seminole pumpkin

I am writing today to make you feel better. Yup, it’s a pretty depressing morning here, so I hope that will make you feel better about your bad start to the day. If you had a good start, yay for you. If you are having gardening troubles, you are not alone.

Here in the jungle, summer is the pits. It is too hot to be outside for long, and if I venture out, it’s either loaded with bug repellent, or covered in long sleeves and pants.

On top of that, there is very little in the way of food growing. All my Seminole pumpkins start to grow, then turn yellow and fall off the vine.

Finally, I have one that looks like it will continue to grow. And today I see that raccoons (my best guess) have scratched it all up!

The Dahlia is wilting. We just had a little tropical system swirling over our area of the state and it dropped 4 inches of rain. We had minor flooding, which went away quickly. But maybe the dahlia did not like all that water. Maybe it doesn’t like July in Florida. I can’t blame it.

The weeds, or should I say, grass has gone nuts. This is all getting away from me because of all the vines that are sprawling all over the yard. The squash vine is done, and I should pull it up. But it’s too hot and buggy.

The watermelon vines have 1 watermelon. The pumpkin vines – well, I mentioned that above. Those vines have nearly made it from the back of the house to the front. They’ve dropped about 10 pumpkins at this point.

Speaking of vines. That mound in the distance in my photo above is an Elm tree next to a Beautyberry bush. Below is a photo of the two trees with most of the vines pulled off. I used to work at this, even though this is not part of my yard. I’d love to see both grow and do well. As you can see it’s a losing battle.

These are trying to grow under that mound of vines in the photo above.

A banana pepper plant has died, and the other peppers don’t look so good. So it’s a depressing start to the day for me. I think I’ll stay inside.

This is a quick review of my experience with the Urban Harvest. This company is located on the western coast of Florida. Elise is the woman who does videos about growing vegetables in this hot Florida climate. I have linked to one of her videos below. She also has a beautiful website with information and seeds for sale. I am so happy to have found her, and very much appreciate her good advice about gardening.

I’m just getting started with my backyard vegetable garden, but so far I’m impressed with the growth from the seeds I bought.

Growing From Seed

Whenever you use seeds to begin a garden, it’s a guess as to how many seeds will actually grow. I’ve had very good luck with my seeds from The Urban Harvest. Everything has grown really well.

If you live in the St. Pete area of Florida (west coast), this company also sells living plants. See more at the Urban Harvest website.

Seed packets cost around $3.00 and all the packets above came from The Urban Harvest even though only two packets contain their label. Shipping was fast. I received a thank you e-mail. In my opinion, customer service is great!

My seeds arrived in April, so I only planted what could handle the summer heat. (The carrots, broccoli and Brussels sprouts will wait until Fall.)

The watermelon and okra were put directly into the ground on April 8th. Of the 12 watermelon seeds I planted, 9 came up. I have thinned them to four plants. I simply don’t have a lot of space for them. (I should have thinned them to 2!)

June 4th watermelon on the vine. Almost exactly 2 months after planting. — My largest watermelon – June 4th

Okra

Almost all of the okra seeds sprouted. I transplanted a few of the seeds when thinning the rows, and I don’t suggest doing that. Those transplanted okra plants are not growing as well as the ones I left alone!

I’ve never grown, or eaten okra so I only planted three short rows. On May 25th I was picking some okra!

On April 8th I put the pumpkin seeds into pots.

Here are the pumpkin seedlings at growing day 10.

Seminole pumpkin seedlings — Pumpkin seedlings – day 10

Now the pumpkins have been growing in the ground since about April 29th. Today is May 12th so these two pumpkin plants are a little over a month old (photo below) from the time I first planted the seeds.

Seminole pumpkin plants, 5/12 — May 12th Seminole Pumpkin plants in the garden

Right now the pumpkin plants are growing upward and I hope they will trail off to the edge of the yard once they get going. I am very excited about these native Florida pumpkins! Search YouTube if you want to see how big the vines grow. They can even grow up through trees and produce hanging pumpkins!

Update on the Seminole Pumpkin: Vines are long (June 4th), but no flowers yet. Leaves are turning yellow and I don’t know why. I’ve trained the vines to follow the edge of the yard.

Moringa

I was totally unfamiliar with the Moringa tree. The Urban Harvest sells Moringa seeds and I have a three growing in the yard, and one in a small pot. All seeds that were begun in pots sprouted, whereas the ones I put directly into the ground did not.

I wish I had more space and knew more about their growth habits, height and so on. This will be an experiment. Right now I have three planted and growing, but they are small.

Elise of The Urban Harvest has a few videos where she mentions growing the Moringa tree. See one here: Three Tropical Survival Foods You Must Plant in Florida. She has loads of videos that cover all kinds of things to do with Florida gardening. I’ve already learned so much.

The Moringa trees are also growing more slowly than I expected. They look good and I guess it will take a while for them to become truly tree-like.

Garden Progress

Creating a garden from a grassy space in Florida takes some work. There are many vines and deep roots to remove from all the natural invasion from the lot next door. Then I am left with sand which must be amended for growing.

In the photo below, I have removed the grass, added compost, planted seeds and seedlings (and added more compost and fertilizer) and watered each morning. From here I will add mulch to conserve moisture and keep the ground cooler. Summer is nearly here and it is already too hot after 9:00am for me to do much gardening.

I ordered a second batch of seeds from The Urban Harvest and will definitely buy more at a later date. I highly recommend this helpful place if you are a Florida vegetable gardener.