Learn how to have a successful vegetable gardening in Central Florida. UF/IFAS Extension agent, Tia Silvasy, stresses the importance of site selection, soil preparation, and plant selection, as well as seed selection and planting methods. This includes a discussion on integrated pest management in vegetable gardens, the importance of cultural control methods, using beneficial insects, and avoiding chemical controls. Jan Ignash, a Master Gardener Volunteer, shared her favorite easy-to-grow vegetables and some of her garden and cooking recipes. For more information about vegetable gardening in Florida refer to the UF/IFAS Florida Vegetable Gardening Guide at https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/VH021.
The cloud all right today we’re going to do a presentation on vegetable gardening in Central Florida my name is Tia sves and I have Jan ignash with me one of our Master Gardener volunteers with UF IUS extension Hillsboro County so the spring is here and vegetable gardening season
Is on So today we’re going to tell you everything you need to know to get your garden started so first of all you want to choose a garden site and the three main criteria here is you want it to be full sun you want access to water so you can
Water your plants and it has to be accessible maybe right outside of your kitchen or nearby your house you don’t really want to plant your vegetable garden in the back 40 because you won’t walk by it and see when things are ripe or if plants need a little help so put
It somewhere where you can visit it you know at least two to three times a week if not daily I’m going to go over the different types of garden beds so the raised garden beds is what a lot of people start with um the pros of these is
They’re off the ground they have good drainage with the rais structure you know easy to maintain you know they’re nice and contained so you know where your garden is and they can be elevated you know if you have mobility issues or want to do less bending um some of the
Cons are you’re going to need to buy materials or find recycled materials to build the garden frames and those materials can be costly you’re also going to spend more money buying soil or compost to feel all that volume so the inground Garden is definitely the cheapest and easiest and
Especially when it do a large area this would be the type of garden to use it’s easy to start up you can just till or use your Pitchfork or shovel and mix in some compost um they also lend themselves well to drip irrigation with the long
Rows um the cons is it is kind of a lot of area and you can get compacted from walking on it and more area for weeds to grow so maybe mulching in between the rows or some strategies to deal with that would be good next is the grow boxes so grow
Boxes there’s a lot of different type my favorite are they self-watering that have uh this water reservoir at the bottom and and the more volume of soil in the growbox um the better your vegetables will grow so this is great for small spaces a lot of these
Containers are made out of like UV resistant plastic so they do last a long time um you can even automate some irrigation like on this tomato on the left you have the little the little drip tube irrigation that comes in there to water it um you know it is uh the cons
Are that they can be expensive and they are small like you can only grow one tomato plant in a large grow box or maybe three kale plants in a large grow box so um don’t use it for your pumpkins or your corn but some little leafy greens or a couple Tomatoes
It does a great job uh grow bags are another option very cheap uh lightweight easy to move you can get these in various sizes but generally the pots are kind of small so like pictured here maybe for some herbs or flowers or Leafy grains but again um
If you have a giant tomato plant in here you’re going to be watering it often so they tend to dry out quickly that’s one of the downfalls but if you’re going to move soon they’re definitely a great way to go cheap and lightweight easy to move um the last thing is these vertical
Gardens and so this is is good because you can grow a lot of food at one time and you can stagger the planting so you could grow one row you know plant that this week and then next week turn it a little bit and plant the next row so you
Can have a continuous Harvest of lettuce or leafy greens um these are better for kind of small you know Bunchy plants not great for huge tomato plants or growing corn or anything else that’s going to get tall or large um the cons of these is they are high maintenance they often require
Electricity um you might need to turn them for the sunlight or provide supplemental lighting and expensive so again not suitable for large plants but if you have an indoor space or really limited growing space this might be a great option or if you just want to have
Fun with it you can get yourself a tower garden so getting started here you want to prepare your soil and you do that by fluffing it up or tilling to loosen the soil um if you want to work towards no till then just you know do this at the
Beginning and then keep adding organic matter and maybe don’t till it next year um you want to break up any clumps remove any large roots or rocks amend with compost like one to two inches of compost till that into the soil and now is also a good time to get a soil pH
Test so most vegetables like the range between 5.5 and 7.0 um it also depends what you’re growing but we do the soil PH at our office here in Hillsboro County or you can send your sample up to Gainesville for a full nutrient analysis so you know get your shovel get your
Workout here and you can just see how it’s tiled up right like that loosen it up fluff it up so here is a little bit about soil many um people in Florida have sandy soil like this picture here on the left that’s what you probably have is Florida
Sand and then what you wish you had was something a little more darker and crumbly which we would call Lam um that has just a better nutrient holding and water holding capacity and it will help your vegetables grow so building the soil really helps with a lot of other things with vegetable
