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.
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.
The plant is now large again, and getting lots of flowers, which contain spikes.
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.
A new eggplant growing on this plant in it’s second year
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
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.
May is here and my backyard vegetable garden is off to an okay start. I’m still getting used to growing veggies in this climate, but I’m happy to have big, luscious green peppers to use already!
My garden area is very small and the plants are divided between a raised bed, fabric bags, and an old grow box. All my Florida gardening is still in the experimental stages! I’m learning, but at least I have the raised bed filled with good dirt.
The backyard garden in May
This pepper plant has been around since last Spring! This amazes me. I always thought pepper plants liked the warmth, but this one survived winter. And, yes, it’s Florida, so “winter” is a dirty word here, but the temperatures were truly cold for a few days. I assumed the pepper plant would die, but it did not.
And once Spring arrived (February… hahaha) buds appeared and the peppers began to grow. I was picking them by April.
Picking green peppers this year by April
The yellow / summer squash is something that I am having trouble with. The plants (from seeds) grew nicely and then flowered and grew little squash. But then they began to pucker up and rot on the ends.
This can be caused by too much water, so I have been watering them less. Also I added some ground egg shells to the dirt because I read that a lack of calcium can be the culprit for blossom end rot.
I’ve picked two small squash so far and have had to throw many rotten ones away. The ones I ate were delicious!!! So I am hoping for more. Last year I tried to grow them also and had bugs and mold take over before I got squash to eat.
Yellow Squash
The cucumbers have just started to take off. Some are growing in fabric garden bags, and a few are planted at the edges of the raised bed.
I’m hoping for cukes to eat soon, but I’ve also read that the raccoons don’t like the feel of the fuzzy stems on cucumbers. If I have strands of cucumber vines all around my garden, will the raccoons leave my vegetables alone? Please work……
Cukes in fabric bag and inside bed
For the heck of it I threw a couple pieces of old sweet potato into my mostly empty garden back in February (?). Now the vines are long and pretty. When they start to die I will dig down and see if I find potatoes. I’ve grown regular potatoes, but never sweet potatoes.
Sweet potato vines and leaves
My little red pepper plant is growing lots of peppers and I’ve already used a couple red ones. They are very hot. I really wanted jalapeños but there were no plants when I was shopping. I dislike having to buy all my plants at the Home Depot, but there are no farm stands around.
Chili red hot peppers
I found a couple of parsley worms on my fennel. Dill plants were nowhere to be found, so I settled for fennel, which I have never grown. Ladybugs and apparently parsley worms enjoy it and I’ve been chopping it up to add to food I cook.
Parsley worm on fennel
One tomato plant has 8 green tomatoes and the other has 6. I’m counting them to make sure the raccoons are not stealing any during the night. I’ll bring the plants inside if raccoons begin bothering them.
Tomatoes are coming along
My little Navel orange tree lost a lot of it’s small fruit, but a few oranges are still growing.
A few oranges are growing on the new Navel Orange tree
The eggplant is still not giving me any eggplants, but it’s a good home for ladybugs. I’ve seen them in many forms (eggs, larvae, and beetle) crawling on the leaves. The aphid problem is no longer a problem. I can’t find a single aphid on anything! Don’t you love those ladybugs?
The weather will continue to get hotter and I may have to stop gardening within a month or so. I’ll see what lives and what doesn’t and go from there.
Planting some vegetables in the March garden in central Florida.
Here in Central Florida we are still having “cool” weather which I love. The neighbors are wearing winter clothing (seriously?) and complaining. When I say “I love this weather”, they tell me to go back to Vermont (I’m from New Hampshire).
I guess Floridians get grumpy when it’s cold.
The weather is perfect for planting the garden, and truly I should have begun sooner. Unfortunately I still have the lack-of-dirt problem. I’ve continued to add leaves, grass, and kitchen compost to the raised bed, but need to buy bags of dirt.
Now I have the money, but need the help lugging all those bags of soil and fertilizer / compost from the store and to the backyard.
For now I am using a few fabric bags where I have planted zucchini (or summer squash, I can’t remember which), lettuce and potatoes. All are doing very well and growing fast.
Check out my other posts to see how things are going: May in the Garden.
Zucchini or yellow squash (can’t remember which)
Tonight I will snip off the tops of this bib lettuce for supper. It will continue to grow back unless the hot weather moves in. Lettuce likes it cool.
The lettuce is loving the cooler weather
Yesterday I searched the Home Depot for some decent vegetable plants. I came away with a Celebrity tomato, and something called a Bonnie Original. One is a determinate and one an indetermanent, and as I stood there in the garden center I couldn’t remember what that meant. I thought one was grown within a cage and the other was sprawling. I think I was sort of right. Read more here about the difference between the two types.
Little tomato plants
I have tomato-stealing raccoons, so I’m not going nuts with the tomato plants. I also have a limited amount of space to grow things. The tomatoes may end up in bags with handles so I can easily move them inside at night away from tiny raccoon paws.
Potato vines
I planted some red potatoes, from my kitchen, with big “eyes” and that is what is growing in one of the fabric bags. I have good luck with potatoes. Although they are usually quite small, they are delicious.
I am so excited to see this little “volunteer” pepper plant! Glad I didn’t weed it out before I recognized it. My original pepper plant is still living and growing from last Spring! Even with all the cold weather over the winter, it survived (although it has a few aphids) and is flowering now. Amazing. I trimmed off the curling leaves and will see what it does. Apparently a seed was dropped, and now a new pepper plant is growing. I’d never heard of a “volunteer” plant until I lived in New Hampshire. My preferred word for them is “free”!
