That question gets asked around here every day, because every day something new is blooming. Here are the stellar performers from the past two days: This is “Lady Lucille”: “Strawberry Candy”: “Jungle Beauty”: “Siloam Bo Peep”: “Night Beacon” “Celebrity Elite”: “Double Peach”: “Janice Brown”: “Tuscawilla Tigress”: “Barbary Corsair”: I can’t believe we waited this long [...]
New to us this year is this the Kingfisher Daisy, an electric purple/blue annual beauty that should nicely seed the crap out of the area where it is planted: Don’t let the package fool you, 6″ tall might be the norm in temperate climates, but this thing is about a foot tall at the moment, [...]
My favorite part of this whole backyard farming experiment is there are no limits to what you can grow. Giant pumpkins that are so heavy gravity causes them to sort of get all slumpy? No problem. Peanuts? Actual, honest-to-Zog peanuts? No problem. Potatoes?? Your very own potatoes? No problem. You don’t need acres and acres [...]
The daylily bed out front is finally getting cranked up, which is mighty impressive considering most of these were planted as bare rhizomes a few months ago. I dunno, I think we have some bare spots, ya? *runs off to find daylily catalog*
Busy in the yard today. The abnormal rainy-ness has stopped, leaving a multitude of tasks to accomplish. The crazed pumpkins were top on the list, as they continue their trek up the backyard towards, well, everything: Only two fruits thusfar but everything on that longest vine there above seems to be female, so we’ll see. [...]
Sure, we’ve been harvesting a few things here and there since the official start of the spring planting season, but a quick look around the garden at the huge number of things growing, soon to be ripening, makes the mouth water… Red bell peppers: Paprika peppers: Celery: Whitney peppers: Black Pearl soybeans: Jacob’s Cattle beans: [...]
It’s been RAINING here for days. ..2″ Monday, 2 1/2″ yesterday, almost an inch today. Hence everything is wet. Sodden. Mildewing even. The dianthus, who were doing SO well on the front border, have bits that are actually turning black. The cucumbers out back are a complete write off. The mildew we were successfully fighting [...]
Passiflora coccinea’s common name is no surprise to me: Red Passion Flower Or maybe I’m the only one who gasps in delight whenever I see one of its $@#&-me red blooms on the vine. Yeah, didn’t think so.
Today’s harvest, 1 lb 14 oz crystal apple cucumbers and soybeans: Those very same soybeans boiled in salty/garlicky water and served with dinner tonight: Cliched as it may sound, there are few things more satisfying than growing, harvesting, and preparing your own food.
One thing you learn about living in Florida…don’t bitch about the weather because it’ll change in the next 15 minutes anyway. After doing some moderate whinging about the complete lack of precipitation over the past few weeks, we were rewarded yesterday with an epic deluge, 3 inches of rain in about an hour. The planting [...]
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