Gardening um here’s a slogan here the right plant in the right place this is number one principle of Florida friendly Landscaping so some of the considerations in your garden design is um here in Florida we in the Northern Hemisphere so the sun angle is kind of coming from the south so plant your
Largest plants in the back of the garden so they don’t shade out the other things um you can decide Rose or no rose also with plant spacing and rotating your crops is important from season to season um not planting the things in the same family so rotating families of plants
And that’s mainly for Pest and disease and also Al fertility issues um so like pictured here is a square foot gardening method where you know they kind of have it lined out with the string and they’re growing some broccoli and cabbages and they have them on the centers for the
Plants uh biointensive gardening is another um strategy and instead of squares they more do like triangles or staggered planting which actually allows you to get the most amount of plants in the smallest area um so those are all decisions um up to you that when you do
Have more plants you have to do more reaching but you have less you know weed problems you need less fertilizer less water because it basically creates a living canopy that helps to protect the soil so a really good resource for getting the timing right for your vegetable gardening is the Florida
Vegetable Gardening Guide and this is a UF IUS publication uh you can find online or you can scan the QR code and this is available in English and in Spanish and so we in Central Florida we’re considered to be in the central zone and a big thing is observing your
Last frost day so you know here in Tampa we usually don’t get Frost Beyond February 15th so that’s kind of like the green light to just go ahead and plant everything outside but it varies from year to year sometimes we get a late Frost in maybe March sometimes we don’t
Get any Frost at all so you’re kind of taking your chances if you plant any earlier than that or be prepared to bring your plants inside or cover them maybe Mound them up with some mulch or throw some blankets on top of them if we are going to get get an unexpected
Freeze now to extend the season you know you can start earlier even like December January if you have a greenhouse or maybe you have a little grow table inside a little grow light or even a heat warmer for getting your seeds started and then in the summer when it
Gets too hot to grow that’s where you could put up some shade cloth and keep it a little cooler to extend the season that way so um here is an important part in that vegetable Gardening Guide this is table one and um it has great information here with all these
Different crops and then the planting dates in Florida you know by which region you’re in it also shows you the yield potential for um like a 10 foot linear bed and the number of plants needed um the days to harvest you know so like green beans you know 45 to 60
Days so this is all very important information when you planning your garden also the spacing between plants and between rows um the seed planting depth and how easy it is to transplant so a number one is very easy to transplant and a number three is difficult to transplant and then finally
It tells you which plant family each of these vegetables are in and that’s key when you’re looking for your crop rotation so we have these infographics that come out each month that um tell you what to plant in you know your region north central South Florida and
They tell you which one to use seeds for which one you can transplant easily and which one you have to be a little bit more careful with making sure the roots are okay and you know definitely watering them in out after transplanting so um they do a good job with the list
Here it doesn’t always include everything but um you can scan the QR code or Google for UF um edible to plant infographics to find these another tip is to use Florida varieties so these are known um heirloom varieties that have been grown year after year generation after generation
In Florida because of their tolerance to heat and um pest resistance so the Everglades tomato is one example even though the tomatoes are very small um they’re one of the few that fruit when the temperature is very hot in the summertime where other Tomatoes won’t get pollinated and set fruit properly um
The seminal pumpkin these were grown by the Native Americans like along the St John’s river up up the trees and this is more tolerant to the pickle worm um so you can grow those also in the summer as well as the rattlesnake pole beans another heat tolerant um pole bean and
If you get them young and tender they taste just like a green bean and you can grow those also in the summer when it gets too hot to grow everything else so I often get the question where to get seeds from and and um there’s uh
Not one answer but many you can get them from online seed suppliers um local plant nurseries um big box stores local seed swaps friends um seed saving um like sometimes people have a seed saving library or a little box where you can take some seeds or leave some seeds
Around the community so um there’s no really right answer here try all of the above of the most important part is that you’re choosing you know the varieties that do good in our area and you can look those up in that Florida vegetable Gardening Guide that I mentioned and Jan
Will get to some of those later so just for example I have these two varieties of broccoli here and so what you would want to look for is all right the one on the left here is heirloom it’s open pollinated that means you can save seeds
From it and it will grow just like the parent did um last year whereas this other one is a hybrid so that’s not better or worse it’s just different you can’t save seeds from a hybrid and get a reliable you know next season crop another thing to look at is the days to
Maturity so the hybrid is actually faster and it only takes 75 days to produce a broccoli whereas the heirloom one is a little slower it’s 85 days also notice the price often the hybrids are a little bit more expensive so um $33.30 versus $255 isn’t a big difference but you know
