My first time seriously trying to grow vegetables and annuals through a Florida summer. I’ve purchase plants and seeds, and transplanted seedlings. A lot of work has gone into my garden area. Some things have done very well, and others are fails and best to be forgotten!
Some things I am still up in the air about.
First, The Wins
Watermelon is at the top of my list for wins. I have harvested three, edible melons. They grew from direct planting and I would have had four, except that the raccoons got one. The vines had no problems, even though I wished I’d had more space for them. These were Strawberry Watermelons which are good for growing in southern locations.
Watermelon
I picked the melons the end of June, and now, mid-July, I have another tiny melon on one of the old vines. Also, new vines are sprouting from the original, so I’ll see what happens.
Eggplant
I’ve grown eggplant for a few years now. I had one plant that grew and grew and seldom ever gave me eggplants to eat! Eventually I cut it down. Now I have about five plants growing in various locations and have been eating eggplant regularly.
The small, Japanese eggplants are eaten fried in a pan. The larger eggplants are usually baked. *By the end of July, eggplants have pretty much stopped producing.
Okra
I planted okra seeds into the garden and then thinned them once they began to grow. They grew fast, have had no problems, and are hardy. The flowers are very pretty, but don’t seem to attract butterflies or bees. The problem is, I’ve discovered I don’t really like okra!
I was picking a few okras a day and slicing them to fry and eat with lunch. But the slimy, sticky okra just turns me off.🤮. I want to grow food I like, and I don’t like okra. I’ve begun cutting the plants down to add to the composter. But, I’m letting a few okra pods get big and dry out for seeds. A friend wants them.
Moringa Trees Looking Good
Two Moringa trees grown from seed are planted in the back corner of the garden and look good. I love their lacy leaves.
Flowering plants – Good and Bad
New to the yard this year are the yellow cosmos, zinnias, Rudbeckia, Gaillardia, seashell cosmos, nasturtiums, and Amaranth. Marigolds also grew again, and they are always dependable, but *did begin to fall over and split by July.
A delightful reader of this blog was kind enough to tell me the name of the yellow-flowering plant above. It is a Melapodium, and it grows well in hot climates.
Of all of these flowers, the Zinnias are an absolute win.
Rudbeckia did great for a while, but the heat brought bugs and I had to cut the plant way down.
The yellow cosmos, which has very different leaves from the frilly leaved cosmos, didn’t do well, but the seeds I collected from it, and threw into other gardens, grew great! So, maybe the original plant was not in a good spot. Now I have lots of new little plants growing. One of them is producing orange flowers. This flower has a remnant of its original yellow as a stripe on one petal. See the original plant in the slide show below.
Borage hates the sun and heat, so I have covered it. Nasturtiums did horrible. Amaranth has done nothing, so I’m not sure yet if it’s a win or fail.
Now For the Fails
My vegetable fails for summer were tomatoes and Swiss chard. I had grown a bunch of cherry tomatoes, but really wanted big tomatoes. I KNOW they don’t like the extreme heat. But, I had one plant already growing so I planted it. The plant is looking great, but no fruit is forming. I’m going to let it grow and maybe it will get tomatoes in a couple of months.
Here’s the tomato plant behind a couple of sunflowers. Tomatoes are suppose to be planted in February here, I believe. That way they are all done by the time the real heat arrives.
I planted Swiss Chard twice, in two different varieties and they fall over and don’t grow.
Happy Gardening!
Hydrangeas Blue 