image by evelynishere
September in South Florida means time to plant vegetable gardens for the earliest winter crop possible. Some old timers wait till October to plant the seeds and spend September prepping the garden beds because often times it rains so much it drowns the baby seeds in September which is the peak of hurricane season.
I say plant in September and if the seeds drown plant again right away. If you get lucky you’ll be eating something from the garden by Thanksgiving if you do.
If you have never planted a backyard garden now’s a great time to start one. Ask you child if they want to help and your first step is to get seeds. One of my favorite places to order seeds is from www.rareseeds.com, which is Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds Company. They carry over 1200 different varieties of heirloom seeds and give good portions of seeds for the price and always throw in a free surprise pack of seeds with your order. Heirlooms are very old varieties of plants and some of the tomato varieties are the same seeds the Native American Indians carried around with them and introduced to the settlers like my favorite the Cherokee Purple Tomato. Oh my, its big, ugly, wrinkly with green on top, red in the middle and purple towards the bottom and so full of juicy flavor especially when you have used ocean water in a 35:1 dilution with rainwater to feed them with all season long. You can also try www.heirloomseeds.com or do a search for heirloom seeds and find a seed company of your choice. Its fun to read through the descriptions of the plants, pick out what you want to plant and know they are on the way to you in the mail while you go to work prepping the garden space.
It’s easy to make a garden space in South Florida. Nearly everyone has lawns full of grass and you can pick out a sunny spot in the grass along the back fence or in a corner of the property and mark it off for a garden space. Then you take a round point shovel and jump on it down the line to mark the boarders and then cut out squares, dig underneath and simply lift the sod right out of the space and put it in a part of the yard you want to grow grass. Then some cheap 1”x 6” non pressure treated wood can be gathered from the store or any type of boarders choice you would like to make from your garden outlet to place around the edge and now you have created a garden space. Drive steaks in the ground and put chicken wire or other cheap fencing around the bourder to keep the animals out and to have something to tie tomatoes and cucumbers to.
If you don’t have good dirt from your own compost pile to add you can go get some bags of soil from the hardware store but its not really necessary if you are armed with ocean water and prepared to use it throughout the growing season. I like to spread mulch about 2 or 3 inches thick over the entire garden space and then pull back the mulch where I wish to plant along the fence and in the rows. At this point you can take your potting soil and fill the hole you create by pulling back the mulch and plant your seeds in that. The mulch helps keep the weeds down but nothing keeps the weeds at bay like weekly pulling. The more time you spending your garden the more beautiful and productive it will be.
So what did I plant so far? Around the fence I planted Fox Cherry tomatoes, Cherokee Purple tomatoes and Yellow Pear tomatoes, Genovese Basil, Parisian Pickling cucumbers, Sugar Snap peas and Wando Garden peas, Zucchini-Lungo Bianco and Hawaiian Orange marigolds for beauty and to ward off pests. Then in the rows I planted Arugula, Dwarf Siberian kale, Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, Early Wonder beets, Early Purple Vienna Kohlrabi, and Tonda Di Parigi carrots. I’m half Italian so I love getting the Italian varieties but you can read all about the seeds and pick your own favorites.
Take ocean water and mix it at 3.6 ounces to a gallon of rain water in a pump sprayer and water your seedlings in and then continue this every week throughout the garden season and you will have a most incredible garden of nutrient dense food. Remember sulfur sweetens and magnesium is a very pivotal central type element that is missing from most soils as well as sodium. Ocean water has lots of sodium as well as every mineral in a perfect balance for plants. Few people know that sulfur and magnesium is 1/10th the amount of sodium in ocean water and that means you’ll be able to taste the difference come harvest time.
Contact you local saltwater aquarium for fresh ocean water or if you friend has a boat give them a few empty milk jugs to fill while they are far from land out fishing. As a last resort find the cleanest beach, dip a bucket in, and the mineral content gained far exceeds the pollution content besides you are gong to dilute it 35:1 anyway.
Have fun and remember to contact me when its harvest time! You may love the veggies I grow with ocean water but nothing will ever taste as good as the food your grow yourself!