When you’re looking for seeds these are all just considerations uh you should take so next I’m going to go into how to actually plant seeds because if you’re serious about growing your food you’re going to want to know how to plant seeds and the best way to start is direct
Sewing some seeds these are like the easy to grow you know types of vegetables that you just put directly in the ground of course this is after you kind of fluffed it up and added some compost and you’re ready to water them and you have your garden all nice so
Things like carrots beets cucumbers um green beans have to be the absolutely easiest thing to grow and you can see you know putting the seeds here you know every two to three inches um other root crops are good to plant directly from seed as well as squashes and pumpkins
Those also have a large seed and they are quick to germinate um other types of seeds you want to start in a flat or in a small pot and these would include things that take a longer time to germinate such as Tomatoes or Peppers um cabbage even
Broccoli you know I put in a small pot like that um the other things like you could start um beans in a large larger like 4in pot but they’re difficult to transplant um cucumbers and squashes they can kind of go either way either plant them directly or maybe start them
In a little three or 4 inch pot and once they germinate and then you can transplant them so the other thing is you want to water them in gently so you know a small detail but very important because you don’t want to wash your seeds
Out um another thing is you can also use this Mister to kind of spray them if you just have to water a little bit cuz you want to keep them a little bit moist let them dry out a little bit between waterings but not too much so if they
Completely dry out the seed might just dry out and die so you can keep the surface moist with a little Mister right like that and then here is your kind of schedule for a spring seedling starting so January um you should be starting tomatoes peppers broccoli cabbage kale
Swiss chart and all these other ones in little cell Flats just like pictured here they could be 50 cell flats or you know 25 or the four packs or whatever you get uh once February comes you can start direct sewing you know those root crops and the green beans and also start
All the things that you have to worry about the frost for like the cucumber and the Squash and then plant out all your little seedlings in in March you continue to direct sew seeds you know bump up your transplants and get them all out to the Garden so you should be
Clearing your Greenhouse out and planting everything into the garden by the middle of March here’s a little video showing you some are the vegetable seeds we have started lenis collards cauliflower spinach never looks that great we got broccoli and swiss Char so these are all ready to go into the garden and work
Planting starting today so that’s how big you want your seedlings to look another tip about growing seedlings is some of them you want to thin thin down to one plant per cell for tomatoes peppers eggplants uh broccoli cabbage and other brass now if you’re growing other things it’s
Okay to have multiple seedlings per cell because you know they’re just leafy greens or something like lettuce Swiss chard spinach arugula flowers and herbs like we don’t care if there’s a couple zenas in the pot that’s fine so you can use a little pencil or a dibler type of
Thing to kind of pry the seeds out remember to always water them in in afterwards here’s how you do it so you just kind of pry the one out and then you poke a little hole and you put The Little Seedling right down in there and water it
In so growing your own seedlings is timec consuming but you will save a lot of money um they are ready to transplant when you’re getting some true leaves like see on this tomato leaf um the skinny one that’s the seed leaf or the Calin and then we’re getting the true
Leaves you know that have these loes and branches and that is when it is ready to transplant into a larger pot or possibly into the garden and um cucumbers too you can see these seed leaves the roundish ones and then they have these two true leaves and
That’s how you know it’s ready to transplant so here’s some like 4in materials I have ready to transplant out to the garden and those are the perfect size so if you don’t want to start your own seeds that’s fine and you can take the shortcut and just you know go to the
Store or get some starts from your friends so if you’re a beginner Gardener um skip that whole seed planting stuff maybe just just try some green beans you know or radishes your first year and just by transplants they’re easy they’re ready to go um the Cons with these is
There’s a limited variety selection like you’re not going to find you know the Florida Everglades tomato or the seminal pumpkin at your big box store um but they will have you know a lot of different stuff and they can be expensive you know a couple dollars
Maybe $5 doar per a small pot so that can add up quick where you can have like 50 plants for like a $5 pack of seeds so I hope that will get you started and next I’m going to turn it over to Jan ignash and she is one of our
Master Gardener volunteers here at ufish extension and she’s going to talk about some easy to grow vegetables and you’ll get to see some pictures of her very own garden and some cooking recipes welcome Jan thank you Tia um I organized my portion of this uh presentation sort
Of by the way I plant the garden out so um you’ll see all of these plants in here but it’s there my planting scheme follows what Tia said earlier that it’s important to rotate your crops so that you don’t end up with pests and diseases and yeah and uh it’s really
Better for fertilizing too so I plant my garden on a rotating basis by quarters and I just keep rotating them around um according to nitrogen phosphorus and potassium the big minerals that they use so I plant leum veggies peas and beans which add nitrogen to the soil and then
