February starts the big planting push in our Zone 9 gardens.  Though there is still technically a chance for frost and freeze, I doubt we will be having any because this is a La Niña year (causes a cooling of the Pacific Ocean surface temperatures resulting in the jet stream and cold arctic air being pushed northward) and because the Arctic Oscillation (a see-sawing type of pressure difference between the Arctic and lower latitudes) has been stronger than normal this year.

I’m going to risk some early planting.  If we do have damaging weather, there will be plenty of time to replant.

Do you have left over seeds from last year?  You can test their viability and germination rate by pre-sprouting them – Place ten seeds on a paper towel, fold the paper towel over a few times into a nice little packet, lightly moisten the paper towel, put it in a closable plastic bag, then lay it someplace warm (on top of your water heater is a good place).  Check the seeds daily.

Sprouted seeds can be planted.  If none sprout or very few sprout then you need to get new fresh seeds.  This site http://peaceseedlings.com/ (go down to the bottom of the page) has a list of a gazillion places where you can order seeds.

Lots more information in the weekly newsletter.  Sign up over there to the right at the top of the sidebar.  Put your name and email address in the spaces provided and get the newsletter (e-mailed every Friday), a printable month by month vegetable planting chart, and other relevant information.

Here is what you can plant in February’s garden.

Cool Weather Plants

• Beets
• Carrots
• Celery
• Collards
• Endive/Escrole
• Kohlrabi
• Leek
• Lettuce
• Mustard
• Onion -bulbing, bunching, and multiplier
• Peas
• Potatoes
• Radish
• Turnips

Warm Weather Plants

• Bush beans
• Pole beans
• Lima beans
• Cantaloupes
• Corn
• Cucumbers
• Eggplant
• Peppers
• Sweet potatoes
• Pumpkin
• Summer squash
• Winter squash
• Tomatoes
• Watermelon

There you have it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Ready to get going with your 2012 garden plan?

Got those gardening resolutions and goals written out?  No?  Well get to it… can’t get anywhere if you don’t have a map.

Subscribe to the free weekly newsletter to get more great info and encouragement for your gardening efforts – really good stuff.  Just put your name and e-mail in the form over there to the right.

Here’s what you can plant in your garden this month

Warm Weather Plants

• Eggplant
• Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Watermelon

Cool Weather Plants

• Beets
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Chinese Cabbage
• Collards
• Endive/Escrole
• Kale
• Kohlrabi
• Leek
• Lettuce
• Mustard
• Onion – multiplier
• Onion – bunching
• Peas
• Potatoes
• Radish
• Turnips

Weather should be wonderful for a while… perfect for gardening.

Still wondering what to get that Central Florida Gardener on your list for Christmas?  Here’s a list of what some of our Central Florida Gardener Newsletter (you can sign up for your own over there to the right ☞ ➠) readers are wanting.  Bet you can get some ideas.

- Good soil

- Second garden plot

- Subscription to gardening/hobby farming mags

- Gardening hand tools

- NO FREEZE UNTIL JANUARY — let my maters ripen!

- A strong beefy gardener to push my tiller(more than I can handle) and till my orchard-in-the-works OR a 6′ tiller attachment for my tractor

- A team of Master Squatters to cut my planting holes and plant a thousand garlic and onions…

- Freeze Cloth, Insect Barrier Cloth, 1′ rebars, and 1″ poly tubing

- Local source for wholesale/retail of Shrimp Shell Meal

- Organic Green Compost

- A sonic device that would make Squash Vine Borers, Cucumber Beetles and Earworms explode or at least leave my garden

- Truck load of compost

- A bench to sit and think

- Large clay pots

- Statues of any sort are nice

- Gift certificate to my favorite seed companies

- A truck load of compost

- Someone to help with the grunt work

- Have all the projects that are started to be finished

- One solar powered watering  fountain system for chickens

- Automated chicken coop door openers

- Muck boots

- Free weeding

- Decorative black iron fencing

- Rat traps

- Bags of organic chicken feed

- Bales of hay

- Laying hens

- Twelve months of garden fresh veggies

- Good pair of gloves

- Some good hand tools

- Seeds (flowers and vegetables) would have to be tops

- Fencing and wood

- Garden globes

- A Meyers lemon tree

- Some magazines on gardening

- An orange tree and a tangelo tree

- Gift certificate to nursuries, seed companies, or a local hardware store

- Some fruit/nut trees that grow in my area

- Help getting my little trailer back on the road so I can pick up fill dirt

- Garden help would always be welcome

- A truckload of compost or good garden soil

- Privacy fence to enclose my little world

- Garden shed to keep all my tools mower etc

- More retaining wall blocks to build some more raised gardens

- Any type of perennial veggie or fruit tree

- A couple dozen blue dangly ornaments, wind chimes, or similar silly figures (all blue) to hang in the grapefruit tree

- A free stand for the gorgeous glass bird bath I got at ACE hardware

- A new table or rack to hold more pots in my potting area

- A foolproof, works- every- time rat trap for that family of rats that moved into the barn

- Some way to get that mole that got caught between sidewalks, and is zigzagging crazily between them

- Some way to clean stepping stones and keep them from slowly sinking into the lawn (without bending over)

- Somewhere to dump all the sand I’m digging out and replacing with compost

- Someway to keep weedelia in its place

- Some way to know exactly how TALL a tiny plant from the nursery will eventually grow

- A tall, super lightweight ladder so I can clip the tops of the hedges

- A full time crew of gardeners and handymen. Six husky men should be enough to get all the jobs done.

