In Denver I grew several kinds of chenopods effortlessly for 15 years, and they reseeded freely....my twelve years back in Tampa all my efforts with several kinds, both winter and summer have utterly failed. Thankfully I tried Magenta Spreen once again with seeds I got at ROOTS in St. Pete...one seedling emerged in that back porch Water Wise Container Garden. It sulked and barely grew, even after I gave it fish fertilizer. But once I started peeing on the soil it took off! Today it is approx. 8 feet tall and making vast numbers of buds and blooms on the terminal tips of branches, so today I snipped off a few to dry indoors in a tub to see if there are viable seeds yet (I suspect that they are too green). Two gardeners near Gainesville tell me that up there Magenta Spreen self sows wildly, almost a weed but they love the taste and texture (it is related to spinach so the taste and texture are very similar raw or cooked)...their's froze to death some time ago. A woman I know in Missouri says the same thing, that hers too reach 8-10 each summer....she no longer even bothers to grow spinach. The leaves are biggest and most tender and most magenta when the plants are 3-4 feet tall...later on the new leaves are quite small and green as the plant (an annual) prepares to set seeds. The two guys pulls up surplus seedlings to feed the chickens...she immerses hers in water for several days to make a potent liquid fertilizer. Here in Florida it definitely prefers summer. All three folks tell me to expect about 750 million seedlings to emerge in my kitchen garden next summer, but that they pull up easily. I added some leaves to salads, other times I cooked them in water with salt and coconut oil 10-15 minutes to serve as a side dish...just about identical to fresh spinach. I expect to harvest a LOT of seeds and would love to share some. I plan on doing a bulk sowing in the back yard center food forest plus maybe the big southeast bed. So funny that just when I'd given up growing chenopods in Tampa I'd get raging success! I never grew it in Denver. John

Of the three Creole Garlics I've planted so far, 'Germinador' (yup, spelled with a "d") is by far the most vigorous growing. Today I plant 'Labera Purple'. Fingers crossed that one/all set bulbs here in central Florida come springtime. Day lengths are the issue with garlics and most onions failing to make bulbs here. John

Monica wrote a fine article about this very progressive project here in Tampa.

http://tbo.com/south-shore/give-thanks-so-many-are-growing-to-end-hunger-20141126/

Debbie and Jon Butts and their Sustainable Living radio show and WMNF 88.5 are perennially respected and supported by the community due to their well known integrity and hard work and dedication. Jon and Debbie's farm pioneered sustainability in Florida decades before it became a popular buzz word. If you've been burned by promoting and/or contributing to individual "permaculturists" who turned out to be less than ethical, as I have a few times now, make your contribution to that fine radio show and station, confident in the knowledge that it will be used prudently and creatively. For me, it's no more giving money to individual "permaculturists" asking for "community support" as all too often they seem to think that money grows on trees, and that it is up to others to rake it up for them. WMNF Community Radio 88.5 FM 1210 East Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Tampa FL 33603-4417

Woo hoo! I better plant more glads and roses and sow more flower, veggie and roses seeds!

http://www.baynews9.com/content/news/baynews9/weather/forecast.html

I have the Air Potato Beetle on what I used to call African Yellow (Dioscorea cayenensis) that some folks feel is just a form of D. alata. Just one beetle, I killed it. Those of us who grow the true yams have been trying to let folks know when they get it. A student in Temple Terrace has it, and Andy Firk and other gardeners in Florida are reporting damage to several cultivars vs. only the Air Potato (D. bulbifera) the state release targeted. Yams have been a staple for me here for more than 10 years...I sure hope it doesn't wipe them out, especially my beloved Purple Ube from the Philippines.

