Navigating Challenges in Florida Vegetable Gardening

Planting and re-planting in Fall for a good vegetable harvest. Bugs, weather, and animals can make things difficult.

Planting seeds is an ongoing process in my yard. Thanks to raccoons, my cats, and the armadillos, a lot of seed replanting happens. In my photos here, the only thing grown from a purchased plant (and not seeds or a cutting) is the sage.

purple sage
purple sage
bell pepper
bell pepper
frog on eggplant
eggplant
broccoli
broccoli
cherry tomato
tomato after Hurricane
bell pepper and carrot seedlings
pepper & carrots
garden fall 2024
Fall garden 2024 – Firespike is permanently angled from Hurricane winds

Where Are The Good Bugs?

I am into year two of vegetable gardening and I’m still wondering where all the good bugs are. Occasionally I see a ladybug. I rarely see much of anything else. It has me wondering if this area simply can’t support good things.

I’m not a fan of Florida. In my opinion the state is a swampland and should have stayed that way. Now, everyone sprays their lawns to kill all the things they never want to see.

All my neighbors spray their yards. I can only imagine how many beneficials are killed along with the unwanted cinch bugs and roaches. Is the ecology in my area so bad that I will never have a self supporting garden full of beneficial insects?

We have invasive frogs and lizards. Are they eating up all the good bugs that may show up? It really seems like everything is working against me here.

I Grow What Will Grow

Ideally, a backyard garden would supply food that is most loved and eaten often. What I would love to grow, and eat often, simply doesn’t grow for me. Onions, peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, and carrots would be great. I’ve had no luck with peppers, zucchini (any squash), tomatoes, and cucumbers. Certain types of greens do well – Tatsoi is a favorite. And last year carrots and onions came up.

Luffa yellow flowers
Luffa flowers
Zinnia orange flowers
Zinnia
Basil seedlings
Basil
Daikon radish garden bed
Daikon radish and new dirt section for planting

The Daikon radish is looking pretty good, but I’ve never eaten one. Can I make a meal out of a radish? The luffa looks sickly, a few beets look okay, the Egyptian spinach grows great – but I don’t eat it (yuk).

I’ve given up on peppers. The one bell pepper plant is covered in white flies or mites or whatever. I’ve tried to get rid of them, and gave up. I had quite a few nice pepper plants growing that simply died.

Squash and zucchini don’t grow. Last year I had a couple of Seminole pumpkins, which were delicious, but this year I have one that might be okay.

provider beans
Beans
cabbage & borage
borage & cabbage
Egyptian spinach
Egyptian spinach
carrots
carrots
golden beets
beets

I will have some carrots in a few months, and hopefully onions as well. It hasn’t been easy to grow those either with the raccoons digging up my seeds each night.

The one cherry tomato looked nice, until Hurricane Milton blew through. I’ve now propped up the eggplant that blew over too. Oh yes, eggplants last for years, but actually grow eggplants only occasionally. And they are not one of my favorite foods.

After success with carrots and onions last year, I was looking forward to Fall planting. I had whittled down my list to the things I had luck with. Broccoli, carrots and bulb onions are tops on my list. They are all growing very slowly.

The last thing I am going to try is to plant in raised beds. I purchased two more Vegega beds but have not put them together.

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Sweet Potato Slips Keep Showing Up

Sweet potatoes are not difficult to grow where I live. In fact, once planted, they may be around forever.

I’ve dug my sweet potatoes, but little shoots keep on sprouting. I’m finding them in the garden, and in the walkways. Any parts of the original plant, that have been hidden underground (roots) continue to grow.

sweet potato slip with roots
Sweet potato slip
potting sweet potato slip
Potting mix
potting sweet potato slip
Compost
potting sweet potato slip
Slip is planted

Later…

sweet potato in pot
Potted sweet potato

Sweet potato vines are popping up in my walkways. The roots are left from the sweet potatoes I grew in that box last year.

random sweet potato vines
Sweet potato vines
sweet potatoes growing in fabric bags
Sweet potato grow bags

Some of the vines have been added to fabric bags and one went into a pot (above).

I don’t think sweet potatoes are meant to grow over the winter. Pre-orders for slips take place during winter and the slips are shipped in Spring. They are a Spring-Summer crop. I will let these grow and see what happens. The leaves are edible and I will use them while I wait for the potatoes to grow.

The sweet potatoes I dug this year were small but I still have a few left to eat. Most were funny looking and not anything like what you buy in the store. But they taste delicious. One day I hope to have a raised bed just for sweet potatoes.

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Cleanup After Hurricane Milton

It was a long, sleepless night – October 10th – spent listening to extraordinary wind. Hurricane Milton traveled across Florida from somewhere around Tampa on the Gulf, to the Space Center and offshore on the east coast. I live about 50 miles north of where the eye traveled, and we got some big wind.

Amazingly, we never lost power. It has to do with all the tree trimming the power company has been doing. And all the previous storms that help clear things out.

after Hurricane Milton
Now for clean up
street flooding Hurricane Milton
Flooding
Moringa fallen over
Moringa is down

We got off lucky with minimal flooding and damage from the hurricane. A few large oak branches fell in the driveway and the rest is mostly small stuff. I was pleasantly surprised after hearing that nasty wind.

In my garden, the tomato plants are dead, the eggplant needed to be propped back up, and the Moringa tree is completely down. My beet seedlings look like they might not make it, as they were flattened.