The following season I plant leaf veggies lettuces kale broccoli and col Robie in that same spot where last time I had put legume veggies because Leaf veggies use nitrogen and legume veggies add nitrogen fruiting vegetables are those like tomatoes peppers squash and melons they use phosphorus and then root
Veggies are car radishes carrots onions and shallots they use a lot of pottassium as they’re growing herbs I kind of plant everywhere I intersperse them among the veggies um I do it for a couple of reasons one I don’t like to leave soil bare um it’s
Just a recipe for asking for weeds and it also kind of confuses the pests I think if you mix things up a bit so let’s start with the legumes uh some veggies here in Florida actually have two growing Seasons each uh each year here in Central Florida and beans
Are legumes and one of those crops you can plant two crops of bush beans pole beans and lima beans a year uh in the Tampa area February through April in Spring planting season and then again in August and September for your fall planting I like to Trellis pole beans
Because they like to climb um it keeps them cleaner oh you can see pest more easily it’s a space saver and it looks pretty um and it makes the legumes a lot easier to pick so a word of of caution be sure if you’re going to use a trellis
To put it in the ground before you sew your beans beans have a weak root system and so you don’t want to be putting the trellis in on top of little bean Roots you want to put that trellis in before you plant so rust can be a problem with
Beans so just watch out for it legumes are um another legum is peas and we have uh they’re a cool season crop you want to plant them from September to March and there’s a number of different kinds um you can plant English peas or snow peas in November
Through February these peas are truly cool seasoned veggies and they will not produce if it’s too hot you can grow Southern peas um which are warmer season peas from February through August again it’s really important as Tia said to consult that Florida vegetable Gardening Guide it’s my Bible I go to it
All the time to make sure I’m planting at the right season fru and veggies um those are tomatoes peppers anything where you can see fruit on the plant like that pumpkins squashes zucchini eggplant these tend tend to be warmer seasoned veggies um I plant all of these things
Regularly one caveat with these though is that you need to watch out for pests when it gets warmer your pest pressure goes up so and I tend not to use pesticides in my veggie garden um so I end up having to scout my garden almost every day in late spring and summer
Mornings I just walk out with my coffee and I kind of look through the garden and see if some uh some pests are are eating my plants some pests by the way are best seen at dusk or the evening you won’t see them in the morning but you will in the uh at
Dusk Tomatoes it’s really important to choose varieties that do well here in Florida um again in that vegetable Gardening Guide they recommend uh varieties like better boy celebrity Amelia and some of the heirloom varieties are really fun to grow they’re they’re beautiful Cherokee purple green zebra and there’s even one called
Mortgage lifter uh that’s probably because it cuts down on your grocery bill to grow tomatoes in the hotter months of the year you really need to pick a heat tolerant cultivar like Heatwave 2 um and again the vegetable guide will tell you that cherry tomatoes
Do really well here um and they will set Heat uh fruit in the heat in including that sweet 100 variety that’s so popular bigger Tomatoes they stop doing well once the nighttime temperatures are consistently above 80 degrees um you want to plant your Tomatoes between January and April after the last frost
So if you plant before our last frost date like Tia said watch out you may need to cover them up with a frost blanket if we get um a light frost you can also plant them in containers and then move them in the garage or someplace once the frost if a frost
Threatens or you can cover them up because tomatoes have to have Sun conos really are a a good bet for you if you need to move them around uh on your property watch out for Pest and diseases that picture on the left is that it’s very pretty but it’s a tomato horn worm
And it will do huge damage to your tomatoes and then ver verillium uh wilt and fusarium Wilt over on the right is when the the plant just starts collapsing so just watch out for it and again the vegetable Gardening Guide if um there’s all sorts of vus Publications on tomatoes and it tells
You what to do if you run into some of these issues Peppers um are another fruit plant that are easy to grow from seed or transplants they are a good warm seasoned crop uh you can buy pepper transplants or you can start your own from seed I usually do mine from seed
Because they’re so easy and there’s some really uh interesting exotic varieties uh if you start your plants from seeds um some people recommend starting them indoors because you can easily wash those seeds away if you we get a hard rain or like Tia was showing you before if you hit it really hard
With a spray from the hose um those seeds of water wash away and then you’re going to have to Reed so you want to plant your little starts in the garden after the last frost in Spring start them inside then transplant them outside you can start another crop of peppers
With seeds in Midsummer for an early fall planting out in the garden in August or September in addition to the sweet bell peppers that everybody knows about there’s a lot of different kinds of hot peppers um things with interesting name like Cherry Bomb Hungarian hot wax uh
Anaheim chili and and of course the habanero you can get pretty high on the heat index on some of these okay next cucumbers um I love cucumbers um last year I planted just six seeds of cucumbers which I partially trellised because they they will Vine and they
Take take up a lot of room and it provided me with buckets of cucumbers I ended up putting up about 16 pints of sweet pickles which my husband loves um and then I’m giving away tons to the neighbors cucumbers do not want to be flooded but they do need frequent
