Category: Garden, Growing Vegetables

Surprise Little Flower on Sweet Potato Vines

It’s November and my Florida vegetable garden is a bit of a mess. I don’t do much with it, but I look at it every day out my bedroom window. And today, I noticed a lavender-pink flower that was out of place. The outside color is about the same as the eggplant flowers, but this bloom was larger. It looked like it was on the trailing vine of the sweet potato plant.  And sure enough it was!

Lavender, pink and purple sweet potato flower
The inside of the flower is darker purple
sweet potato flower on vine
Sweet potato vines can flower!

Any day I can learn something new is a good day, in my opinion. And today I did. After neglecting my overgrown raised bed garden for months due to the heat, I am pleased to see new things happening in November.  Maybe a cool down was all it needed.

Sweet potato vines
Sweet potato vines trailing over the garden bed

After doing a quick search about flowering potato vines, I found an article at The Walden Effect which said flowers on potatoes were unusual. Then, I read comments from lots of people who have had flowers like mine. So whether it is uncommon or not, I don’t know. Maybe flowering sweet potatoes are only common in Florida, or other humid areas. It certainly looks like more flowers will be blooming on my vine. And yes, as someone mentioned, they do look like Morning Glories.

blue morning glory flower and buds
Blue morning glory flower and buds – my photo

At my house in New Hampshire I grew a big Morning Glory plant with blue flowers. The vine grew up the side of my deck railing, but the plant was frozen just as loads of buds were forming. I decided not to grow them again, but the blue flowers were gorgeous.  The buds were twirled around and unfolded like a mini umbrella.  You can see that in my photo above.

Getting Seeds From Sweet Potato Flowers

Another interesting sweet potato article talks about how sometimes the blossoms can turn into tomato-looking berries.  This is where the seeds will be.  I have never grown a sweet potato from seeds, only from tubers, or bits of old sweet potatoes with eyes.

sweet potato flower on vine
Potato vines climbing through tomato cages

I will watch and see what happens to the flowers, and if I get any of those seed pods.

IMG_6644

Finally, Growing Tomatoes Advice For the Florida Climate

As I was searching for some other gardening advice altogether, I came across a Florida gardening blogger who seems to have very useful information to share. Unfortunately it looks as if his blogging stopped a few years ago in 2015. Maybe he moved away to a better place.

I found a post with growing tomatoes advice which would explain why I have such a difficult time with tomatoes.

First of all he starts with seeds (Plant Your Tomato Seeds). I’ve been wondering if the fact that I buy seedlings from Home Depot (there is nowhere else I’ve found) is my biggest problem. He says store bought plants “are never very good”. I already suspected this.

Start planting seeds early enough to have seedlings ready for the garden by March first. He says to buy a combination of sizes, but tomatoes won’t grow very large in this climate. I’ve found that to be true as well. I don’t have the space for a lot of plants, but I can use my fabric bags.

Which Tomato Seeds to Buy?

The blogger I am referencing plants Hybrid Tomatoes only.  I am not sure why, except that they are probably tougher than heirlooms.  A hybrid is a cross-pollinated plant.  The characteristics are better yield and disease resistance, among others.

Roma tomato seed packet
Roma tomato seed packet

In case you are interested in buying tomato seeds online:  Organic Heirloom tomato seeds can be purchased at the Tomato Fest site. These are NOT hybrids. Heirloom tomatoes give the grower the option to save seeds to plant the following year. You can’t do that with hybrids.

Buy the most disease and pest resistant varieties. Look at package labeling for letters that follow the name of the tomato. See the key list of what that lettering means on this page at Gurneys.  My packet above contains the letters VF which protects from wilt disease.

Indeterminates only – this means the tomatoes will continue to grow shooting out stems and growing tall all during the growing season. Indeterminates continue to set fruit while you pick ripe tomatoes. In other words, they just keep growing until something stops them. They need staking, whereas determinate varieties are more compact and can grow in pots.
**Note here: Indeterminates can grow to be 12 feet tall! I will need to re-think my staking. I suspect that in Florida they could easily grow to astounding heights.  I can see the raccoons climbing my stakes and destroying my crops.

Pick Tomatoes Early

Letting tomatoes ripen on the vine is my preference, but the raccoons tend to pick them before I get to.  My reference blogger picks his early and says they taste better when he lets them ripen indoors.  His blog is helpful, but not easy to navigate, so use the “search” area.

He mentions planting some tomatoes later in the season, in the shade, in a new area, and they did well.  Read about that at the bottom of this page where he “answers a question“.

I’m grateful for this info.

Why I Remove the Peat Pot When Planting Seedlings

From the time I first began buying plants from Pell’s Nursery in Osteen, Florida I was told to “rough up” the roots when the plant was removed from the pot.

I’m talking plastic pots here, which are the way big plants usually come. Often the plant is a bit root bound from growing in a container. In order for the plant to do well when it’s in the ground, the roots need to know they can now grow outwards.

Some plants with thick roots can actually be sliced, or cut to train them to spread. You do this at a few intervals around the root and dirt ball before it’s set into the ground.  The Pell family gave me good advice and I always had excellent luck when adding their trees and bushes to my Florida landscape.  Their planting suggestion was a good one.

Screen Shot 2018-05-13 at 8.17.22 AM
Hot pepper plant from store

These days little seedlings are often sold in biodegradable, plantable pots, which will disintegrate in the dirt. We are told to plop the whole thing (minus the bottom, says the label) into the ground. Easy-peasy, no muss, no fuss.

I don’t like it. Why would I want a pot in my garden? And what is it really made of? I also believe it inhibits plant growth.  “Peel off bottom of pot for optimum root growth” – it says this on the plastic.  So imagine if you let the roots around the sides have that optimum growth chance as well!