“Volunteer” pepper plant
On my latest trip to Pell’s Nursery in Osteen I picked up this little Navel orange tree. I have left it in it’s original pot for now, but bought that ceramic one for later use. It has a few little oranges growing which I hope don’t fall off. Sometime between October and March I should be picking an orange or two from my yard.
My new Navel orange tree
I’ve had good luck with growing the Persian Lime, so thought I’d add more citrus to the yard.
Using a paintbrush to help with pollination of my big eggplant tree.
My Eggplant “Tree”
You may be wondering about my post image of the eggplant with a paintbrush. I’m hoping that little brush will help with eggplant production. When your eggplant flowers keep falling off, you may need a little paintbrush too.
For many months now I have had an eggplant “tree” growing in my garden. I’m not familiar with growing eggplants. In my New England yard I think I tried a few times and picked maybe one eggplant from my own garden! The plants never grew very large – maybe a couple feet high. Here in Florida, my eggplant has become a small tree. And this photo was taken AFTER I pruned big branches off the thing!
Because of the warm climate, vegetable plants just go on living for many, many months. I am not used to that. The New Hampshire growing season was very short. When frost and freezes don’t happen, I suppose the plants could go on living forever. I don’t know. Does that happen? I thought vegetable plants were only good for one season.
I get lots of these
The plant produced many little purple flowers, and I kept hoping to see the dark purple vegetable pop out, but it never happened …. until just recently.
I figured there might be something wrong, since the plant itself is healthy and big. It gets plenty of water and sun. The weather has been hot, so I attributed the lack of fruit to that. However, the days have become cooler and now that one eggplant had set, I hoped to see more. That is not happening. All the other flowers are still falling off.
November 15th – Finally, a Little Eggplant is Growing!
I searched online and found a helpful article at Gardening Know How, which told me that lack of pollination may be the problem.
So this morning I went out with my little paint brush and swished it around inside some of the flowers. This is what that article said to do. Now I’ll wait and see if I get more eggplants forming. (Update: this did not help. I never got any more eggplants – that season – Read what happened the second year.)
I don’t love to eat eggplant, but I would definitely use them in a stir fry or vegetable lasagna dish. I just need this big plant to give me something to cook with!
In the meantime, I am using green peppers daily. I never thought I could grow them, but it appears I just had to wait.
Now that the weather is cooling off here in central Florida, gardening is on my mind. I can comfortably step outside and work in the yard. October was a little hot, but November has been nice.
My Gardening in Florida book says that October is the time to think about growing cool-season crops. Now it’s November and I still don’t have enough dirt for planting. But if I did, this is what I would have planted.
Also, further down the page, see what is still growing and beginning to produce vegetables!
What to Plant in Fall
Suggested planting includes carrots, beets (I seldom eat) and turnips (I never eat), which can be started as seeds. No need to buy seedlings. Last spring I planted carrots in a fabric pot and they did pretty well.
My book has a section about building strawberry pyramids – so I assume I should plant strawberries this time of year. I don’t really have the space for them, so maybe I need a pyramid? There is probably no time or money for that this year, but it’s something to keep in mind.
What I really need is a fence. It will give me some place where I can add containers and keep the raccoons out at the same time. There is no money for that right now.
I must deal with reality, so here is my list of vegetables I could have planted in October. My garden is 10 feet long by 3 feet wide. So not a lot of space, but I do have fabric pots to use as well. If only I had a garden full of good dirt.
Lettuce Kale Onions – plant around the edges, take up little space Peas – Will need a trellis
Some Plants Are Still Growing Well After Summer
I all but gave up completely on growing anything over the summer. I had planted tomatoes, eggplant, squash and peppers in Spring. I did get some small tomatoes but the raccoons helped themselves. The squash plant got bugs and died before it gave me any squash. The Eggplant and Peppers are still going strong. In fact they are now doing well.
My neighbor, who does no gardening in summer, said that when it’s too hot the plants won’t produce. She covers the ground with plastic to kill the nematodes. However, I wonder if she realizes that burning out the bad also affects the good. I’m not sure it is wise to do that. And because my plants survived the summer and are now looking good, I plan to keep the garden going all summer long next year.
My Eggplant “Tree” and green pepper plant in the raised bed
I honestly thought everything would eventually die in the summer heat. I kept watering, just in case. My eggplant grew into a small tree! It was pretty, and has plenty of purple flowers, but never gave me an eggplant to eat. Finally I cut it back hoping the excess energy put into growing would be used to possibly give me some eggplants.
And then…. today (maybe 2 weeks after trimming it) I was watering in the morning, as I do every day, and I found a small Eggplant beginning to grow! Yay… more please.
November 15th – Finally, a Little Eggplant is Growing!
The only other vegetable producing plants that have survived are the peppers. The hot pepper plant gives me a pepper here and there.
I have 2 bell pepper plants. One is in a fabric pot and it has produced a couple of peppers over summer. Now that the weather is cooler, the other pepper plant is producing like mad! I’ve never been able to grow peppers but maybe the secret is to plant in Spring and wait until Fall to eat them.
So, what I’ve learned so far is that planting in Spring gives me vegetables in Fall. The plants seem to go dormant over summer and then produce when the weather gets nice.
I’m continuously amending my soil and will continue to do so. I think poor soil was inhibiting growth.
Hydrangeas Blue 