Watering they have these large thin leaves and it causes them to dry out faster uh than other thick Lea plants be careful not to over fertiliz fruiting plants like cucumbers if you fertilize them too much you’re going to have beautiful leaves but not uh not much fruit so be careful of that cucumbers
Grown in outdoor settings rely heavily on pollinators you need the bees you need the pollinating wasps if your cucumber plants are not setting fruit um a lack of pollination could be a problem so what I do is I plant no stum and other flowering ground covers
All around my veggie garden to make sure that I attract pollinators and bees one caution with cucumbers and squash and melons in general is to scout your garden frequently see that picture on the bottom right that where those damaged cucumbers are those are actually cucumbers from my garden that have
Pickle worm damage so I didn’t I didn’t uh take action quickly enough and I lost part of a crop but I had so much it it was okay but major pests of cucumbers are melan thrips Mellon worms pickle worms spidermites and they will do damage to your crop so you really need
To to be careful also watch for things like powdery mildew and Downey mildew which um that disease pressure ramps up in the warmest parts of the year as well so what do you do with all that produce um I entitled you know growing veggies and herbs from garden to table is
Probably what we all want to do that’s why we’re growing these but you might want to get you might want to plan ahead with what you want to do like I said I ended up with so many cucumbers this year that uh I ended up canning and I
Hadn’t expected to but it turned out to be a happy surprise give them I give them to the neighbors I actually even had more than that so um you know I it was a shamed to have to compost them but I did do that with some of them I have a
Family GA I have a gathering basket and I’ve got neighbors where I would um just Heap up a basket of collared greens and they have a big Sunday dinner every Sunday and I would leave it on their doorstep and they they had collards every Sunday uh for through the summer so
Other things you can do be next um pumpkins many varieties grow extremely well in Florida and by the way these store really well you can store them for up to six months if it’s if your garage is not too hot or if you’ve got a cooler place for them the
Um this is a picture I had 50 Pumpkins this one year and I love these uh small sweet seminal pumpkins it um they make great pumpkin pie and what’s really wonderful about these pumpkins is they’re less susceptible to the pressures of heat and humidity and they are resistant to potery mildew more
So than some other kinds the fruit is small they’re not big uh like like you might think of a Halloween pumpkin for carving um but they’ve got great flavor they store well when you’re if you want to cook them what you might e they’ve got a tough outer rind you might want to
Put them in the microwave for a minute or two and then take a vegetable peeler and peel off that outer rind and then it peels off pretty easily I save the seeds um and you can roast the seeds or you can use them for next year’s crop caveat
Though they need a lot of room those Vines I had Vines up in my crpe myrtles um you know and I think it’s kind of cool so but just be you need a lot of room for them one of the things uh that I love making in addition to the pumpkin pie
Which I mentioned earlier was kale squash lasagna most of what was in that recipe except for the cheese which did not come from the garden came from my garden it’s seminal pumpkins kale and onions and about the only thing I had to buy was the cheese to make that kale squash
Lasagna for squashes we’ve got both summer squashes and winter squashes here in Central Florida um so we’ve got two seasons like we do for beans for the winter squashes like butternut and acorn squashes you want to plant them from January through April and then you can plant them a second time August through
September they have these squashes have hard rinds and they will keep for up to six months uh just like the seminal pumpkins one caveat again to the winter squashes they’re going need a lot of room like the pumpkins uh and they will not survive a freeze so you want to keep
That last frost date in mind when you decide uh when to plant for the summer squashes um like zucchini and my personal favorite which is called Patty pan squash it kind of looks like a flying saucer it’s an interesting plant uh they don’t really do they they’re called Summer squashes because up North
They plant them in the summer but they don’t do super well in our Florida Summers because of the high heat and heavy rain they’re more like spring squashes so you can plant them here from February to May and then again in August and September um they have thinner
Rindes so they don’t stay very fresh they don’t stay fresh as long as the winter squashes and you do want to eat them shortly after harvesting you can eat both the skin and the seeds of these as with pumpkins uh you need pollinators so again you might want to be planting
Some flowers or nosters around this um to make sure that you get the pollination this is just a photo of a summer squash salad almost I think everything in this photo except for some tahini and a little feta cheese is what I grew in the garden it’s zucchini Dill mint
Cilantro um it’s it’s a spring salad and it oh and it’s it was so tasty everything was so fresh we just walked out and picked it and put it together with a little feta cheese and toini looks delicious um root veggies um I use a lot of root and fruit vegetables in cooking
So root veggies can’t really take our summer heat so these are fall winter veggies um and radishes carrots onions and shallots these grow so well here they’re pretty they’re easy to grow I usually plant about 70 of the big sweet onion starts in October um and I also do succession
Planting with carrots and radishes so I start in October and then every two weeks I plant a few more seeds so that I’ve got a steady supply um maturing at different times rather than all at once sweet potatoes are another root veggie that does well in our summer heat um
