ZONE 9 and FLORIDA GARDENING

[Kikiriki]

I just looked it up and saw it has thorns... Not something I love! But I will enjoy your photos, lol!

My one success is my geranium...it was left by a tenant at I house I rented years ago. It looked dead, but I watered it and it came back, so when I moved I brought it and it has been with me for 15 years now. It only ever did just okay until I gave it worm castings...WOW!...what an explosion of flowering it had!! That inspired me to start raising my own worms. The more I investigated the more sold I became on the high value added by castings over any other type of fertilizer or soil amendment. The benefit from the castings I initially added lasted over two years...I used my wonderful geranium as an experiment, I have to confess! I think it is due for another good feeding now and I actually have home grown castings to use.

 

[digginindirt]

Geraniums are actually one of my favorites. They add such a nice color touch to any where. Ieven put a few up in my staghorn just because. Also just lined the part of the driveway facing my front porch yesterday so I could look at them when the away from home work day ends but the just started house chores begins.

Pulled the weeds, put down weed block mat then planted. But all worth it since they last so long and flowers for the whole season.

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[kwol]

Hi! Thanks for starting this thread, Kikiriki. I've been meaning to check it out and finally got around to it. As a Pennsylvania transplant, I wish I would have had this thread as a resource when I started gardening in JAX in 1995! Most FL gardening books focus more on the subtropical climate in Southern FL, but with experimentation and the internet I expand my knowledge a little each year.

Moved to St. Johns near the river this year and will start the learning curve again. My soil is rich and black here, as opposed to my sandy knoll in Jax that I had to compost constantly. we have lettuce, eggplant, tomatoes and jalapenos so far. I aim to plant some onion bulbs for green onions, but I haven't come across any recently.

Now that we have the chickens roaming the back yard we are really careful about our fertilizer and avoiding pesticides. We used a greanular fertilizer on our honeybell orange tree a month or so ago and we thought we had worked it into the soil and watered it in, but the next day the chickens were busy scratching and pecking there, They didn't get sick, so maybe we just stirred up the bugs for them

.

I recently heard about a way to treat our fireants which I am trying today. Sprinkle some grits near the opening in the theory that the ants take it back to the queen and the colony for food and after eating the grits the grits swell up inside them and they die. I have my doubts about this one, but I am willing to try and will keep y'all posted on the results.

 

[Kikiriki]

Digginindirt, I love the way you did your driveway!
If I ever get money I want to do one, but we have a ditch so we need permit, new culvert, fill dirt, and have to be cautious because 2 water lines are right where the new end would go. There is an old rotten culvert in place, but it is too narrow for a car and too corroded to support one. I will also have to remove a couple of trees. Someday...

 

[Kikiriki]

Hi!  Thanks for starting this thread, Kikiriki.  I've been meaning to check it out and finally got around to it. As a Pennsylvania transplant, I wish I would have had this thread as a resource when I started gardening in JAX in 1995!  Most FL gardening books focus more on the subtropical climate in Southern FL, but with experimentation and the internet I expand my knowledge a little each year.

Moved to St. Johns near the river this year and will start the learning curve again.  My soil is rich and black here, as opposed to my sandy knoll in Jax that I had to compost constantly.  we have lettuce, eggplant, tomatoes and jalapenos so far.  I aim to plant some onion bulbs for green onions, but I haven't come across any recently.

Now that we have the chickens roaming the back yard we are really careful about our fertilizer and avoiding pesticides.  We used a greanular fertilizer on our honeybell orange tree a month or so ago and we thought we had worked it into the soil and watered it in, but the next day the chickens were busy scratching and pecking there, They didn't get sick, so maybe we just stirred up the bugs for them .

I recently heard about a way to treat our fireants which I am trying today.  Sprinkle some grits near the opening in the theory that the ants take it back to the queen and the colony for food and after eating the grits the grits swell up inside them and they die.  I have my doubts about this one, but I am willing to try and will keep y'all posted on the results.

