Bye-bye Broccoli: Hello Summer!

Good-bye broccoli! What a bounty we've enjoyed. From the initial harvesting of the main curds (heads) at the end of November through the endless come-again spears until last week, there have been more than 40 harvests!

Broccoli sprouts from the root. I'd never seen or noticed
 this behavior before.  I separated them out and planted
them in a large pot that I put in the shade by the potting
bench.  It will be interesting to see if I can carry
them over until fall.

Transitions in the garden

There's always something going on in the vegetable gardens. I finally removed the old broccoli plants that had been keeping us supplied with all the broccoli we wanted for six months. When I removed these gnarly plants, I noticed that two of them had produced a bunch of sprouts from the roots. I have separated out the sprouts and have planted them in a large pot, which I placed in the shade. Will they last through the long, hot summer?

I sowed the seed for the original broccoli plants on Labor Day. I'd also planted a second crop in late January; these six new plants are continuing to produce come-again broccoli spears. The new plants will stay in the ground for a few more weeks, but had I known how productive that first crop was going to be, I might have used that garden space for something else.

This huge cabbage was very dense and very sweet. 
What a treat!

 
Meanwhile, I have a few heads of cabbage to deal with. The cabbage in the photo to the left was quite heavy and when my husband cut into the head, we both marveled at how dense it was. Even though it's the end of the cool-weather crop season, this cabbage was the sweetest one this year.

The first dish made from this head was a cabbage, vegetable soup with lots of carrots and onions. After the first servings, we've been enjoying the soup cold and will be eating it for several days. I guess we could freeze it and move on to something else, but we're not upset by repeats of the same dish. We'll probably create a cole slaw or pseudo-Chinese cabbage salad with the other half of the head.

I gave a neighbor a smaller cabbage that was also ready and there are two others still in the garden that will be ready soon. How much cabbage do we need is the question.

Here's an article on the vegetables to grow to save you the most money. Some crops, they say, are not worth the trouble on a purely economic scale: Growing the Right Vegetables Saves $$. What do you think? Do you grow stuff to save money or do you grow it because it's fresher and and more nutritious? Many people have said that growing edibles is like printing money.

The end of the carrots for the season. This had been the third crop of the winter. Half cosmic purple and half orange nantes. Even this late in the season, they are sweet and tender. All the orange carrots went into the cabbage, vegetable soup.

Elsewhere around the garden

Surprise! A squirrel tree frog climbed from the watering can as I was watering some newly transplanted muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris). I thought it would jump away, but instead it climbed up the handle of the watering can and then up my arm. Finally, I urged it onto to grass.  Eat bugs, baby!

A Florida native, arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum) planted itself out next to the front pond
and in several other mostly shady areas.

Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) growing out by the front pond.
Doesn't the flower head of this native shrub look kinda like a Sputnik?

A confused late purple aster (Symphyotrichum patens) has been blooming twice each year since I planted it three years ago. I thought it would just happen once as part of its adjustment after my planting it, but no, both the butterflies and I get to enjoy it twice as much! For more information on this drought-tolerant native see Hawthorn Hill's website.

Keep cool in the garden now that summer is here and drink plenty of water! I'm done gardening these days by 10am.

Green Gardening Matters!
Ginny Stibolt

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Only two public events left on the book tour

Talking to people at the Wildflower Festival in Deland
about my vegetables and my books. A fun event.

The "Flowered Shirt" Book Tour

June is upon us and that means that this whirlwind book tour is almost over, and of the six or seven dates left, only two are public.

1) June 10th I'll be speaking to the Cuplet Fern Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society in Sanford, FL at 7pm at 200 Fairmont Ave. 32773. My presentation is Ecosystem Gardening and it's open to the public. I will, of course, also be signing books afterwards.

2) June 15 An open house event at Sunrise Jubilee Farm in Baker County
An afternoon celebration on the farm at 4:30pm in Baker County. Jennifer Asbury writes, "This is an open house for the Farm. We were invited to be a part of Ginny Stibolt's book Tour featuring her new book 'Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida.' We will also have face painting, hoping for a hayride, looking for some local artisans to join us, a community potluck..(so please bring an amazing dish you can share)." There will also be music. Let Jennifer know if you wish to come to the celebration. Here is the farm's Facebook page where you can send a message so she can send you driving instructions. If wish to attend and you're not on Facebook let me know.