I had been excited to get growing this Fall, but now I feel like giving up. I seem to have way more setbacks than successes when it comes to growing a productive vegetable garden.

We were lucky. I haven’t seen news about the Gulf coast, but the damage must be horrible. They were still cleaning up debris from Hurricane Helene. North Carolina is in shambles, and fortunately this hurricane did not head in that direction.

The metal hurricane shutters on the windows will stay there for now. Hurricane season doesn’t end for over a month.

Hurricane Milton Before the Hit

Hurricane Milton is coming. We are as ready as we can be, and now we are waiting.

We went camping over the weekend. When we came home Monday, we unpacked and began hurricane preparations for Milton.

Hurricane Helene mostly missed us, but this big one named Milton will not. We are in the path, with the eye going just a bit south. I live on the east coast and then projection is for a Category 1 by the time it gets here.

The Gulf will be devastated, and I can’t even imagine facing a Category 4. Many people have evacuated. Gas stations are without gas.

We spent the day putting up metal shutters on all our windows. We left some gaps in order to see outside and get fresh air with open windows once the storm has passed. There will be no power – for how long?

Metal hurricane shutters are on the windows

My son is a firefighter and is heading into work a day early. I hope the city will not be sending them out when the wind gets bad. People need to be self-reliant during times like this.

I expect power to go out and trees limbs to come down. Hopefully the flooding will not be bad, but lots of people were getting sand bags.

By tomorrow night we’ll be getting wind and then it’s a matter of riding out the storm into Friday. This is a big one, and damage will be extensive across the state.

Pros and Cons of Roselle Hibiscus Gardening

After growing Roselle Hibiscus for a year, I have decided that one plant is enough for me.

This was my first year growing Roselle hibiscus. I was very happy to have bushy, big plants that would give me lots of tea to drink. But there are problems with this plant.

Growing Roselle was an experiment. I didn’t know much about it, but the tea is good for the heart, blood pressure and other things. It is grown for the red pods, called calyces that form after flowering. They are peeled, and the red petals are used for tea. The tea is delicious and healthy. The center of the pod is where the seeds form. Where I live, the bush is very easy to grow. I had no idea how much Roselle would love my yard. It took over.

Pros

Roselle is one of the easiest things I have ever grown. Plant seeds, or simply cut a small branch from an existing plant and stick it into the ground. It will grow! The plants are beautiful, with big dark green leaves. The flowers don’t last long, but new ones bloom every day – in the Fall. Then it’s time for saving the calyces to have tea in the months to come. I simply peel and freeze mine – if I can pick them before the ants come.

Cons

The beautiful bushes are not very strong. Strong wind catches the leaves and the whole bush will split down to the ground. Or, branches will break off. I lost one of my biggest bushes over the summer during a storm. Then Hurricane Helene damaged the others.

Pathway blocked by shrubs
Beautiful shrub!

Roselle shrubs are huge. In a year they grew taller than me. They took over, blocked sun to parts of the gardens, and made navigating my yard more difficult. I didn’t know, and now I do.

These problems are manageable, and it’s all part of gardening. What I really don’t like about the Roselle is the ants. Once the red calyces began forming, ants were all over them. Maybe I have an excessive amount of ants in my yard, or maybe this is normal, I don’t know. No one warned me of this.

Also, inside each calyx are mealybugs – little white things. It just wasn’t worth the trouble to save these pods.

Roselle Hibiscus calyx covered in ants.
Covered in ants
Inside roselle flower with white mealybugs
Mealybugs inside

I have rinsed, set outside in the sun, rinsed again. The ants were everywhere. It was so bad, in this last batch of roselle I picked, that I gave up and threw them into the woods. It is possible the mealybugs cause the ants to come. I know ants show up when aphids appear too.

I did get an early set of pods, which had many fewer ants. I managed to clean and freeze those without much problem.

Another thing that is annoying is the flowers that drop become mushy and stick to my shoes. They make a mess. I’m certainly not a neat freak, but it feels like dog poop stuck to my crocs.

If I had lots of land, I would grow Roselle in a big area away from the house. They could expand and do their thing without getting in the way. Dropped flowers would be wiped from my shoes before I got back to the house. But this is not the situation I have.

One Roselle Hibiscus plant is enough for me. I’m going to cut them all down except one. Many broke and fell due to Hurricane Helene, so I’m already in the process of removing them. It is possible they will die over the winter anyway.

Solution

It is possible that my yard is not yet balanced with beneficial bugs to clean up this mess. I rarely see ladybugs. Even though I’ve had aphids on a number of plants, the ladybugs don’t stick around.

I read somewhere that it might take a few years to bring the beneficials to a garden, so I’m hopeful things will improve over time.

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Garden Readiness For Hurricane Wind

Hurricane Helene is bearing down on the west coast of Florida. Although I live on the east coast, we get wind and rain as the hurricane passes through. The storm could also change directions, and not follow the forecasted path. We all have to be ready.

In the garden, all I’ve done is tie up some of the taller plants. This includes the Celosia and Firespike flowering plants. The bell pepper is lanky, so I tied a rope around it as well.

Bell pepper plant
Celosia

I’m not doing much else to prepare for the hurricane. Even when very bad ones are heading our way, they cross over land first (usually) which slows them. Where I live, the biggest problem is possible flooding.

In the garden, I am more worried about the wind. I did some more trimming of the roselle bushes because they are susceptible to damage with branches breaking. I’ve already lost one during a windy storm a few months ago. Since then I have been trimming out the smaller branches.

Roselle Hibiscus
Firespike