“How to Grow a Vegetable Garden” presentation at the Dec. 4th Vegetation Committee • Sanibel, FL

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Please join us at Mackenzie Hall for the Vegetation Committee meeting on December 4th at 1:30 pm for “How to Grow a Vegetable Garden” presented by Frances Tutt.

In this presentation, Frances will discuss how she is growing healthy and organic food in pots in her screened in porch that her family can eat for years to come. She will also share the books, YouTube channels and other resources that she uses to keep learning. She will talk about saving seeds and propagating plants. She admits that she is on a never-ending learning journey and hopes that you will find some benefit from hearing what has and has not worked for her so far!

She will talk about some local native eatable plants that you can grow in your yard.

Frances will bring some of her seedlings for you to take home.  You can take home a spinach plant and grow in a pot and see how fun it is to grow something you can eat. Her only request is that once your plant gets large enough you in turn share cuttings from that plant with someone else.

She will bring: sisso spinach, longevity spinach and Malabar Spinach.

About Frances:

She relocated to Sanibel with her husband Simon in 2019. They purchased their house about 10 years prior to that and vacationed in Sanibel until eventually moving here fulltime. Frances is originally from Atlanta, Georgia. Starting around age 5 she developed a passion for gardening and was given a spot in the family garden where she learned to grow carrots, beans and watermelons for many years.  After graduating from college and being employed as a food scientist for McCormick, in Hunt Valley Maryland, she started a garden of her own. Frances had a very productive garden. She even sold tomato plants she propagated to support McCormick’s charity day. 

Frances was employed with McCormick for 30 years in the industrial flavor division. She retired as a principal scientist in 2018. Frances worked with the flavor group to develop flavored beverages for huge manufacturing companies, such as Anheuser-Busch. Some of you may have seen her present at the Community house about her experiences while working for McCormick.

Currently Frances and Simon live on the east end of Sanibel with their two cats Ozzy and Chloe. Frances has taken on the challenge of learning how to garden in Sanibel, where the soil and climate are so different from what she had previously experienced. She admits that some of her first endeavors were not pretty and some even epic fails! However, she never gave up and has continued to learn more every day. She has found success by being willing to experiment and also by tapping into local gardeners’ deep knowledge.

Besides gardening, Frances loves teaching and practicing yoga, staying fit and working out, cooking, canning, preserving, fermenting, shelling, fishing, exploring the island and photography.