December 24 Update

What a difference between the weather last year at this time and this year. Last year we were having morning lows in the 30s and 40s. This year it is in the 60s and highs in the mid 80s. At least I am not having to worry about frost killing my plants. So far the warm temps don't seem to have any adverse effects on my lettuce. Once it gets too hot the lettuce tends to get bitter.

Let's get to some pics. First up is the newly planted lettuce coming up. This will be the second crop. In a few weeks I'll plant some more to keep it coming. I planted a row of Romaine, Buttercrunch, and 2 rows of different red leaf types.

Next my strawberry plants have really begun putting out some berries. I picked a couple the other day which were pretty good. Several more are beginning to ripen up.

 Here is the first planting of lettuce and spinach. They all taste wonderful and I am eating salads picked fresh from the garden daily. Also I cooked up some of the spinach by sauteing in olive oil and garlic. The transplants in the large black pots are doing better than I thought they would do 

The Bush Goliath tomatoes both have several growing on each plant. They won't be ready to pick for several more weeks.

Here my zucchini squash have lots of blooms. So far they are just male blossoms but the females are getting ready to bloom. I haven't had any problems with pickle worms yet. I think that is because  it did get down into the 40s a couple weeks ago. Usually here once that happens the moth populations tends to decrease greatly.

The sugar snap peas have taken off nicely and so has the chard planted between each row. My earlier planting of chard I ended up pulling up as it was pretty much eaten up by worms. I am thinking I may have to keep any greens I plant early in the season covered with an insect barrier. That way I won't have to worry about spraying.

The first crop of broccoli is heading up nicely. I should be able to begin harvesting in a few days. The variety is Pac Man. My favorite variety.

Here is the second crop I planted a couple days ago.

Next my Cherokee Purple tomatoes are loaded with fruit and growing like crazy. One large fruit is almost ripe enough to pick. 

Beans are forming from the flowers on the purple bush beans.

 
 Cabbage is heading up nicely. Along side the cabbage are the beets and carrots. I thinned them and they should be ready to begin picking in about two weeks or so. I planted a few more rows of carrots on the other side of the beets. They should begin germinating any day now.

The hot peppers have fruit on them. I don't know the variety as they were given to me and the person didn't know what they were either. They were just a few plants from a package of mixed seeds.  Also the Sweet Banana  Peppers have fruit on them, too.

The eggplants in the pepper bed  are growing nicely. I had to replace the one to the far left because fire ants built a nest at the base of it and killed it. Fire ants are a constant problem here. I chased them off by spraying the ants with rotenone/pyrethrin mix. It is pretty toxic but yet organic. I only use it on fire ants because they are so destructive so fast.

My pole beans should be ready to begin being harvested in a couple days. The variety is Kwintas.

The Pak Choi is doing real good and I have harvested several heads  and put them in stir fry. They are really tender and mild. I ordered three more varieties and will plant them when the seeds arrive. They are a baby variety, regular sized Bok Choy, and a purple variety.

A shot of the pole bean / pak choi bed with a volunteer tomato growing in front. The tomato is full of fruit. I wonder how they will taste since it is a plant from seeds from  the Beef Master that grew there last year. Since it is a hybrid the plant won't grow true to it's original.

My one bed of blue berries that are actually growing.  They have a few blooms and look pretty healthy.

I am getting some papaya from the plants I planted a few months ago. I found several large caterpillars on the under sides of the leaves which I would pick off and destroy. I also kept finding these cottony balls which I thought were moth eggs on the bottoms of some of the leaves. I would pull them off thinking they were moth eggs.I decided to let a caterpillar  grow to see what kind of moth it produced. To my surprise one day I went out to find the caterpillar full of the cotton with little "worms" moving inside it. Duhh!! They were the eggs of parasitic wasps. A beneficial insect which preys on caterpillars. I have a pic of  the eggs below. As the days would go by the wasp larvae would slowly consume the caterpillar until all that was left was the "cotton" underneath the leaf.

I also have a Carambola that I planted in the spring. It is now bearing fruit which should ripen in a couple weeks.

That's all for now.

December 11 Update

Time for another update. We went on vacation last week so I was unable to do an update then. It's just amazing how much things grow when you don't see them for a week. Vacation also can lead to garden disaster. I had a lot of small seedlings growing so I had one of my neighbors kids come over and water every other day to make sure things didn't dry out. Even though it is December it still can get hot and dry here in SW Florida so I didn't want to take any chances.

Before I left I picked the pineapple that was growing in the pot. I was falling over and about to break off the stem so I picked it. It still had a lot of green on it so we left it sit out on the counter while we were gone. Here is what we came home to:

Here is a view of the garden from an angle over the strawberry bed.

Some of the strawberry plants are blooming and it looks like I might get a few berries this winter. This variety, Tribute, is supposed to bear in the late fall and then again in spring.

When I left last weekend my lettuce and spinach was still real small. Now they are much bigger and ready for some serious harvesting. Some of the spinach leaves are huge.

One of my new beds with cabbage, carrots, and beets.

The purple beans are getting some blooms on them.

Some of the Cherokee Purple tomatoes are getting very large and should soon start ripening up.

The broccoli is starting to form little heads in the center. There is nothing like fresh steamed broccoli. It is one of my favorite vegetables.

The zucchini is doing well with flowers beginning to develop.

The snap peas are climbing up the trellis and the chard needs to be thinned between the pea rows.