Do not do the grits in the rain, and I do not recommend it at all, actually... Back in the 90's my mom had a huge nest outside her patio and I tried the grits. There was a small die off, but then the nest doubled in size!! Fire ants like meat so once this rain passes and we dry out a little, I plan to treeat the fireants by using raw ground bacon mixed with the stuff they put in ant bait...borax? Can't recall...I'll look it up. I selected bacon because it has a strong smell to help cover the poison.

Isn't it nice to have good soil? It is wonderful to not struggle to keep plants alive, but the down side is happy happy weeds!

When I moved to my current home it had no sunlight and no lawn...just a huge weed patch with perennial weeds that got too woody to cut with the mower. I hand pulled them all. Took me weeks. Sodded, but the sod all died, and have been seeding and seeding for several years now, just to get one small patch of grass going! I have removed about 15 full grown trees from a quarter acre. Many were too close to the house, and even still, I have only one nice sunny patch for growing veggies.

And now it is ruined. A tree in the yard next door needed removal because it was a hazard to electric service. Two days ago, the tree company had a bucket truck that busted a line over my garden and dumped hyd oil on it. They dug out areas of obviously affected soil, but it still smells like a machine shop... How can I grow food there, now? They will still be replacing fencing that got sprayed, so I don't know if that is where the odor is coming from. They bought me several bags of organic soil, but I don't want to put that on top of soil that might still be contaminated. And I don't know if it went into neighbors yards or if they dug it out if it did. Meanwhile it is raining and spreading whatever might be there... It just makes me want to cry....

It was just sheer luck that most of my plants are in containers this year, but not all were and now I do not feel like I can use them, and I will never feel safe to plant food crop into that patch of land ever again...

 

[Kikiriki]

Hi!  Thanks for starting this thread, Kikiriki.  I've been meaning to check it out and finally got around to it. As a Pennsylvania transplant, I wish I would have had this thread as a resource when I started gardening in JAX in 1995!  Most FL gardening books focus more on the subtropical climate in Southern FL, but with experimentation and the internet I expand my knowledge a little each year.

Moved to St. Johns near the river this year and will start the learning curve again.  My soil is rich and black here, as opposed to my sandy knoll in Jax that I had to compost constantly.  we have lettuce, eggplant, tomatoes and jalapenos so far.  I aim to plant some onion bulbs for green onions, but I haven't come across any recently.

If you want green onions you do not need onion sets! When you use an onion from the store, cut it carefully: cut above the root mass toward the center, but not cut the center where the inside of the onion gets small. Make four shallow vertical cuts and carefully peel off the layers until you have the root mass and the onion center. Plant that, leaving only the tip poking just barely out of the soil. You will have green onions in a couple of weeks. These will never form bulbs as they are in their second year: they will flower and go to seed.

I did this with onions that had started to sprout. As well as some that had not...they are all growing perfectly: I had half in pots and half in the ground that was contaminated so thankfully I did not lose them all. My onions from the sets I had purchased were all the ground and will now be going in the trash...

I also did this with garlic that had started sprouting and those also make greens that have a milder garlic flavor, more like a garlic chive....

 

[Kikiriki]

Well, I have been looking for plants that will do double duty as both people and chicken food and also things to supplement the chickens food. I was surprised to see a study that examined both of two the plants I have been looking at:

http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd22/12/saro22225.htm

Sweet potato, it turns out, is not related to the nightshade family as are regular potatoes, so the leaves are edible raw or cooked for both chickens and people, as well as the root tubers. Plus, sweet potato does great in Florida heat and humidity and does not have a load of problems with pests or disease. They like well drained soil, but do not like trace aluminium in soil. They need lime to counteract it. They do not take flooding, so a high spot is necessary. The more woody stems are used like bamboo shoots in asian cooking, too. The outer wood is removed. They start easily from cuttings of branch or tuber. In the study above, the chickens liked the leaves and the tubers. I will planting it straight away!

The other plant is something you probably see all the time on ponds down here: duckweed! Chickens ate it by choice, but they do need other food, too. The other study I saw used it dried, which meant harvesting and drying and storing, and in both studies it cannot serve as a main food source, but this study used fresh wet duckweed and the chickens seemed to like it more than they did the dried in the other study. It is covering my mom's pond, so I am going to test it this week! I bought a little kiddie pool for them so maybe I can see if they peck it off an inch of water...