Sometimes I use it as a cover crop to keep the weeds down in the garden in the summer because I’m not maybe growing as many things and it keep it spreads out nicely and I don’t have to spend hours weeding in the hot sun I don’t like to
Leave uh my ground empty without any cover so um sweet potato bonato casava these will all grow well in our summer heat bonat are people don’t know about that one as well they’re white and they have a fluffier texture than a sweet potato they’re very good and the cassava
Some people call it a yua but it’s um it will grow in our summers it’s a tuber and you eat it just like potatoes here’s um onion shallots and garlic um some of the best known uh sweet onions are the those vielas and they’re they’re all grown in a specific
20 count region in Georgia technically vielas are all the same cultivar which is known as granx and that’s what I get and plant and they grow really well here so you want to plant your onions from September through December in a Sunny Spot um you can grow them from seed but
It takes a lot longer so I always use those seed sets which are little small tiny onions that come in bunches of about 50 or 60 and um you spread them out far enough apart and they grow into beautiful bulbs they’re ready to harvest in about four or five months you know
They’re ready to harvest when about the top quarter of the tops have fallen over so you can you what I do is I dig a trench of about 4 inches deep and 4 in wide in between the rows where I’m going to put the onions and I put the
Fertilizer in the trim onions need fertilizer from the start um they do better that way and then um sometimes I don’t um you you’re supposed to fertilize them at intervals after that um I often don’t because they do so well in my garden without it you can also
Plant shallots in the fall and then you harvest them in the early summer but with shallots you want to wait until all the leaves have turned brown and then Harvest them carrots so easy to grow um from seed and they are cool sou uh seasoned veggies
They do best in deep well- drained and fertile soil they do need water so you when you you first put them on the ground you really want to make sure that you’re getting enough water to them to get established the roots expand rapidly um and this is really important because
You’re probably growing them during Flor FL is dry season when there’s not as much rain so before you plant your carrot seeds you want to remove any debris in the garden space like lock rocks or Stones because your carrot roots don’t like to be disturbed and they’re going to grow around anything
That gets in their way you could end up with some strange looking carrots um I usually plant multiple kinds of carrots just because I like the differences there’s short thick shanton carrots and there’s midsized ntis carrots rainbow carrots come in lovely colors purple white and red again that Florida
Vegetable guide will give you some great information on um new varieties so it’s fun to experiment and see what you like best radishes one of my favorite um I’ve liked radishes since I was a child um they’re super easy to grow from seed it’s not recommended to transplant them
Because they’re a root veggie and they don’t like to their Roots Disturbed and the root is what you eat so you can um they’re really super tasty in salads you can eat the leaves the leaves are peppery some people think they’re a little too peppery but we I like them
They’re the perfect plant for succession planting I plant a row in October and then every two weeks I plant more seeds so I’ve got a steady supply Japanese daon radishes do really well here those get they’re white and they can get super long up to 20 in long in the soil some
People use them as a ground cover to break up hard ground here’s um something that my husband and I eat a lot throughout the year we’ll do a sheet pan of roast veggies throw in some herbs like Rosemary from the garden little sea salt little olive oil and then we might have
A little fish or chicken alongside it and sometimes we just eat a sheet pan of roast veggies and it’s all come from the garden Leafy veggies um greens are cons generally considered cool seasoned vegetables uh September through March is when you plant them this includes spinach collards kale mustards turnup greens some greens like kale can survive light frosts even they’re they’re pretty hearty um if the weather is already warming up in the spring it’s probably
Too late to plant cool seasoned crops but um Swiss Chard is one of those that can be planted a little later even if it warms up a bit uh some people have tried it even as late as May if it’s not too hot Malibar and New Zealand spinach will
Grow during our summers even um again consult that veggie garden guide in the you’ll get the timing right insect damage is usually a bigger problem for leafy greens than diseases we like them and bugs like them um so what I do is I water wand my veggies I take a strong
Blast of water from the hose and I get both the top sides and underneath uh sides once or twice a week and that helps keep the aphids and white flies at bay broccoli I was surprised at how easy broccoli grows here um it’s a great cool seasoned crop um along with cabbage
Cauliflower Co Robbie brussels sprouts these are all in the same family as broccoli I’ve had really good luck growing growing both broccoli and col Robie from seed here it takes about 80 to 100 days to mature so don’t plant too late in the season um because Rising temperatures then will plant cause the
Plants to bolt and that means you get flowers within the head that start to open what I do with broccoli is you’ll get a c Al head and I always cut that out before it gets too big and then I get those beautiful tender little side
Shoots lots of them which make for great stir fries um and if you cut that Center head out you will get a lot more of those little side shoots um walam 29 by the way is an old favorite of um for broccoli some unusual greens that people