I need to add a the top to my tomato cage for the Beef Master tomato in this pic. That variety was one of the tastiest and largest I have ever grown last spring. The variety is very vigorous.

My pole beans grew way over the tops of the trellises and the pak choy is getting mature enough to pick some. Looks like stir fry will be on the menu soon.

That's all for now. Gotta get unpacked and things ready for work tomorrow.

11-19-2011 Update

Finally another update!! The last couple months can be described as challenging to say the least. Right as I was beginning my project of building the raised beds from the blocks my wife decided we needed to tile the whole house now. That left my plans on hold. It was pretty good timing however because we had some really sad weather in October. Seems like we got half the summer's worth of rain during that month. Usually we average a little over 2 inches but on one single day alone we got almost 6.

The rain heat and humidity took a big toll on my garden. The cukes, romas, peppers, and zucchini I got from The Latas Patch were destroyed along with the seeds I had started. I found some real nice looking roma plants at Lowe's one day and couldn't resist. So I bought those and replaced my dead one's. They did start out real well and were soon inundated with caterpillars. I neglected the garden for several weeks because of the house project and the never ending rain and bugs took their toll. Finally though things cleared out and the tile project came to an end and we got some real nice weather. Now I am back at it again.

So let's see what's going on in the garden.

My strawberries have begun to send out some new growth now that it has cooled off a bit. I thought they were supposed to produce a crop in the fall but it doesn't look like it this year. The plants I started from the runners look better than the original plants. They have a lot of damage on some of the leaves from caterpillars but I am on top of it now with spinosad to the rescue.

Here you can see the new plant sending out some roots just looking for some soil to anchor in.

The pineapple should start ripening up pretty soon

Next we have some lettuce and spinach. The lettuce from left to right is Buttercrunch which didn't germinate very well. Then some Red Sails leaf lettuce. When I thinned them out I planted the thinnings in pots. I hate throwing plants out. I just need to remember not to seed them so thick. Then there is Vivian romaine which is a large head variety.   These were all planted on 10-30.

The spinach was planted on 10-30 also. It had real poor germination. The last few times I tried spinach the germination was terrible. Doing some research I got the idea to pregerminate the seeds in the fridge before planting. What I did was placed several seeds in between some wet paper towels and in a ziploc and left them in the fridge for two days. Then I planted them in the garden. I got about 90% germination from this experiment. So the next time I plant spinach I will try that again.

The spinach

I picked up 2 Bush Goliath tomatoes for a couple pots that had tomatoes in them which succumbed to the heat and rain. I planted them one evening and the next morning when I went outside I found one dug up laying by the pot. Unbelievable. I quickly replanted it. Now I have a fence completely around my garden just to avoid things like this but I guess it doesn't work as well as I had hoped. I checked my surveillance cameras from that night and found a recording of a possum climbing in both pots and ripping out the one plant. Aggravating only begins to describe it.The plant appears to be doing fine now that it had time to recover though it is fairly smaller than the other one.

Next we have some Burpee Fordhook zucchini that was planted on11-6. Nothing much to look at now. I planted them where the others were. I will eventually thin them out to individual plants.

I next planted some Sugar Snap peas and Fordhook Chard in the bed where the Butternut squash were on 11-12. I alternated rows. The peas I will trellis up which should provide a little shade for the chard.

Here is one of the new beds with Roma tomatoes and fordhook chard. The chard was planted on 9-18. It had a lot of caterpillar damage on it a while ago and I ended up trimming most of the leaves off. A few of the plants died but most came back nicely. The Romas are getting a few tomatoes on them. Hopefully I will get enough to can a few quarts.

Another of the new beds with broccoli in it. The variety is Pacman. They are somewhat compact plants which produce large thick heads of broccoli. My favorite variety. I usually start them from seed but the rain destroyed seedlings this time around. I got lucky and found these at Home Depot.

One thing that did survive the October onslaught is two of the three Cherokee Purple tomatoes. They are getting a few fruit on them now. I planted a  Bonnie Select Hybrid in place of the one that died.

Next we have a bed of Royalty Purple bush beans that were planted on 11-6. I was surprised to get about 98% germination from them. They produce a purple bean that turns green when cooked. I've never tried them before so we'll see what we get.

The second batch of Roma tomatoes is in the bed where the batch bit the dust. They had a lot of caterpillar damage but I am spraying with the Spinosad now and it appears to be working well.

Here is a bed where I planted the sweet onions I purchased as seedlings. Next to them I planted carrots and scallions on 9-18. The carrots are about ready to harvest along with some scallions.

The sweet onions are on the left. Here is a closer pic of them.

I bought several pepper seedlings and was given a few hot pepper seedling which are a mystery as to what variety they are. The one's I bought are Big Bertha bell peppers and Sweet Banana peppers along with 3 Black Beauty eggplant.

Another of the new beds has 4 Bonnie Hybrid cabbages on one end. I planted Nutri Red carrots and Detroit Dark Red beets in the center. The other end will have more carrots sown in it in a couple of weeks. I have to remember to quit planting things so close together. Beet seeds are one thing that surely doesn't need to be planted close because each "seed" actually contains a couple seeds in it. Plant them too close and you have a lot of thinning to do. You can however use the thinnings in a salad.

Closer up of carrots and then beets.

Finally we get to the bed that had the cucumbers. Now it has Kwintas pole beans and Pak Choi which was sown on 11-6. I plan on thinning the Pak Choi and planting the thinned ones between each row of pole beans.