- I really need some new containers as I do container gardening mainly

- Seed gifts are never wrong.

- Tropic Sweet Apple tree

- Tropic Snow Peach tree

- Definitely, a hoe. One of those narrow ones.

- A very high fence between my neighbor’s yard & mine

- A book about veggie gardening in FL

- Some native plants to put in my front beds – the non-native ones aren’t doing so well

- Seeds for spring gardening – can’t wait to get started!

- Citrus trees and other fruit trees – love that we can grow citrus in Central FL and really want a Carambola tree!

- More raised beds

- Someone to prep my existing beds

- More mulch

- A pair of comfy gardening gloves – haven’t found a pair i love yet

Nice little cool snap we had there the first of December. Our last two winters have been strange to say the least with a freak hard freeze in March for a couple of days and a very early few days of hard freeze in early December even before our expected first frost dates.

What is this winter going to hold? Cold and harsh, mild, freezes or no freezes. Predictions run the gambit… do you have one? I’m going to bank on a mild winter… mainly because I don’t want to see all our summer’s work killed off!

The cool is great for some things, particularly the fruits, especially the citrus and things like apples and peaches and some berries that you might have growing.  Not so much for the tropicals like papayas and such.

There are still a lot of things, cool weather things, you can plant in the garden but do be aware that germination will be slower and growth will be slower… might even stop all together but will resume growing with a vengeance when the weather warms up a bit.

Here’s your December list:

Cool Weather Plants

• Beets

• Broccoli

• Cabbage

• Carrots

• Cauliflower

• Celery

• Chinese cabbage

• Collards

• Kale

• Kohlrabi

• Leek

• Lettuce

• Mustard

• Onion – bulb, multiplier, bunching

• Peas

• Radish

Early next month we can start some warm weather plants in pots to be ready for transplanting into the garden after the last expected frost dates.  More about those later.

Sign up for the CFG newsletter (up there in the right hand corner of this page) to get more in depth info.

Stay warm…

A quick video on starting seeds indoors for transplanting to the garden.  Many of your cool weather plants can be started now and in another month or so it will be time to start some of those warm weather plants like tomatoes and peppers.  Or, you could go ahead and start them now and have an inside winter garden and then have BIG plants to put out in February or March.

Central Florida Gardening – Garden Transplants

November is a little cooler and a little dryer than October, but as far as what you can plant in November, it’s exactly the same.  For us gardeners, it will be a lot more pleasant working outside this month though for sure.

This weeks newsletter is going to be about growing the cool weather plants and why they thrive.  To get that information you need to put your name and email address in the form there to the right of this post -BY THIS FRIDAY! (because that’s when the newsletter goes out)

Cool Weather Plants

• Beets
• Broccoli
• Brussels Sprouts
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Chinese Cabbage
• Collards
• Kale
• Kohlrabi
• Leek
• Lettuce
• Mustard
• Onion – bulb, multiplier, bunching
• Peas
• Radish
• Spinach
• Turnips

Warm Weather Plants

• None

ANTS!!

Central Florida Gardening has received a number of desperate questions as of late about ANTS!! How to get rid of them in their gardens.

So, we did a little research to see if we could find a definitive solution. Nothing absolute but a lot of ideas and methods people swear by.