While I've loved the various gardenfests, most of my speaking engagements have been at Florida Native Plant Society chapter meetings and Master Gardener meetings. And what great audiences they've been! They've asked great questions and have bought a lot of books. I'm always in interested in these in-depth discussions about organic gardening and how important it is for the health of our state. Plus both of these groups do so much volunteering in their communities and provide great outreach and education, so I'm pleased that I can play a part in supporting their efforts.

It's been fun to drive all over Florida this spring. The scenery is often spectacular especially where the "no mow" roadsides have been planted with wonderful wildflowers and where the roads go through undeveloped wooded areas. But, as I found out recently, I didn't need to leave Clay County to find beautiful roadside wildflowers: There is a great display of wildflowers just south of Middleburg. I've also seen some interesting birds including bald eagles, ospreys, roseate spoonbills, crested caracaras, and various egrets and herons.  

Florida is a fantastic state!

A flowered roadside in Clay County.

Ironically, this is just across the road from the wonderful wildflowers in Clay County shown above.
Which side is more sustainable?

I was honored to receive the coveted Green Palmetto
Award at the FNPS conference. Yes, of course I was
wearing another one of my flowered shirts!

The Florida Native Plant Society Conference came to Jacksonville!

I was on the conference committee, the publicity chair, and it was a lot of work to put the conference together. We'd been planning it for more than two years. But in the end it was all worthwhile, because everything came off without a hitch. Yay!

To learn about some of the activities and see some of my photos, read my "live Blogging" posts from the conference: Live Blogging from the 2013 FNPS Conference; Live Blogging from the Conference Friday; and Live Blogging from the Conference Saturday.

I particularly loved the three-hour nature journaling workshop taught by Elizabeth Smith that I arranged for and then participated myself. We all received an FNPS bag with a sketchpad, pencils, a nice pen, some water colors, a water brush, which I'd never been aware of before. Now the question is whether I will make myself slow down and actually take the time to sketch nature as I see it. I wrote about it in the first post above.

One morning in the garden...

The dune sunflowers glow in the morning light.

An oakleaf hydrangea flower head makes
this native shrub very showy.

My transplanted longleaf pine is finally going vertical!

Back in December 2008, I wrote about transplanting this longleaf pine. Well, it has taken its own sweet time to finally go vertical. I guess the transplanting procedure really set it back since these pines develop substantial root systems as part of their defense against fire.

More time?

Now that I will have a little more time to garden now that the book tour is winding down and I've been able to scrape myself from the driver's seat. But only a little, I'm already working my my next book for University Press of Florida.

I wish you a happy summer season in your garden!

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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An almost full moon

An sojourn outside this evening as it was becoming dark surprised me with an almost full moon.  It was high in the sky as dusk descended, so was easily visible.

I remembered that the April full moon hike was on the 25th -- the full moon date for May is also the 25th, although tonight's moon looms large!

an almost full moon (May 23, 2013)

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What's New

So Kids, took my mom and my sister out to the GreenHouse. Boy was that fun, the weather was perfect and it was such a lovely country drive. It was part of my mom's Mother's Day gift. We got a lot of really great plants, here are a list of some of them. Thats one thing that I really love about Spring, you get this fun feeling.

So Here is a real interesting plant we got. The Mexican Gherkin Cucumber was on of those really different plants I found. It is an heirloom variety that produces small 1 inch perfect for pickling!

This was another really fun plant, not even because of the uniqueness, but mostly because of the sign...So funny!

This is also really cool, Shiso smells amazing, like a mix between basil and mint. Plus it can be used to color drinks!

I can't wait to see how these fun plants turn out!

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Swapping out cool-season to warm-season veggies

It's been a strange spring, for sure.  But it's finally time to harvest the last of the greens to make room for the tomatoes, peppers, and squash in my mountain raised beds. The early planted tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers have survived, but they vary in how they've coped with the unseasonably low temperatures, too.

The early spring cole crops (direct-seeded) are bolting, although the lettuce that I put in via transplants is still looking great (and it's tasty, too, thanks to cool weather).

I'll be putting in more tomato plants this weekend, as well as sowing beans, squash, etc.!

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The last cool-weather crops

It's my opinion that the best growing season here in north Florida is the winter because the cool-weather crops that grow right through to late spring. But now that season is transitioning to the warm/hot weather and those lovely crops that we've enjoyed through the winter are ending their cycles. I've loved that my husband and I have been eating from the same six broccoli plants since November! After harvesting the large curds (heads) shortly after Halloween, they've sent up side shoots with abandon--if we don't pick them every second day or so, they'll bloom, which would signal that they can slow down. I planted a second crop of broccoli in January that are now sending up their own side blooms, so we've been eating lots broccoli!

