Rain!

Central Florida has been in a drought for 3 years now. It makes it hard to grow anything when it's so dry outside. The yard has turned to dust and weeds (not that I care, I really hate grass lawns), and I've carved out a little plot of heaven in the back yard to grow my vegetables.

Today the skies let loose a nice strong band of thunderstorms like the ones we used to get when I was a kid. Lots of wind, some tornadoes, and most importantly - RAIN! It started falling in huge fat drops at first, and now it's a slow steady rain that easily soaks into the ground. My plants are LOVING it. I can almost see them growing. This is the first day I haven't had to hand water my garden since I planted it. How sad is that?

I harvested my first handful of snow peas last night. Made a pork stirfry with pineapple and brown rice to go with it. Turned out pretty good, and the snowpeas were excellent. I'm actually surprised they made it to dinner, I almost snacked on them as I was picking them. My garden is organic, so there's no worries of fertilizers or chemicals to poison me, I can eat right off the vine.

My cucumber vines are loving life, though they're having to be tied to the trellis. I can't get it to climb properly. Silly plant. Some cut up pieces of old panty hose did the trick, though, and I manually wrapped some of the vining tendrils around the trellis. Hopefully they'll figure out how I want them to behave now. My bush beans are growing well, starting to see little beans in and amongst the flowers. They have big showy green leaves too, and so far the locusts haven't touched them or the cucumbers.

Wish I could say the same for the sunflowers. They are growing alright, but many of the leaves have big holes from the little locusts that I'm infested with right now. I have locust stomping parties when the kids are over, and I stomp every single one I find. Sometimes I find them in groups of hundreds in the yard. They disgust me. I'm looking for an organic deterrent for these awful creatures. I swear there's a biblical plague of them in my yard! I do think the nasturtiums and marigolds are doing their jobs, though, because I haven't seen a lot of locusts on that side of the garden. Perhaps I should plant some marigolds near the sunflowers to keep these critters at bay.

My corn is coming up nicely, too, though I only have 10 stalks right now. I figured I'd stagger the plantings so that I don't have a huge amount all at once.

I'm having trouble with my peppers, tomatoes, squash and cantaloupe. They're there, they're just not flourishing. I will figure out why hopefully soon. Probably needs more nutrients, like fish meal or something. When it stops raining (which I hope is next week!!! We so need the rain...) I'll test the soil. I have a feeling, being the limestone formation that Florida is, that the soil is too basic. Some pine needle mulch might be just enough, actually. Now I'll just have to find some.

Lettuce harvesting

I did a major leaf lettuce harvest this morning. Five 1-gallon bags of lettuce are now in my refrigerator. It's a mesculun mix lettuce, and sadly I don't know which lettuce is which (they were not pelleted seeds, and each kind of seed in the package was not labeled in any way). One of the kinds of lettuce has been completely overtaking the other lettuces, so that is the one that I get the most of. It's a very spicy lettuce. I get so much of it that I've been sharing with friends. I like sharing, it's fun.

I haven't been blogging about the garden the entire time I've been working on it. Currently I have lettuce, snow peas, spinach, squash, bush beans, green peppers, sunflowers (6 varieties) and corn (2 varieties) in the ground. I also planted nasturtiums and marigolds. Seedlings I have left to plant are cantaloupes. I have lots of other seeds to put in the ground this month, I'm trying to decide where to plant them all. Oh, and I have tomatoes too - two in a "topsy turvy" and 3 more in the ground. They are the "Big Boy Hybrid" variety. I also have a hanging pot of chamomile and spearmint, I'm waiting for the chamomile to flower, the spearmint has been slow to germinate.

Florida is in year 3 of a drought. It makes it hard to grow things, but I do the best I can with the little water we have. I'm looking at buying some rain barrels, assuming we actually get some rain at some point I'd like to collect as much as I can. We don't water our lawn (it's all dead). I'm sure our neighbors just love our brown thatch. But you know what? I don't care what they think. I'm growing food with my land, what are they doing?

Here's a picture of some of the lettuce I cut this morning soaking in water in the kitchen sink:



Notice the sink is COMPLETELY full. That's only about 2/3 of what I ended up with after the 2nd trip to the garden. Yay!

Looks like the wind is picking up. I'm hoping for some rain in the next couple/three days. Keep your fingers crossed for us! I have to go make sure my nasturtiums are sufficiently secured...they like to break off their stems and blow away for some reason.

For a treat - here's some nasturtiums to look at:




This is the nasturtium that blew away in the last bit of wind we had. Luckily it grew roots when I stuck it in water for a few days, and now it's back in soil, flowering away as if nothing happened.

Introduction to marz's Gardening Blog - Spring 2009

I love to blog. Over the years I've attempted to keep an accurate blog going about all the things going on in my life, sort of like a diary. Unfortunately I haven't really been successful at keeping any one of them up. I have a blog on myspace that gets updated next to never, and livejournal about once or twice a year (that's even closer to never). I think that my problem is that I've never really tried a topic-based blog, and I've never been in the position before now where I had no job to go to on a daily basis. In these very trying economical times, I'm left wondering where my next meal will come from.

Enter the Garden. Yes, vegetables and fruits of my labor will hopefully feed us as summer approaches and my prospects for employment dwindle. I'm going back to school for my Masters starting in May, because, well, that's what people do when they find themselves unemployed as a technical writer and no one is hiring people who really only want a part-time contract job (so that I can have the time to go to school full time).

When I'm working in the garden I find myself wanting to share what is happening. The miracle of seeds sprouting in the sugar-sand soil of Florida. My first flowers (nasturtiums and marigolds). Recycling tips for turning old junk into stuff to use in the garden. The joys and frustrations of weeding. Pests and how to grow organically. These are the things that make my current world turn, and they are the things that I hope to tell you about here. I hope that you will share with me as I share with you. Please, comment, ask questions, give advice, bribe me with seed trade offers - I look forward to interactions with this blogging community!