Don’t think about are the daon radish that I mentioned earlier it’s it it’ll grow 20 in long it’s white um mustard greens okalan spinach Malibar spinach arugula bok choy I found a recipe uh in one of my cookbooks for Thai mustard green casserole and coconut milk and it
Was fabulous um you can put it with grains like pharaoh and some other grains and it it was a lovely it made a lovely lunch herb BS um herbs are great to interplant among your veggies and here are some of the ones that I plant every
That I just always have in my garden Basin cilantro chil coriander is the seed from the cilantro plant Dill margom mint oregano parsley rosemary sage Teragon all of these and once it gets like looks like the plant is bolting or it’s getting um kind of at the end of its
Lifespan a lot I’ll Harvest it I’ve got a dehydrator I’ll dry the herb leaves in that and then um they go in my spice cabinet lemongrass Ginger and turmeric you can harvest the bulbs or tubers bay leaves are great and they’re just so much better if you grow this yourself
And then use the leaves and cooking rather than buy them in the store fennel is another great uh plant you can use both bulbs and leaves this is an example of what I do with turmeric turmeric is a root so that on the left there in the colander is a
Bunch of turmeric Roots where the I dug up the plant and the leaves turn brown so that’s when you know to harvest it it’s actually it’s about this time of the year right now I need to do it so you dig up the plant you harvest the Le
Uh The Roots they look like Ginger and then what I do is I peel the the outer shell off and then I slice it thin I put it in my dehydrator which is the middle slide and then after that I grind it up into spice and I end up with a jar of
Turmeric and it smells so wonderful much stronger than a lot of times than what you would get at the store the the turmeric tubers then what you want to do is save some pieces of that that and replant that for next year’s crop so once you plant it you can keep breaking
Off pieces and then you H you have it on your property forever if you want so the word is have fun try new plants we’re in Florida I mean there we have so many possibilities we’ve got wonderful growing seasons on the left there you see is lemongrass turmeric and
Lemongrass on the right purple col Robie which I’d never grown before I moved here um many years ago and it’s adds a wonderful crunch to salads and it I couldn’t believe how easily I grew that from seed um and the plant was probably half as tall as I was so have fun with
This and bonea te all right danan all those good recipes are making me hungry here so um I’m going to wrap it up here here with just some tips on growing your vegetables so um fertilizer there’s specific times that vegetables like to be fertilized and that would be you know
Some of them get a little starter fertilizer at the time of planting like Jan mentioned for the onions and then another common time is fertilizing um after transplanting like when you’re bumping up your tomato to a bigger pot and when flowers and fruits appear for the fruiting vegetables very
Important now it doesn’t matter if the fertilizer is organic or inorganic for example the product on the left is inorganic and the product on the right is organic so the plants will grow basically the same either way now for a vegetable fertilizer look for some something that contains uh nitrogen
Phosphorus and pottassium don’t use your lawn fertilizer these have different needs and these um fertilizers often contain micronutrients that are specific for vegetables so that’s important and if you’re in um Hillsboro County or another County with a fertilizer ordinance then Edibles including vegetables are usually exempt from the
Ordinance but but you should still practice your best management practices You Know cover the fertilizer to reduce um nitrogen losses um don’t heavily fertilize before we’re going to get a heavy rain or a hurricane and always follow the label instructions now one benefit of the organic fertilizer is
That not only will it fertilize the plants but it will build your soil and it will provide food for a healthy living so soil so that’s another benefit um next is irrigation so vegetables can use quite a lot of water and we want to do our best to irrigate
Them efficiently for example here we’re using drip irrigation on this row of collards and that’s a really good you know drip is great for rows and you can water right at the root zone right where the plant needs it um here’s another drip on row of green beans you can also
Use these micro sprays that you can place exactly where you want them in your garden and um the bubbler here on the right hand side also hand watering is very efficient if you just can go out and observe your crops and say oh this guy is looking a little thirsty or this
One needs some water or these are fine and the best time to do that is first thing in the morning or like at sunset in the evening because on a hot day it’s natural for a vegetable to wilt you know In the Heat of the day so check them in
The morning and in the evening to make sure they’re well hydrated um they will need more irrigation you know when they’re a young plant so more frequently for young plants and seedlings and then as the plant grows less often but deeper watering for established plants also remember we’re irrigating to supplement
Rainfall so if we get a nice inch of rain we’re pretty much good for like the whole week and um you know you can buy a rain gauge or something to help track your rainfall on average if you have an established vegetable garden like everything is 30 30 days or more old um
They’ll need about one inch of water per week mulch is another important part of having a successful vegetable garden so mulch helps to protect the soil it holds the moisture in so less watering um as it breaks down it’s adding organic matter to build the soil and encourage beneficial microorganisms like the
Bacteria and the fungi that are going to help keep your plants healthy it also prevents weed growth if you’re doing the inground rows and you have large kind of walkways then that it’s a great just to mulch that whole area um now if you have younger plants or seedlings you might