In short, it’s not necessary. Treat it like a regular pot and remove it.

Screen Shot 2018-05-13 at 8.17.15 AM
Everything removed and ready to plant

I always remove the peat pot when I plant something purchased at the store (in my case the Home Depot). I do this because it releases the roots so they can instantly grow into the garden dirt in a natural way. I see no reason to add a pot to the garden soil. It’s just as easy to remove the plastic wrap and the pot.

This type of pot is often used for starting seeds. When I tried this when growing things for my northern garden, the pots began to turn moldy! So they aren’t necessarily a good choice for that either.

Screen Shot 2018-05-13 at 8.17.05 AM
New little pepper plant

By the way, I’ve found that hot pepper plants are one of the easiest types of vegetable to grow.

Starting New Tomato Plants From Suckers

I always plant little tomato plant seedlings when I garden. But there is a way to start new little plants from the original seedlings.

Once the seedling begins to grow, it will probably grow “suckers” which sprout from between stems.  (If you don’t know what I am talking about, see an image of suckers at the Gardener’s Journal site.)  The key is to only remove suckers below the fruit producing area. Usually down by the first or second stems of the plant. The reason is to give the tomato plant fewer stems and leaves to deal with, sending production to the tomatoes themselves.

But the suckers can be turned into new plants! Warning if you live in an area of the country with a short growing season. The season is too short for these propagated plants to produce before the weather turns cold. I’ve tried.

The “sucker” below was pulled off one of my store bought plants and I simply stuck it into the dirt in my garden bed. Each day I gave it plenty of water, and in the beginning it looked droopy. But they come back and begin to grow (plenty of water is the key here).

It doesn’t get any easier to have yourself a new, free tomato plant!

tomato propagating
Little tomato plant started from original, store bought plant

The other sucker plant (below) was brought into the house and stuck in a vase of water for about a week, or until it sprouted little white roots. Then I put it out in the garden.

As you can see, the water grown sucker looks better than the one simply stuck into the dirt. But you can do it either way. I look forward to seeing if these free plants do grow tomatoes eventually. It may become too hot before they get the chance.

propagating tomato plant
Propagating tomato

On a side note, this green pepper plant sprung up in the garden beneath my big pepper plant. I moved it to a better spot and it is growing nicely.

Be careful when weeding, and know what is what. I recognized the leaves of this little pepper and let it grow. It’s easy to simply pull out all the “weeds” and inadvertently remove a volunteer plant!

seed pepper volunteer
Bell / Green pepper plant started from a seed which dropped from the big plant

Update on Growing Eggplants That Survive Year Round

This year-round gardening with vegetables still blows my mind, but I have a few plants that have been in my garden for over a year now. Yes, they go dormant (and even look dead) when the cold weather moves into Florida, but they come back and produce even better the second time around.

Will they still be around next year? I have no idea. But this Spring season has been a great one for my bell pepper plant and now my eggplant is showing signs of producing as well.

In the Spring of 2017 I planted two eggplant plants. One was eaten up by a tomato worm and the other continued to grow and grow. It gave me no eggplants until well into the season. I finally got one. Only one. I tried the paintbrush pollination method but still nothing happened.

The plant got huge. I had to cut it back because it was taking over the garden bed. When the cold weather came, the entire plant turned brown and I thought that was it.  I’m used to plants dying and having to be planted in Spring.  When my vegetable plants don’t die, and instead begin to grow again, it amazes me.  I didn’t even know vegetables could do that.

dead eggplant
Eggplant plant turned brown during Florida winter.

However, at the base of the plant some greenery remained. As the weather warmed, more leaves and stems appeared.
Screen Shot 2018-05-09 at 5.55.53 PM
The plant is now large again, and getting lots of flowers, which contain spikes.

eggplant flower
Spikes on eggplant flower

As of now, May 2018, the plant has been flowering like crazy but again the eggplants themselves were missing. So the other day I pulled lots of the flowers off (that is when I noticed how spiky they were!). I don’t know if that is what the plant needed, but suddenly I now see a small eggplant. There are signs of maybe a couple more ready to pop out as well.

Too many flowers? I don’t know if that was a coincidence, but if your eggplants are not producing, try removing some of the buds.

little eggplant
A new eggplant growing on this plant in it’s second year

Blossom End Rot Problem on The Squash

I’ve been having a blossom end rot problem with my Summer Squash. After reading a bit about the disease, I found a couple of solutions to try.

Vegetables will begin to grow and look fine, but then the ends will turn brown and rot the fruit like in my image below.

First, overwatering is a concern. Because it tends to be very hot here, I do water my garden every morning. Plants in pots outdoors, like my Persian Lime Tree, need lots of water.

The problem with too much water on the yellow squash, or zucchini which is similar, is that calcium leaches out of the soil and the plant can’t get enough to grow the squash correctly.

So adding calcium can help.   I decided to try adding eggshells, but store bought organic calcium may be the better way to go.  It’s not cheap, but this problem can affect many types of vegetables so the bag would probably come in handy.

squash blossom end rot
Squash blossom end rot

I have read that one way to add calcium to garden dirt is by adding crushed, dried eggshells.

A mortar and pestle can be used to crush the shells to make a fine powder. This can be added to the soil.  However, I also found this page at the Garden Myths site which claims that eggshells basically do very little to enhance soil.    They say that grinding the shells to powder and adding to acidic soil is your best shot for this idea to work.  They claim that eggshells remain intact for long periods of time and do not break down to add nutrients to the soil.

Egg shells
Crushing dried egg shells to add calcium to the garden

In the end, what the suffering plants probably need is additional calcium (in whatever form you choose to use) and possibly less water.  Read more about Blossom End Rot at the Gardeners site.