A harvest earlier this week created ...

a whole meal salad.

In the photos above, I created a whole meal salad from this one harvest. Starting with the knife at the bottom and moving clockwise: butterhead lettuce, garlic chives, purple lettuce, curly parsley, chive flowers, come again broccoli. broccoli flowers, and carrots--both orange and cosmic purple. I fried some 7-grain bread in olive oil and wild garlic for croutons and then we created our own oil and vinegar dressing and topped it all off with some Parmesan cheese. Very nice meal. In my presentations, I mention that my husband and I have reduced our food bill by about 15%--whole meal salads are one of our favorites!

I harvested all the lettuce yesterday, because some of the plants were beginning to bolt,
which makes them bitter. Time to take them all in and hope that we eat it all before it spoils.

If I'd harvested the lettuce earlier in the season, I would have left the roots in place so we could have enjoyed some come-again lettuce. But it's too hot now.

A rosy wolf snail found in the lettuces. This is a good snail--a carnivore that eats slugs, worms, insects, and other snails. While the shell was cracked, it was alive. I moved it to the Swiss chard row.

Sweet onion harvest

Sweet Onions!

Yesterday was the day. The soil was dry and more than half of the onion leaves had fallen over. In addition some of the onion were blooming, a bad thing for the maximum bulb size, because the producing the flower uses much of that stored energy in the bulb.

We'll hang the most of the onions on a line in the garage, the ones that were blooming and the smaller ones with no good leaves left, we'll move to the refrigerator to use first.  It'll be months now before I have to purchase onions.

Next, I'll harvest the garlic.

Yesterday's onion harvest. Half of them had been growing in that empty wide row between the parsley
and the second broccoli crop and some carrots. For more information on wide row gardening see my post "Wide Row Gardening and Trench Composting."

Hidden ginger lilies are blooming this year.

The rest of the landscape

While I write a lot about the edible gardening, the rest of the landscape is looking wonderful with the flush of growth due to the recent rains and warm weather.

The previous owners left us with some canna lilies that have multiplied like crazy and have started blooming.  They also had planted some hidden ginger lilies, which took me a while to finger out what the heck they were since they only bloom every other year. See my piece "Hidden Ginger Lilies and other Intriguing Monocots."

I'm off to the Florida Native Plant Society Conference today, which is in Jacksonville this year. If you're free tomorrow, Saturday or Sunday, come on over. Here is all the information you need for registering onsite: It's NOT too late! The FNPS conference is this week.

Hope to see you there!

Green Gardening matters,
Ginny Stibolt 

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Swiss chard

I wish I had a photo to go along with this post! 

I harvested lots of chard from the mountain beds earlier in the week (they were starting to bolt).

We had part of it (the harvest) cooked a couple of days ago, but I included the final harvest in a chard salad to take to a local foods potluck this evening.  Yum. 

I'd not made a fresh chard salad before, amazingly, but chard (chopped finely) is mild in taste, and with some vinaigrette, onions, chives, chive flowers, and some diced purple sweet potatoes -- it made a lovely, colorful, and delicious dish.

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Enjoying waterfalls

My gardening companion has been visiting great wildflower and waterfall areas, as part of his field work for a new project.

Here's our boy Woody, enjoying the research!

Woody at Jones Gap Falls

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An Edible Gardening Convert

A nice collection of lettuces.

A guest post by Claudia Graves, a college friend and now a new and enthusiastic gardener.

Zero to sixty in three years

My mother could grow anything. It seemed that her touch could bring a sickly plant back from the brink or encourage a healthy one to thrive. “The greenest of green,” is how I used to describe her thumb, but she passed that trait along to my brother only. His plants thrive. Entrance into myhouse is the kiss of death. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I kill them with kindness and too much watering. No – I kill them with neglect and abuse. Why use “dirt” other than what lies right outside my door?  Why fertilize except for an occasional blast of some chemical so potent that it produces instant wilting… followed by a high probability of death. And watering? Once every few months should do ‘em. So I have “grown” a lot of lush “plastic plants” in my lifetime and not much else.

Then somewhere along the way I discovered that pencil cactus and aloe could often survive my version of care, so I grasped that straw and grew multiples of each on the porch. They were never exactly healthy, but they didn’t totally die. Just parts of them died. Sometimes big parts.