I've wondered why after being almost unheard of it is now rampant in the U.S. the last several years. Just a new "food craze" or power of suggestion/hypochondria? I've long known that our wheat is not GMO but was bred, INCLUDING transgeneric crosses with a wild grass to boost the protein (aka gluten) content during the Green Revolution. I'll poke around about the claims in this article I saw on FaceBook but in the meantime will share it so folks can do their own research. John

http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/real-reason-for-toxic-wheat-its-not-gluten/

I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, but the "shallots" from China that I bought at DoBond Market and that I suspect might be "potato onions" ( a sub-species of shallots that multiplies underground), and that I planted barely a month ago in a Water Wise Container Garden as single individual bulbs, are already seeming to be replicating! Normal shallots are taller than wide....potato onions are flattened globes wider than tall. Fingers crossed as the one I ate had pungent, in-your-face onion flavor. John

That rhizome of Maranta (Arrow Root) that Josh Jamison gave me at Andy Firk's I think two autumns ago has become two robust colonies. I've given some away and have tons left. I've mentioned before not liking how eating boiled ones leaves many tough fibers stuck badly in my teeth. So today I browned three, covered, in olive oil, with sea salt. I let it cool, peeled off the scales then ate it like corn on the cob, with most of the fibers left in the middle. But my teeth are still jammed with fibers! Next time I'll slice them into 1/2 inch sections and boil those to see if those much shorter fibers are simply swallowed along with the pleasant tasting starch. I will also try again running some raw in water in my blender, strain out the fibers, then add the starchy water to a soup, smoothie or stir fry. Craig Hepworth also does not like the fibers in Maranta rhizomes and has already tried what I was going to try next.....cut the raw rhizomes into thin "coins" as he puts it, boil then serve. This cuts the long fibers into very short ones he calls "tolerable". The plant grows very easily in shade, but websites and videos make clear that extracting the starch is a lot of work for a small amount after drying. Arrow root starch has been my favorite food thickener for years, especially in my home made Asian dipping sauces, but I can get a 1 pound bag for 99 cents at The Oceanic Market downtown. If the sliced "coins" technique doesn't result in pleasant eating (the fibers wedge deeply into my teeth for a whole day!) I may well give up on this crop. In the pic, Josh Jamison is on the left, Craig is on the right. Both are brilliant, truly decent men and excellent botanists/horticulturists/gardeners....Craig's effort to breed a PERENNIAL corn for Florida using one of our tall native grasses intrigues me because that is full blown inter-genus breeding, which has VERY few success stories (Fatshedera and that Potentilla/Strawberry cross and the Rosa/Hulthemia crosses are the only three that I can think of). He knows the odds are remote, but persists....last year he got hybrid seeds! He is using corn as the seed parent. I am continually amazed by the awesome people I meet in the Florida gardening and permaculture communities. John

Whew! After growing and eating true yams (Dioscorea spp.) here for a dozen years, a few times this year I up ones from the center east bed and after the usual methods of cooking they had a horrible "plasticy" taste and a very unpleasant, wet "squeaky" texture. They were so bad I fed them to the chickens. But today I dug up a small chunk of a big one in the SE bed, fried the slices in olive oil with sea salt, covered, and served them with a new batch of fermented hot sauce, with fried eggs and raw Surinam cherries on the side.....EXCELLENT! My only theory is that the bad tasting ones came from a garden that Muscovy ducks lived in for nearly a year.....maybe their poop tainted the soil? So far, no signs of the Air Potato beetle here yet. John

No WHY don't I miss Denver?

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=39.733799783334405&lon=-104.91621594271083&site=all&smap=1#.VF5DYvnF-UQ

Last month's rains plus my usual obsessive water conservation steps here resulted in my new water use bill being just $2.09! Nonetheless I hope the forecasts for 90% rain chance tonight into tomorrow pan out. John

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=27.892721275067856&lon=-82.50549877924448&site=all&smap=1#.VF5DO_nF-UQ

I am having a bumper crop of unusually sweet juicy Meyer's Lemons and even though I have a quart left over from last year, I'll make another quart of Moroccan Preserved Lemons, and I just put up a quart of pickled ginger root using lemon juice vs. the usual rice vinegar. Next I will make a quart of green papaya pickles using lemon juice, salt, brown sugar and hot peppers.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Preserved-Lemons-231570

About 10 days ago I planted in this Water Wise Container Garden a small bag of shallots from China that I bought at DoBond Market here in south Tampa. Normal shallot bulbs are taller than they are wide...."Potato Onions" are a replicating subspecies of shallots that are flattened globes wider than they are tall, which is why I got excited when I saw them and bought the bag. I ate one raw...wonderful in-your-face onion flavor. If by early summer each bulb has replicated into several followed by the tops dying back, signalling harvest time, I will have scored my first "red" potato onions!