 

[kwol]

Do not do the grits in the rain, and I do not recommend it at all, actually... Back in the 90's my mom had a huge nest outside her patio and I tried the grits. There was a small die off, but then the nest doubled in size!! Fire ants like meat so once this rain passes and we dry out a little, I plan to treeat the fireants by using raw ground bacon mixed with the stuff they put in ant bait...borax? Can't recall...I'll look it up. I selected bacon because it has a strong smell to help cover the poison.

Isn't it nice to have good soil? It is wonderful to not struggle to keep plants alive, but the down side is happy happy weeds!

When I moved to my current home it had no sunlight and no lawn...just a huge weed patch with perennial weeds that got too woody to cut with the mower. I hand pulled them all. Took me weeks. Sodded, but the sod all died, and have been seeding and seeding for several years now, just to get one small patch of grass going! I have removed about 15 full grown trees from a quarter acre. Many were too close to the house, and even still, I have only one nice sunny patch for growing veggies.

And now it is ruined. A tree in the yard next door needed removal because it was a hazard to electric service. Two days ago, the tree company had a bucket truck that busted a line over my garden and dumped hyd oil on it. They dug out areas of obviously affected soil, but it still smells like a machine shop... How can I grow food there, now? They will still be replacing fencing that got sprayed, so I don't know if that is where the odor is coming from. They bought me several bags of organic soil, but I don't want to put that on top of soil that might still be contaminated. And I don't know if it went into neighbors yards or if they dug it out if it did. Meanwhile it is raining and spreading whatever might be there... It just makes me want to cry....

It was just sheer luck that most of my plants are in containers this year, but not all were and now I do not feel like I can use them, and I will never feel safe to plant food crop into that patch of land ever again...

What a terrible shame! I wonder if there might be something you can spread that would help absorb any oil residue? But with all the rain we just had anything left might have been absorbed right down to China!

Borax is something that is in roach bait, maybe ant bait too. They are supposed to get it on their legs and than ingest it when they clean themselves, I hadn't considered that, but would it harm the chickens? They free range the entire back yard. I bought some diatomaceous earth, maybe I could try that. Didn't do much for fleas on the dog though...

 

[Kikiriki]

What a terrible shame!  I wonder if there might be something you can spread that would help absorb any oil residue?  But with all the rain we just had anything left might have been absorbed right down to China!

Borax is something that is in roach bait, maybe ant bait too.  They are supposed to get it on their legs and than ingest it when they clean themselves,  I hadn't considered that, but would it harm the chickens?  They free range the entire back yard.  I bought some diatomaceous earth, maybe I could try that.  Didn't do much for fleas on the dog though...

Yes, it can be a problem for pets or children. I will blend the raw bacon and ten mix in the poison. Place the mix into something like a small lidded yogurt cup and punch holes large enough for ants to enter, then put the cup down in dirt near a nest with large a 12 x12 patio paver on top to keep the dogs and chickens from getting it. I did this for sweet loving ants using those small clear containers from the deli...within a few hours the ants were all over it. Another benefit to it being underneath something is that it is shaded, so the ants will still go to it during the heat of the day when are normally less active on the surface.

 

[digginindirt]

Thank you Kikiriki

.
It took us 10 years to get to this stage of drive way. We stil have to seal the asphalt, but much better than the leaf pile we drive on til now. The fron did come with an exisiting concrete straight drive which apparently wasn't enough room for the previous owners as they just parked anywhere in the fron of the house making everything just a big dried out dust bowl. We laid out 4x4's to make the circular part, but funny enough people just thought that was to keep them from driving on the circular part and would pull up into the "yard" up to the 4x4's. Including the mailman

. About a year latr we then put out the azaleas to give a clue that someday it would be a yard. The mailman however would still pull up and walk right through the azaleas trampling and breaking them until he had a clear pathway through them. A yaer after that we upped the ante by putting up a split rail fence between the 2 drives out at the road, and would you belive he would just pull along the fence, jump it, and walk through his pathway anyway??...Really!!??!!

. I beleive we only "won" because he either quit or moved to another route, as we quit seeing him about 6 months later. The yard now looks like a real yard (always in progress), but no more issues with mail delivery.