Yardlong Bean

A variety of Yardlong bean [3 feet plus, white bean? Can't remember]

Do they get to be a yard long? Pretty close. I often see them at 30 inches or so.
Love the Florida summer. Maybe 60 days to flowering? I started these in March.

Prolific as hell. Two plants, about one week.
That's a regular sized dinner plate, sports fans.

***
Yardlong beans for dinner
Yardlong beans for lunch
Covered in roast onion and tarragon pesto
I'll even have them for brunch

***
Yardlong beans on the grill
Yardlong beans with tofu
Yardlong beans in stir fry
A lot of yardlong beans to go thru

***

Florida. Summer.
Watching the yardlong beans grow
a sweet recompense

You can get seeds at Evergreen Seeds.
That's a lot of beans for $4.50 worth of seeds.

Great Egret

So I'm taking a shovel back to the tool corral [where Stephen is supposed to keep his mes, um tools corraled] and I notice something new to the yard....


It's a great egret! It's big! It's after the fish in our fish pond! It does not want to go away! We finally had to build a mesh cage to put over the pond. It remains optimistic about its chances though. We see it all the time.



Awfully pretty though. And kind of wonderous to have in your yard in downtown Snorasota. Florida is amazingly fecund.

glowing in sunlight
thinly bound by gravity
hope stands on stilt legs

Common Yellowthroat Warbler

So I'm on my front porch reading and I hear this 'tchat.' [srsly, that's what they sound like, you can listen here. an added advantage is if you have cats, they'll run around like crazy looking for the bird. Haley was convinced it was inside the printer.] Tchat, tchat. I look around and see this teensy bird hopping from bush to tree, perching on the plant stakes, looking at the peppers and broccoli. Cute!



He flies over to the bird bath [which hardly anyone uses as a bath, it's mostly too deep but lots of them drink from it] and hops around on the edges. Hop, tchat, hop, tchat. It starts to jump inside the bath-whoa I think--it's actually going swimming? Jumps in, jumps out.

Jumps in, jumps out. Does not want to go swimming. That's when I realize the water is too low for it to reach, and it's thirsty! I fill it up of course, but fully expect that I've scared it off. But no! It only waits until I'm back on the porch and comes and drinks and drinks and drinks. Yeah teensy bird!


It hangs around and sings a bit. wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty. wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty. then leaves.


I love my front porch.I'm so happy, I sing too. wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty. wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty.

If I do this every day, I might get better...

photo is too dark
haiku is not much better
some disappointment

[attempted study of reds and greens]

Kohlrabi, Kohlrabri...

I once had a friend named Kohlrabi
And he was friendly as friendly could be
I often had him for dinner
I sometimes had him for tea
But winter she was soon ended
And Mr. Kohlrabi went home
Hot sunny days and hot humid nights
Are not where Mr. Kohlrabi prefers to roam!
But fall will come as it always does
And seeds I will put in the ground
The weeks will pass and the rain will fall
And Mr. Kohlrabi soon will come round!

***
A lovely plant.

Can be eaten raw and crispy in salads [cut off the thick skin]. I also use it like a root vegetable and grill, roast or bake it. It tastes like a potato with some attitude-not spicy mind you--just kind of the different flavor in town.

Don't Give Up On Broccoli

Planted in November. Don't give up on broccoli after getting the first head. It's mid-April and I'm still getting enough fresh shoots with tiny heads [eat the tender leaves too] for dinner once or twice a week, from 4 plants. I'll definitely plant more next fall.

don't give up on broccoli
it's a most advantageous fruit
once you cut the head off
it still sends up more fresh shoots

so don't give up on broccoli
thru April, May or June
once a week you steam them up
and happily consume!

Bad Ass Bluejays

Bad-ass blue jays. Don't like crows or hawks very much.


and not very afraid of them.

but evidently, neither are cardinals.


it's the tree he sings in every night. I guess neither crow nor hawk was going to stop him.

This was in a tree across the street from our house. Even though we only live about a mile from downtown, our neighborhood has an astonishing amount of wildlife.

A Daikon Radish A Day

A Daikon Radish a day...will keep your friends from answering the phone, once you start to have an avalanche of them. Luckily, I have a secret weapon:

Roasted Daikon Radish Fries

Cut into 1/4-1/3 strips
marinate in olive oil with a shake or two of cinnamon, curry powder, cayenne pepper and a teaspoon or so of honey.
Roast at 425 for about 10 mins each side.