• Diatomaceous Earth – microscopically razor sharp shards that cut through the waxy coating on insects. They die of dehydration
• Cinnamon – repellant
• Coffee grounds – repellant  One of our CFG readers has had good luck with this one
• Aspertame/Equal – an excitotoxin.  Overstimulates them to death.  One pack sprinkled over a small mound, 2 over a large one
• Grits/Cornmeal – there are people who swear this works for them but science doesn’t support it – theory is the ants eat the corn, drink water, then explode
• CO2/Club soda – dry ice or club soda (carbonated) down the mound hole to displace the oxygen and smother them to death
• Soap – soapy water (dish soap down the hole followed by a lot of water from a hose) drowns them.  The soap breaks surface tension so that they can’t survive on little air bubbles and it covers their “breathing holes”
• Chili pepper – repellant
• Orange peel – the oil in the orange skin is a repellant as well as a pesticide
• Bluerepper’s Super Bug Death Tea – 8-10 garlic cloves, 7 or so tabasco peppers, couple spoons Murphy’s Oil Soap, couple spoons canola oil, habanero sauce, couple spoons dish soap.  Put in a blender with a little water.  Add to a quart of hot water.  Put it down the hole?
• Molasses and boric acid slurry – borders of the mound.  Poisons them
• Human urine – don’t know how this one works
• d-limonene (orange oil) – can buy it commercially.  Also used as a dip for fleas on dogs.  The oil kills the ants.  One tablespoon to a gallon of water (can also add some molasses or compost tea).  Put the whole gallon down the hole.  Reported to work on fire ants
• Nicotine tea – milk jug of water.  Add cigaret butts or pipe tobacco (don’t know the amount… probably the more the better)  Sun brew until the color of tea.  Nicotine is a poison.  Beware of putting this on  tomatoes because of the high possibility of transmitting mosaic virus from the tobacco.
• Amdro – commercially bought granuals.  Srinkle lightly around the perimeter of the mound (just follow the directions on the package)  Seems to work well.  Do be aware that it breaks down quickly.  If you have foraging/ free range animals you can put an over turned clothes basket or milk crate over the mound and product so the animals can’t get into it.  It is a delayed-toxicity food chain killer, in which soldier ants carry the bait into the mound and feed it to the queen, killing her and decimating the mound. Amdro uses a corn grit and soybean oil base, and must be used within three months after opening to be effective. Amdro has several drawbacks: (1) when it rains, or the bait is moisturized, Amdro loses its effectiveness entirely; (2) insecticide baits tend to be slow working, and take up to a month to be effective; and (3) Amdro cannot be used on food crops.  Highly toxic to fish so beware of run-off
• Rue – an herb you can grow in your garden.  Repellant
• Pennyroyal – an herb you can grow in your garden.  Repellant
• Citronella – repellant
• Borax sugar water – poisons them
• Cooking oil – smothers them
• Boiling water followed by apple cider vinegar – no clue how this combination works
• Cucumber peelings – an old favorite.  No clue how it works
• Granular molasses – no clue
• Cinnamon/black pepper/coffee grounds mix – repellant
• Boric acid and Coke – boric acid in 1/2 can of coke – similar to borax and sugar water.  Leave the solution in the can… the ants will come to it
• Citrus peels – in food processor and a handful sprinkled in a 2.5 diameter around the mound
• Theraflu (cold/flu medication) – don’t know if it’s down the hole or on the mound.  No clue how it works
• Glue – down the hole.  Mechanical
• Baby powder – Curious about this one… don’t know how it works, if it is a deterrent or if it kills them

There is even a group about ant control http://groups.google.com/group/Ant-Control

I’m going to try some of these and will report back here.

If you try any of these, please leave a comment about your results in the comments below so that others can benefit from your experience  THANK YOU!!!!

Oh my gosh!  Nothing better than waking up to coolness!  Mid 60’s, crisp and clear… Practically mandatory that one gets outside and into the garden.

This month starts the all cool weather plantings.  Too late to plant warm weather plants – other than in a protected situation such as a greenhouse or containered on a sunny patio.

Cool Weather Plants

• Beets
• Broccoli
• Brussels Sprouts
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Chinese Cabbage
• Collards
• Kale
• Kohlrabi
• Leek
• Lettuce
• Mustard
• Onion – bulb, multiplier, bunching
• Peas
• Radish
• Spinach
• Turnips

Warm Weather Plants

• None

WHOA!!!  Is it ever going to get busy out there in the garden this month.  This is it.  Finally here!  That second spring for us Central Florida gardeners.  This is the last month this year for planting warm weather things.

Hope You’re ready!  Here we go.

Warm Weather Plants

• Bush beans
• Pole beans
• Lima beans
• Corn
• Cucumbers
• Eggplants
• Southern peas
• Peppers
• Summer squash (yellow crookneck, zucchini, pattypan…)
• Tomatoes

Cool Weather Plants

• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Celery
• Collards
• Endive/Escrole
• Kale
• Leeks
• Lettuce
• Mustard
• Onion – bulbing, multiplier, bunching (in other words, all of them)
• Peas
• Radish
• Turnips

This list isn’t exhaustive – though it might be exhausting.  Next month you can still plant all the cool weather plants plus several more.

I’m thinking it’s going to be a goooood season.

It’s finally here… August, the start of planting the autumn/winter garden. In Central Florida zone 9 it is looked at as a second spring. Only real difference is that we plant things in reverse order. In spring one plants veggies that like cooler weather first then as temps get warmer the heat loving veggies are planted. For our “second Spring” the heat loving veggies are planted first and then the cool weather lovers are planted later.

August’s sun is still blazing, temps are still in the 90’s and little seedlings and transplants are subject to heat exhaustion (so to speak). You need to take extra care and diligence to assure these veggie babies are well watered, don’t dry out – not even a little bit, not even once – and have some sun block in the form of shade and protection. You can use sheets, blankets, cardboard, pots, row covers, non-woven poly fabric that you can find in the plumbing department by the PVC pipes in stores like Home Depot… Use your imagination and you can come up with lots of ideas.

Plant the warm weather things now and the cooler weather things later in the month.

Warm Weather Plants

• Beans – pole (pole beans require a longer growing season)
• Corn
• Eggplant
• Southern Peas
• Peppers
• Pumpkin
• Summer Squash
• Winter Squash
• Watermelon

Be getting your tomato seedlings ready for transplanting to the garden at the last of August/first of September.

Cool Weather Plants

• Broccoli
• Celery
• Collards
• Onion – multiplier and bunching

Be sure to leave space for September and October planting because there are a bunch more things you can put in the ground then.