. 

Prepping your garden: 

Taking time in September to prep your garden for fall will pay off when its planting time. If you've cover cropped your garden 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. Also, if your garden has been languishing empty through the summer it likely has some pesky weeds in it or big old diseased plants, so get them out of there and cover your soil with a thick layer of hay so they don't just come back with a vengeance. When we prep a garden for planting we also 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 a bit of muscle into using a shovel to dig every square inch of your garden up. Once you've got a shovel full of your garden soil and theres a hole where it used to be you just drop it back in there, it'll break up upon impact and naturally loosen up that way. If you encounter roots, use the sharp shovel to cut them and remove them. 

One more thing... if you have compost and organic granular fertilizer to add to your garden thats best done at the same time as your fall planting, so that none of the nutrients go to waste in the meantime. 

Installing a new garden space: 

September is a great time to build yourself a new garden or expand your current one! Our classic raised bed that we encourage beginners to build (or have us build for you) is a 4 x 8 foot raised bed made out of pressure treated pine from the lumber store. The wood we buy is 10" x 12 x 2 and we cut it down to a 4 foot and an 8 foot length for each side. We also use 4 x 4 posts in the corners and carriage bolts to secure it all together. Heres a pic for reference if you'd like to build yourself one to those exact specs: 

After laying down your wooden bed you'll want to add a liner like the one we sell, so that neighboring trees don't send their roots there to look for water and nutrients (trust us, they will do it, they can literally smell the new rich soil when you lay it down), and then soil. Soil is a whole thing, because there are so many contradictory opinions about what you need to have in your soil and what you should buy for it. 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 aka sterilized (its 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). This filler soils basic role is to keep the water content of the soil balanced, thats why most of the ingredients are either for moisture retention or moisture drainage. Read more about our soil mix here, where we sell it to hundreds of DIY gardeners every season. 

There are lots 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 love these cedar planters from Gardeners for people who want to put their gardens on hardscaping or pavers or patios and balconies.

If you're more interested in going serious DIY you can also build yourself an in ground garden. This involves having a space without much root competition (so a space thats at least 20 feet from all major nearby trees in all directions) and a bit more elbow grease than other gardens. You'll first need to clear the space of all plants including grass, then lay down some cardboard and then mound new soil on top of that cardboard layer and shape it into a plateau into which you plant. 



Here is an in ground bed in progress. Roots were removed from the area, the native soil was mounded up, then cardboard added and finally a plateau of fresh new soil. 



Here is the same space being planted. This will only last one season but it was more affordable to make because it doesn't have a wooden border or a container. 

Seed starting for fall: 

Seed starting is one of the trickiest parts of home gardening, which is why companies like ours exist in the first place! Theres a lot to be said for letting the experts grow your vegetable starts. If you're doing it yourself not only do you need the know how, but you also need somewhere safe to keep them (they cant get rained or nor can they handle full sun exposure), plus you need a stash of specialty materials (germination mix, cell trays, under trays, misters) and of course you need to go online and buy a packet of seeds for every single plant you want to grow (at 3$ a packet plus shipping). Or, you can head to your local specialty organic plant nursery (thats us!) and pay us 4$ a piece to do all of that heavy lifting for you! 

If you do want to try yourself your first task is to watch our seed starting video on youtube or consider joining the new "Secrets of Seed Starting" workshop we just added to our events calendar. That video is jam packed with all of our favorite techniques and materials we use to get good results and healthy seedlings. 



You might be wondering when you should be prioritizing all of this activity! If you are building new garden space do it whenever, just cover the new soil with hay to protect it until you plant it. If you are starting seeds, keep in mind that we start selling 5 week old tomato seedlings on October 15th. So we start our tomato seeds (and kale, and cilantro and almost all of our plant varieties) on Monday September 13th. While we start them in cell trays like the one above we "up pot" them into 4" pots at 3 weeks old, to get them even bigger and stronger before they get planted into gardens. 



If you need supplies for revamping or building a new garden hit us up! Our nursery in the Redland will be open every Saturday from 10-5 and we have lots of soil, compost, fertilizer, and seeds for you to use on your September projects. We also sell raised bed kits, which come with everything you need to get started plus we will deliver them! We are super duper here for you as you head into your first or your fifth gardening season, and we cant wait to see you at the Heirloom Tomato Seedling Sale, this coming October 15th - 17th. 