Yum on!


It's an amazing vegetable. Like the boniato, they like sandy soil. The beets didn't do well at all in the boulevard, but the onions did okay. Along the left edge of the boulevard is a weed called Virginia Pepperweed, sometimes, Poor Man's Pepper. Early settlers used it as a pepper alternative. I always let some come up. It's also a host plant for the Great Southern White butterfly.


Sandy, barely improved soil, they thrived in it. I planted one variety that grew to the size and shape of a football.

The Basics: Watering

In the summer I water the fruiting plants [eggplant, green beans, tomatoes, peppers] every day and everything else every other day unless it rains. I live downtown a mile from the bay in Sarasota and it is often dry here when it is raining everywhere else. Stuff in the ground I water twice a week. I could probably get away with less, but I have plenty of water.

In the winter I water less frequently. It really depends on how humid it’s been, how hot, etc. I feel the soil of the fruiting plants and if they seem dry, I water. I also check them out when I get the mail in the evening. Does anyone seem listless? Water the next day.

[Sump pump and rain barrel.]

I use a combination of gray water [from our washing machine] and rain water [we have 10 rain barrels. What can I say, I can get obsessive]. The rain barrels are on the corner of each house catching the rain from the gutters. We haven’t used city water in maybe two years now. If you have an older house your washing machine is probably in a utility room or your garage and it’s dead easy to pull the discharge hose out and route it to a rain barrel. And the barrel doesn’t have to be lower than your machine—the pump in the washing machine will do all the work.

There are lots of ways to work your watering system. We have two sump pumps on each side of the house. Stephen got ours at Ace Pump in Sarasota, you can get them at Lowes or Home Depot. Stephen thinks he paid about $150 each for the pumps—1/2 horsepower units. Hook a hose to the pump, drop the pump in the rain or overflow barrel, plug it in and voila! You have water pressure. To remember; you can’t use a nozzle with the laundry water because it will soon get clunked up with fibers.

You could also let gravity work. Put your rain barrels up on some cinder blocks to get them above the height of the containers and you’re good to go. If you hooked your barrels up to an irrigation system—which could be as easy as securing a hose over your containers and drilling holes where you need them—you could pretty much automate the process. I think about it ‘cause it would save time but I like watering by hand. I get to talk to the neighbors, the cats have fun running around and acting crazy, I plan the meal for the evening. It’s also a good opportunity to inspect the plants for pests.

[The kids tired out from playing in the yard.]

Gratuitous plug: If you live in SW Florida and need help with setting up your water system or raised beds, my husband Stephen, the handyman, is available for hire.

The Basics: Why Container Gardening?

Why Container Gardening?
• I thought there might be some advantage to being able to move plants around to find their optimum sun placement. [And this has been useful given the sun/shade patterns in my yard.]
• Easier to control soil quality. [Nematodes are a big problem here—and I have even gotten them in some of the containers. I just rotate in a plant they’re not interested in, like onions, herbs, leafy greens, root vegetables.]
• They’re pretty! And it gave Stephen a reason to go to thrift shops and garage sales [one of his favorite leisure activities].
• They let you work with limited spaces. You can tuck a container here, two there, etc.
• Great for instant gratification as there is no soil prep to be done [so me].

I didn’t realize I would soon go insane with it. I read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and got interested in figuring out what could be grown here under what conditions. An Inconvenient Truth
got me really interested in reducing my carbon footprint. And then I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
and got interested in seeing how much of what I ate could I grow—or buy local. A Perfect Storm [great book] of influences that resulted in the proliferation of containers. I still think it’s a fine choice for me—and the urban environment--but raised beds for some crops and improving the soil for others is better if you have more room. I do both now.



Considerations
• They do have to be watered more often than plants in the ground.
• Soil can get too acidic from over-fertilizing [yet to happen to me].
• Both harder and easier to grow tomatoes [roots get warmer easier meaning they don’t fruit but if you are in a rainy area also easier to control for too much water].
• Potting soil can lose its ability to drain and you need to replace it. This has not happened consistently to me but I do find I get some plants that are not thriving and it’s either the soil has become sludge or nematodes. I’ve got two piles of dirt now in the yard where I’m working this sludge with other organic matter to hopefully restore its ability to drain. If it doesn’t work, I’ll just buy potting soil once a year or so.

