Friday, October 28, 2016
Yesterday I got four kinds of garlic to try in Tampa in hopes of FINALLY finding a variety that produces bulbs vs. just tops from Filaree Garlic Farm: Mexican Red Silver, Mild French, California Early, and Early Red Italian. That last one is THE biggest garlic I have ever seen! I will taste it today. Today I will hopefully choose the four container gardens in my back door kitchen area to plant the cloves in for testing.
Friday, October 14, 2016
I've been growing white alyssum and snapdragons from seeds here in Tampa since the late 70s, and in Denver in the 90s, and have always found them easy when direct sowed in garden beds. So I was baffled when I sowed both in my northeast street bed just before we had rain from Hurricane Matthew, plus watered on no rain days. But I got zero germinationover two weeks in a fertile bed that grows so many perennials and annuals. So I tried a pinch of the seeds in two pots out front and got germination in three days! I have loved Everwilde Farms for years so had full confidence in that bulk seed. I would love to figure out what is going on.
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
One of the many things I enjoy about being sixty three and retired back home in Tampa is connecting all of these life experiences into some element of 20-20 hindsight. I love being true to myself all these years. All those decades of eating and shopping for SO many things in dumpsters gave me so much financial and experiential freedom. I am so glad that those lean times bought my retirement home for cash in 1998 due such frugality so I'd have a new level of freedom. Gardening is a life long classroom for me.
Monday, October 10, 2016
When I bought my retirement home in 1998, south Tampa had hundreds of citrus trees, and part of the joy was that incredible fragrance each winter and spring. Neighbors would give each other whole bags of various kinds of fruit. I had never heard of "Citrus Greening" until it killed my neighbor Theresa's huge juicing orange and pink grapefruit about five years ago that her husband Bill planted in 1961.....now it has wiped out nearly all citrus trees in south Tampa except for one in the pic in a yard two houses west of hers. It too now has Citrus Greening. All of my citrus trees are fine, but they are own root and for years my soil has gotten trace elements from kelp meal, Mill's Magic Rose Mix, azomite, and Sunniland trace elements. The only one I lost was a limequat killed by a flock of Muscovy ducks who's manure burned it to death. Living here has so changed in the absence of citrus trees! I hope that mine continue to do well. John
Saturday, October 8, 2016
I ordered for my Denver friends Michael Mowry and Amy Cara the Racombole garlic that thrived incredibly for me for 14 years in Denver, but that inspired me to AGAIN to research obsessively on garlics that MIGHT grow here in Tampa where day lengths and temps are SO wrong for garlic. For years me and friends in surrounding cities and in rural areas have tried SO many types of Creoles, Spanish, and Cuban garlics that MIGHT grow here but we all got the same results.....a winter annual with delicious leaves but an utter refusal to make bulbs. Garlic won't even grow at all in the summer here! So I looked on line, wrote down new candidates, looked them up, and ordered them from Filaree Garlic: Mexican Red Silver, Mild French, California Early, and Early Red Italian. $35 plus $12.50 shipping. I think of this as gaining knowledge to share....I am no longer a garden writer but share on FaceBook, a Florida gardening forum on Yahoo I've been a founding member of since 2002, plus my blogs. Each variety will be labelled and in different parts of my yard to avoid a mix up. IF any work here I will know by late next spring IF the foliage yellows and dies back and IF I pull up actual new bulbs from the planted cloves. Today I learned there are MANY types of Racombole.....I will never know if the one they got is the same as my Denver one. My instincts tell me that these four might very well grow in Denver.
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