More Vegetables

However, everything changed a few years ago when my significant other and I began eating a lot more vegetables and started making green smoothies every day for breakfast. I bought organic vegetables whenever possible, but the variety was limited and they were very expensive.

Claudia's array of Earthboxes next to the pool.

Several friends had gardens and I began to give that some cautious thought. Knowing my track record as a gardener I wondered if there was any point in trying. But as luck would have it, Ginny stayed with us a few days during one of her book tours and I decided to mention it to her. We walked around my yard and she pointed out a place where a garden might grow. She told me how to proceed and we did everything she said. I couldn’t believe it - things actually grew! Somehow I hadn’t expected that. It wasn’t totally wonderful because there were too many “critters” and not quite enough light, but it was an exciting start.

The next fall I decided to try container gardening inside the screened pool enclosure. That was easier and worked better because there was plenty of light as well as bug and “critter” protection. An additional benefit was that I could move the pots around or even take them inside if frost was expected. We had a better crop that year but it was still a lot of trouble. It didn’t look very good and I had to water, fertilize and weed. Obviously, none of those are my strong points.

Kale growing without weeds because of the
plastic mulch.

Earthboxes to the Rescue

“Get Earthboxes” several people said the next year. I didn’t really believe all that they told me, but we drove to the Earthbox Research Center anyway and attended a demonstration. I was amazed at what I saw there and how foolproof it seemed to be. Nothing is left to chance because in addition to the containers themselves, the right amounts of everything needed is sold in individual packets: soil, dolomite, and fertilizer as well as a plastic cover to keep the moisture in and the weeds out. It would be almost impossible to do it wrong.

I was so impressed that we bought four of them on the spot then returned a few days later for two more. Several weeks later we bought a seventh box. On the second trip we also got an automatic watering system that is controlled by a battery operated timer. Not only does that mean that we don’t ever have to water (sigh of relief from me and the plants), but that the garden is self-sufficient when we are out of town. With the addition of the watering system there is nothing to do after the initial planting except to harvest the crop. And we do just that – big time.

Every day I gather one or two colanders full of vegetables for immediate use and also have extra to share or freeze for later. I am amazed, my friends are impressed, and I have overheard golfers on the course behind us talk about the “garden house.”

I’m actually a gardener now. Who would have thought?

Claudia and I enjoyed a sunset at the beach in St. Pete.

I love that you can read this post by one of my disciples--a convert to gardening. One problem Claudia will have with her screened-in veggies, is that she'll need to hand pollinate the squashes that she's just started. There are male and female flowers and without pollinators, she will not get any developed fruit unless she transfers the pollen.  

I spent three nights with Claudia while I was speaking to groups in central Florida and then participating in the Green Thumb Festival in St. Pete. It was a great way to catch up and one evening we drove a few miles to the west to enjoy a beach sunset. :-)

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Waiting for monarchs

I brought some Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) shoots and (dug-up) plants to share with a friend in the mountains.  She's "fostering" monarch caterpillars through Monarch Watch (I think).  What a great thing to do!

I had plenty of milkweed in the Piedmont, but the chilly spring has meant slow emergence in the mountains.  And the numbers of monarchs overwintering was at a really low point this year, so help (for the successive broods as they come north) is especially important.

Planting milkweeds of all sorts, but particularly common milkweed, is especially important, as it helps their journey north, as it takes at least 4 generations to make it to the farthest point!

My favorite site for tracking the adults is Journey North, but there are others, too.

And my friend shared this great video about the journey of Monarchs via her Facebook page, which I'm reposting here.

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Bok Choy

This year I have a lot of Really fun greens that I will be planting. One unique green is Bok Choy, sometimes called Pak Choy. I am planting a Red and Green variety. They should be planted every 12" apart, and can be used as a cutting green or harvest all at once, like a one stop shop. Unfortunately they are also susceptible to the vial Flea Beetle. Me and the Flea Beetle are not very good friends, they have destroyed many an eggplant in my garden...Who knows maybe this year we will have better luck. Lets gross our fingers.

Red Bok Choy on Left and Green Bok Choy on Right.

Later on when I harvest, I will post another video on the total process  But here we go...the 1st video ever on this blog.

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Spring migrants

The director at the Garden where I work (in the Piedmont of SC) reported hearing numerous warblers yesterday in our woodland gardens (in this Facebook post). Wow!

And Journey North's expert described an amazing array of sightings in his final Weather and Songbird post.

It's a great time to be out watching (and listening) for birds.

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