Want to hold off on the mulch or apply it thinner but if you have a wellestablished garden like this is our summer garden here with some okra and some blackeyed peas you can put a whole two to three inch of mulch on there without hurting the vegetables so um some good types of
Mulch to use would be like materials Like Straw or leaves or pine straw um I wouldn’t recommend getting a whole load of like wood chips or something um you can use those lightly but you will probably want to scrape them away when you’re going to um change your garden
Over for the next season but that would be fine in the summer put like a nice two to three inch um layer of wood chip mulch on there but when you’re growing you know seedlings and stuff you want something lighter now integrated Pest Management um like
Jan mentioned a lot of these um tomatoes and cucumbers you really have to look out for the pests the hornworms and other types of caterpillars aphids and so this is just a um triangle here showing you that you know cultural control like the varieties you select
This is the best you know starting point you know having healthy soil you know that’s a very important part for Pest Management you know and then physical mechanical like scouting every day and making sure you’re you’re looking for the pest you know maybe putting up some
Traps or barriers you know as you move up the biological there might be good bugs like a parasitic wasp that’s going to lay its eggs to kill your caterpillar or you might decide you need a little chemical control which in that case we recommend the least toxic um chemical
Control first starting with natural and organic products so um you know using the least toxic things first are important and back to the cultural which is the Baseline if you create an ecological vegetable garden you will have the beneficial insects that are helping to control the pests such as
This little ladybug here you know what do ladybugs eat they eat a leids you know lace wings are other beneficial insects the the parasitic wasp they pray on the bad caterpillars um bees and other pollinators are very important um like this eggplant here and this bumblebee because these need to be
Pollinated in order to produce fruit so here at the bottom here is the lace Wing In Action the lace wi larvae eating the aphid and then here is the parasitic wasp laying its eggs in the caterpillar so the way to attract these beneficial insects to your garden is to
Grow flowers um here’s some easy grow flowers or also insectary plants because they provide pollen or nectar or something that attracts the insects so um we have this coreopsis or tick seed here there’s several varieties of that they’re all good A lot of these things in the daisy or Aster family like the
Marold zenas blanket flowers colula these are all good um Salvia there’s a lot of species of salvia this red one is actually native and it’s particularly good if you have a shady location um but there’s plenty of salvia for Sun and different sizes and flocks so there’s
There’s a lot of different flowers these are just some of my top picks for the easy to grow ones um so caterpillars here’s something that you really got to watch out for in the middle picture here is the Tomato horn worm and you can see the little horn on the on the
Caterpillar and that’s what kind of identifies it as a hornworm here it is on a jalapeno uh pepper plant but you’ll often see these on uh Tomatoes um even papayas and some other types of fruit and vegetables now um the tomato hornworm is a large caterpillar and it
Can really have a voracious appetite and eat down your plant but did you know it turns into a Spinx moth which is a beneficial moth um it’s native to Florida here and so you know when you’re kind of managing the pests in your garden you might decide well maybe I’ll
Keep a couple to have some moths or plant extra tomato tree for the moth or maybe you just want to kill them all um another thing is like on this leafy green like this Chinese cabbage here’s another type of um caterpillar going on here so look for the little um green
Frass or caterpillar poop some people will say hey what’s that what’s that green bug on my plant I’m say no that’s not a that’s that’s not a bug that’s the poop from the caterpillar so that’s often the first sign you’ll see is these little green balls and here is the squash Vine borer
So this is a type of caterpillar um you can hand squish them um plant resistant varieties like they really love these yellow crook neck squash but they’re have more trouble getting into the seminal pumpkins they’ll still get in there a little bit so um if you have
This in your yard remove and Destroy any infected plant parts you know I would like try to burn this in the campfire or maybe tie it in a plastic bag and throw it out if you have more squash plants growing so it doesn’t infect them all because it’s hard to get the
Caterpillars out of here um if you want to use a spray as soon as you start seeing damage from the caterpillars start with the least toxic like the BT or the bailis gensis that’s a organic biological control that’s made from a bacteria um similar is spinosad and then also um rotate the
Insecticide so maybe spray the BT one week and the spinosad like the next week so that the chemical is um getting different for the pests we have a whole publication on this if you want to read through um and it’s called natural products for managing landscape and
Garden pest in Florida and it goes through the different types of sprays and and how to use them and which ones have which toxicity and control different insects so that wraps it up for our vegetable gardening talk I hope you enjoyed it and learned a lot um if you
Would like you can scan this QR code here to take our survey and if you have any plant questions please feel free to email us at Hills mg mail.ufl.edu or call Our Help Desk 813 744-5519 and don’t forget to follow us we’re on Facebook we’re on Instagram
We’re on YouTube and you can read my blogs on the University of Florida website so thanks for listening and happy vegetable gardening bye-bye
1 Comment
Very good information! Thank you!