I have tried the Earth Box. I have a few friends it works great for but I just wasn’t that taken with it. I had this vision of charming containers perched fetchingly on our winsome stone pathways. What can I say? I’m an artist .

I found that Sam’s Club had the cheapest, lightest containers that suited my purposes. 14” cast concrete [much lighter than ceramic pots] for around $8.00. Other than garage sales or otherwise creative containerment [baby pools, old boats] the $5.00 Home Depot buckets would be your cheapest option, but plastic does degrade in this sun and I wonder about what it releases into the soil as it degrades. Plus I wanted pretty. The Sam’s Club containers aren’t always gorgeous, but they can be easily spiffed up with some paint. Buy some potting soil at the same stop, and you’re almost done.


Most of the potting soils you buy already have 90 days worth of long-release fertilizer, so make a note in your calendar [you will need to keep a plant calendar] when you need to start fertilizing. I use a handful [or two for the fruiting plants] of Fertrelle twice a month. I’ve read lots of stuff that suggests you should use a liquid fertilizer with every watering, but this seems insane to me, because then you periodically have to water the hell out of your containers to get rid of the salts. Plus, how much fertilizer are you putting into the water supply? So, I don’t get HUGE eggplants and peppers, but they’re big enough to feed us [might also be a function of being in containers].

The Basics: Fertilizing and Pest Control

I use an organic fertilizer called Fertrell. You can get it at most garden supply stores—if you need to find a dealer, you can look here. I add about ¼ cup twice a month. I also add Superthrive to the water every week or so [to be perfectly honest I haven’t seen zooming crops, but it doesn’t hurt anything]. I lime [Soil Doctor Pelletized Lawn Lime1/4 cup] twice a year.

I could probably fertilize more but it’s easy to build up too acidic soil in containers, and what I’m doing seems to be working reasonably well. I could of course test the soil, but if you’ve read any other blog posts by now you’ll realize I like to wing it.

Pest Control.
I only use stuff that doesn’t adversely affect cats, bees, humans and other critters. For pest control I use Garlic Barrier [they recommend every 10-14 days but I find I have to use it once a week during the summer—10 days is fine in the winter]. It takes care of everything but aphids, spider mites and army worms [and some other type of teeny worm that wants to eat the tomatoes]. When I see worm damage I use Conserve Electrolyte [I do pro-actively spray the tomatoes bi-weekly]. Neem Oil is recommended for fungal infestations, but the only plants who ever had a fungal problem where the squash, and well…I’ve also used a milk solution and that seemed to work as well as the Neem Oil. [You can get Conserve and Neem Oil at most garden supply stores, or, look them up on the web.]

About twice a year I get aphids or spider mites on the eggplants. You can just use soap and water to get rid of those and when I see them I also buy ladybugs [In Sarasota, from Hibbs Farm and Garden Supply]. They’ll take care of lots of munching critters.


To keep snails and slugs off the lettuces I built a sand trap—I’ve read they don’t like to cross sand or shell. See the white strip on top of the raised bed? That’s pieces of old vinyl soffit we had around here that had a raised edge filled with sand. You could do it a number of ways though.

Edible Landscaping II

This Katuk is the last plant I got from Echo Farms. It is delish, with a slight peanut taste. A cup has 10% of your protein requirements for the day. You're supposed to keep it chopped at 4-6 feet.


I've not had any bug problems with it. I do water it once a week if it hasn't rained, but I suspect it would be okay on its own.


Bell peppers, good eatin', nice home for frogs. [I'm pretty sure this is a Cuban tree frog, which is considered an invasive species.] Some gardener I am, look at all that grass!

Edible Landscaping

This spectacular plant is Cranberry Hibiscus [I've also seen it called Red Hibiscus] and/or False Roselle [Latin: Hibiscus acetosella]. An annual/short lived perennial a freeze will knock them back. At least in my yard, it is 100% maintenance free :)

They range in size even in my yard--some getting to 13 feet, some only getting to 4. It reseeds itself, coming up all over the yard. As it comes up you can cut it back to make it bush out.

