Anyone from So Fl have luck with planting a garden???

[new2gardening]

What did you plant and can you share any secrets?

 

[Rusty]

Most years I plant tomatoes with really good results. The key is to plant a VERY early spring garden or a VERY late fall one. I spray a lot with insecticidal soap as needed, keep them staked, and I feed with really well-aged manure made into manure tea. My little corner is probably more manure than sand these days, because I've been tilling in aged horse manure every January for about 15 years now.


Rusty

 

[new2gardening]

What months of the years do you normally plant your gardens? What do you plant? We planted ours in towards the end of March and it is way to hot for the plants right now, they are all dying one type at a time. First was the green beans, squash and now the corn. Everything was thriving before it got really hot.

 

[Rusty]

Depending on how the winter is going, sometimes I start in early February. If it is a chilly winter, I skip until the fall garden, which I put in in late August or early September. I normally plant cucumbers, tomatoes and corn. I have a well, so I water regularly (every other day for sure unless it rains that day) and spray as needed.

I always pick THE most disease-resistant varieties in the catalog (Burpee or Parks). Disease kills WAY more stuff than the heat does. And I try for the shortest season stuff--i.e. 2 kinds of tomatoes with equal disease resistance but one is 78 days and the other 90? I always go with the 78-day one.

HTH

 

[new2gardening]

This was our first garden, so we are defintely still learning. Our corn was growing beautifully, then it got brown spots, probably some type of disease on the stalks. We only picked two squash from a whole packet of seeds, which was a nice size row. Green bean grew beautifully, until it got so hot. So we haven't had much luck. Tomatoes and peppers are going good, and it looks like we'll get some eggplant. What do you spray on your plants for insects. We had stink bug looking bugs on our tomatoes, but were dark brown or black, instead of green.

 

[lavacaw]

How far south in FL are you? We had a garden every year when we lived in Lakeland. Some things did better in the fall but we grew almost everything. The soil was mostly sand and took lots of organic matter and needed water almost every day until the rainy season started. Eggplants and Okra made it all the way through the summer as did the bell peppers. We started planting about the first of February with potatoes followed a couple of weeks later with tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and green beans. Then the warmer season crops. I know we grew broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts in the fall but don't remember how early we planted them. We used to get bags of oak leaves from friends in town and used them for mulch and tilled them in in the fall...followed by more bags. Good luck..hope this helps

 

[Rusty]

I use Garden Safe Insecticidal Soap from Schultz that I get at WalMart or one of the 3-in-1 products that hit bugs and diseases. I hand-pick the tomato worms whenever possible--but that is in addition to spraying and not instead of it. I check for buggies and disease morning and evening. Until I started buying seeds based on resistance and short growing season, I lost lots of stuff to disease. There's no cold season to kill off these things, so if you want a garden in Florida, you really have to stay on top of it. Miss a few days and the buggies get the goodies! Plus I do not turn under the spent plants the way so many suggest. Often by then they are full of disease, so I yank them and burn them. That does seem to help, too.

Rusty

 

[new2gardening]

lavacaw-we are in Palm Beach County. What type of organic matter did you use? Did you till into the garden area prior to planting, or place around the plants once they started growing?