The holidays in Florida

Sugar snap peas are delish right from the vine.

Starting from the point of the knife: oregano, curly parsley, garlic chives, purple & orange carrots, sugar snap peas.

 

Clay County Delegation Hearing and Plan Ahead!

Speaking at the Clay County Delegation Hearing.

I spoke before the Clay County Delegation hearing on Nov. 18th. The delegation includes our state senator, Rob Bradley and 2 representatives that claim part of Clay County in their districts: Charlie Van Zant and Travis Cummings. I spoke to this same group last year, which I wrote about in my article: "Supporting Wildlife Beyond Your Garden Gate."

While I still wanted to make the same case that preserving Florida's wildlands is not anti-business, I used different examples and changed the handouts.  So here is my handout to them--I'd printed on green paper. It includes a summary of my presentation and some references for more details.  Again I offered to be their go-to person if they had questions about environmental issues.

Short-day onions & more...

Garlic chives!

The winter edible season has started, but not before a couple of last gasps of the fall crops.

In doing the research for "Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida," I planted some garlic chives.  I'd never planted them before and was prepared to be underwhelmed, but not so.  They've grown amazingly well, they are evergreen, and we love the taste--both cooked and raw. Plus they are beautiful even after frequent harvests.

One week only: signed books offer

From November 10th to the 17th, I am taking online orders for my books. See the Gift Book Offer page. Maybe you know an avid gardener who would love one of my books for a Christmas present. If so, let me know and I will hold off mailing it until the middle of December and include a Christmas card saying the book is a present from you.  But this is the only week I'll be taking orders, so don't wait until then.

Organic Methods for Vegetable
Gardening in Florida

Sustainable Gardening
for Florida

Thanks for your support!

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

Sunrise at Spring Park

I went to Spring Park in Green Cove Springs this morning for the sunrise to see the partial solar eclipse. We have too many trees in our neighborhood for a good eastern horizon. What a beautiful morning!

The outlet of the spring into the St. Johns Rive in Green Cove Springs.

Edging project: risks & rewards

Some ongoing fall projects are re-edging the lawn along the back yard and weeding out the shady triangle area. I last edged the shady triangle in the spring, but it's been a couple of years since I edged along the lawn east of the triangle.

Risks of weeding with beggar lice or tick-trefoil.

Rewards of wildflowers in the garden.

Rayless sunflowers, fall seedlings, & more

Rayless sunflower & native bee.

When I replaced a 10' x 14' section of lawn with a native garden, I planted several rayless sunflowers (Helianthus radula) as part of the mix. Months later, they are blooming much to the delight of the butterflies and native bees.

These flowers are not showy from a distance because they are missing the showy florets around the edge that look like petals. When we think of sunflowers, we expect to enjoy a big show, but the show here is more subtle and draws you in closer.

I wrote about this plant and reported on the progress on this native pollinator garden in my monthly post over on the Beautiful Native Plants blog: "The beauty is in the eye of the beholder."*

*Just to satisfy my curiosity on this cliché, I looked up the origins of the saying. This particular phrase, "Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder," is a paraphrase of Plato's writings and the theme has been repeated in various ways by different people, including by Shakespeare, over the centuries.  See this phrase finder website for more details.

An early fall compost pile

Some of the new chips had been sitting in the truck for a few days so they'd
already started composting. They were steaming hot and had turned gray.

Normally I do my major compost building later in the fall when we have lots of dead leaves on hand, but several events occurred this year to speed up the process.

1) I'd depleted my compost supply in building the new edible beds and I had saved a pile of sod that we'd removed, which was waiting to be composted.

2) Some of chips we received last week had been on the truck for several days and had already heated up and turned gray with fungal spores.

The Eagle has Landed, Fall Gardening, and more...

Fall is the beginning of our best growing season--the cool-weather vegetables. Here in north Florida we normally experience our first frost sometime in late December, but the soil never freezes and we can grow many crops right through the winter. This is why we set up the three planting calendars (for north, central, and south Florida) to begin in September, not January, in "Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida." 

After more than a month of in-the-ground composting, freshly uncovered soil in the middle bed.

Kitchen scraps used in the trench between the rows.

The Middle Bed

We have three beds next to the western-facing back of the house: the herb garden next to the porch door, the middle bed, and the north bed.

I'd grown marigolds across most of the north and middle beds over the summer and had also grown tomatoes and peppers in the middle bed. When I finally pulled the tomatoes in August, I turn marigolds under in both beds except for the peppers row--they are still producing to some extent. I also had composted kitchen scraps under all of the north bed.

Invasive vs. Aggressive: plants and animals

Spanish needles (B. alba) is native to Florida,
and so is not invasive

Native plants are NEVER invasive. 

They belong here and work well within the natural ecosystems. A pioneer plant like beggars' ticks (Bidens alba) is certainly aggressive and efficient at completely covering a disturbed site, but after a couple of years, it will give way to other plants in Mother Nature's succession parade, which  depends upon where it's found. The plants that take over could include broom sedge (Andropogon spp.), goldenrod (Solidago spp.), dog fennel (Eupatorium capillifolium), which then my be replaced by pines and oaks after a few years.

Definition:
- An invasive exotic plant is a naturalized exotic plant that is expanding its range into natural areas and disrupting naturally occurring native plant communities.     
via Florida Invasive Species Council