The leaves are yummy in salads and stir fries. Kind of like a cross between clover and rhubarb--tart.

You can read more about it here, and on the Echo Farms site.

Desperately Seeking Spinach II-Malabar Spinach

Malabar Spinach was another spinach I've tried. Grows like crazy in the summer, not so happy in the winter. I've put in two varieties. The first, red-stemmed malabar spinach, I got at Evergreen Seeds. It's another lovely plant. The second I got from Echo Farms. It's attractive too.



As with the Okinawa Spinach I think the new leaves, raw, are preferable. Neither of them are a true spinach substitute, IMO. I'll try Tat Soi soon, but at this point in my garden Swiss Chard and/or arugula come the closest as a spinach substitute.

The Urban Locavore In SW Florida

[Have kittehs and like the birdies too? Put your birdbath in a tree!]

I should make it crystal clear that I'm not a true locavore. I can really only manage the veggies and certain fruits certain times of the year. I live downtown and there's no possibility of cows or chickens and I've yet to find a local source. Would I go that far if I lived in the country? Possibly....I know I'd love to have a big old pond and stock it with tilapia. I did find a local source for rice [hey, it's Florida, we should be able to grow rice here, right?] and I'm trying to find a local retailer that carries it.

Other than that, I try to keep it to this continent [you can be reasonably certain soy products are from the US.] although even that's not always possible [frozen seafood almost invariably comes from Southeast Asia]. But, as Barbara Kingsolver points out even small changes like locally sourced vegetables can make a big difference.


One big difference from you northern locavores/gardeners, you can grow food year round here. Eggplants, peppers, green onions, swiss chard, grape and cherry tomatoes, and arugula can all be grown year round. Well let me rephrase that. I can grow certain things year round here. I know people who manage big-ass tomatoes in the summer here but I've never felt like putting the work into it. Like the squash.

Which brings me to a point I want to make--a lot of people think you have to be a great gardener to grow your own vegetables or to have the yard that I do [jungle-like but pretty.] I'm not. I only have Florida-friendly plants that thrive without any care. My peppers have spots on the leaves and the peppers are kind of small. I should probably read up on it or test the soil or something. But you know what? 6 pepper plants in containers gives me enough peppers when I want them, and that's good enough for me. If it can't produce with my level of care out it goes. And I try to grow only enough that can be consumed by two people at a time--no canning, no freezing--but that works perfectly with our small yard and house. Although I do often have extras for family and friends.

To the year-round staples I make seasonal adjustment. Winter sees mustard greens [they'll actually do well about 9 months of the year as will most leaf lettuces], rapini, kohlrabi, broccolli, cauliflower and others. After visiting Hong Kong in Feb 2008 I realized we should be growing asian vegetables here in the summer. My biggest success--and it was a HUGE success--were yardlong beans. Man, we ate a lot of beans this summer. Yum. We had a lot to give away too. I also experimented with subtropical sweet potatoes--boniato [I got cuttings from Echo Farms]--which grew great but really you need more room than I have to keep you in potatoes all summer. [I failed to take photos of the summer plants but I will this next year.] Which brings me to another point about limited space gardening. Your best ROI are plants that produce for long periods of time. With a head of lettuce once it's done is done, while leaf lettuce you can harvest from much longer.

More on urban gardening soon...

My Yard: Where Squash Go To Die.

Okay. I've tried summer squash in containers [below is an oriental variety more like zuccini, really]. I get a few wonderful squash, then end-blossom fruit rot. I tried neem oil, more fertilizer, lime, tears, nothing worked [I suppose there are some fungicides I could use but I read the ingredients and They Are Not Coming In My Yard. I have kitty-cats and bees and stuff to consider.


I'm now trying a few varieties out in the boulevard, but I don't expect much.



They're blossoming but I think it's just to taunt me.


I'm not the only one to have problems though. My friend Elena has only successfully grown them IN her compost pile. I talked to the gardener out at Crowley Museum & Nature Center and he has problems too. However, Worden Farms in Punta Gorda manages it, because they have lovely pattypan squash and zuccinni at the farmers market. I am green with envy. They're local though, so I can feel good about buying them every now and again.

[two days later]. Yes indeed, end blossom fruit rot. So done with squash.