August is one of the hottest months of our tropical climate growing season, as you must feel every time you step outside your door. If you have a raised bed vegetable garden its likely either completely empty or its got a few struggling herbs hanging on, meanwhile your perennials and tropical fruit trees are likely thriving and growing like teenagers. If you haven't planted anything summer friendly yet its definitely not too late. September is the second rainiest month of our season (June is the first) so theres still lots of humidity and rainfall ahead of us to help establish your banana circle or mango tree (check out our July blog post for more info about designing and planting a food forest for your backyard). 

The main focus of your August gardening to-do list should be resting. Not just laying on the couch resting, but allowing your soil to rest, and be revitalized. That doesn't mean just ignoring your garden, on the contrary there are a number of techniques you can execute in your garden to help the soil rest and regenerate its nutrients so that it will be at its very best come fall. 

Lasagna Covering
This is a made up term for a technique that we have adapted from the popular "lasagna gardening" technique for building new garden spaces. In lasagna gardening large layers of organic material are stacked on top of each other (like making lasagna) on top of bare soil to build new soil. This technique takes patience as you then have to wait for the whole steamy pile of hay, manure, mulch, grass clippings, kitchen scraps, newspaper and whatever else you've added to compost and turn into soil before using it. To use this technique as a soil conditioner for your raised bed you shrink the whole system and make a "lid" of the ingredients on top of your preexisting soil. We typically add a layer of leaf litter, a layer of old plant material, a layer of horse bedding and then top it off with a nice thick layer of coastal straw. Not only does this protect your soil from being washed away during the heavy rains of summer, it will also suppress weeds, keep your soil life nice and protected (the earthworms and fungal residents will appreciate being protected from the extreme heat) and of course the main purpose of this is that when the summer is through and you are ready to replant for fall most of the material will have composted right in your garden and turned into new soil and organic nutrients. 

It might not look like much in this picture but these beds aren't "empty" they are full of composting organic material protected by a layer of hay, which will keep weeds from sprouting and taking over. 

Cover Cropping
Cover cropping is a very important tool in regenerative agriculture that you can adapt to your backyard garden to help build new soil during the off season, which is now! August is the perfect time to plant yourself a cover crop, watch it grow, and chop it down so that it can decompose and leave your garden perfectly ready for fall. There are many benefits to planting a cover crop. Firstly, the complex web of life that exists in your soil, from worms and bugs to fungus and bacteria, like having roots around to live in, so having live plants in your soil at all times benefits the soil life you've built up over time. Secondly, cover crops suppress weeds by crowding them out, and they protect your soil from erosion by slowing down the movement of water through your soil. By far the most important benefit to sowing cover crop in your raised beds is that once you cut them down and either smother them or incorporate them into your soil you are using that plant material to build new organic matter in your garden. Its basically growing a plant just so you can compost it! 

Here in South Florida we primarily use buckwheat, sunn hemp & cowpea to cover crop. Buckwheat is like cover cropping for beginners since its short (30 days), easy to cut down and quick to decompose. Sunn hemp is a bit more involved (because it can get away from you if your timing is off) but it has an added bonus of being a nitrogen fixer. What is a nitrogen fixer? Im glad you asked! All plants in the legume (bean) family form a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria in their root systems that uses the plant to remove nitrogen from the atmosphere and then sequester it in the soil in the form of nitrogen nodules. To over simplify this process: these plants basically make you organic fertilizer! Not only that but when you cut them down and incorporate them into your soil (at around 45 days) they will also become nitrogen. 

Figuring out how to use cover crops in your raised bed can be intimidating so if you'd like more info on the process head to minute 50 of our summer gardening virtual workshop on YouTube where farmer Chris of French Farms and I take a tour of his cover cropped fields and talk about the process. If you are ready to give it a try and need to buy seeds we sell both buckwheat and sunn hemp by the pound. Stop by our nursery any Saturday from 10-5 or if thats too far Urban Oasis Project sells it for us at their farmers market booth at the Legion Park Farmers Market every Saturday from 9-2pm. 

Young sunn hemp in a raised bed. It will grow for another month and get almost shoulder high before you cut it down and either cover or incorporate it. 

Buckwheat flowers quickly and kills itself after producing seed, making it easier to handle but less long lasting than sunn hemp.