I am fairly certain that this is the strain of Allium fistulosum I purchased from this great company about nine or ten years ago that in four years proved to be truly perennial and to divide freely in Tampa.....this name looks very familiar to me. I am mailing seeds to Nate Chetelat and Allen Boatman and others to grow and test so they won't all be in my yard this time. I just ask folks to PLEASE identify them with a sign and in their notes. Attached is a video of my original plant. John

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozjyWZM7VEo&t=110s

I am trying a method of pit composting to get the area behind my mailbox ready for two roses and quite a few bulbs.....BIG hole partially filled with very old tree trunk sections, Publix plain cat litter, dead banana leaves, about twenty pounds of dried chicken poop from the hen house, quite a bit of 'Mills Magic Rose Mix', trace elements, a lot of undiluted 'Alaska Fish Fertilizer', old rotten eggs, and yard debris. I think the roses ('Graham Thomas' and 'Blush Noisette') will love growing here!

I was inspired to seek these out after seeing on Facebook the photo of Jon and Debbie Butts tree in full fruit on their EcoFarm. These love Florida, are rarely seen or sold, and I have not eaten one since the mid 1970s. Very hard fruit....many people cook them, but I loved them raw. I ordered these from the Arbor Day Foundation.

My two times in Costa Rica, and Tim's many visits to his wife Kathy's native Columbia, we were served in soups chunks of corn cob with giant, chewy, starchy, tender, almost white kernels. Tim is not fond of it but I loved it as someone who does not enjoy modern sweet corn. It took quite a bit of Googling but I found two South American varieties. "Peruvian Giant Yellow" corn has big kernels, but this one has me very excited! I got 35 seeds for $5 after shipping and this March I will plant them in my moist fertile east bed filled with roses and pentas. This will be the first time I've grown corn in easily ten years. "Giant Cuzco". John

More Sissoo Spinach

http://survivalgardener.com/sissoo-spinach/

Someone in Costa Rica was reading my old gardening column in The St. Pete Times and asked me if I'd ever heard of this cool veggie. It sounds wonderful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw3ER-SNkmA

A great overview of using beans.

http://cooking.nytimes.com/guides/21-how-to-cook-beans?utm_source=Facebook_Paid&utm_medium=social&utm_content=Guides&utm_campaign=kwp&kwp_0=156744&kwp_4=1081463&kwp_1=503075

Today I am planting these multiplier onions in a large Water Wise Container Garden next to the comfrey that Jim Porter gave me. These tiny bulblets are in a small paper bag kept in my produce drawer since summer until today. Tampa is SO not the desert southwest where I have lived in my youth but I won't know if I don't try. John.

http://www.crookedskyfarms.com/iitois-onion

For anybody I've shared seeds of the forage rape 'Bonar' with, these are now five weeks old in a baby pool Water Wise Container Garden by my avocado tree. The soil is about six years old, is home made compost containing quite a bit of Publix brand cheap unscented cat litter (made from calcium bentonite clay), one sprinkling back then of dolomite, and has been fed over the years with kitchen gray water and dilute fish emulsion now and then. This it been fed just once with organic 'Mills Magic Rose Mix'. And these plants are still babies! Raw or cooked the leaves are mild and tender, no fibers like in collards. If I still lived in Denver I'd be growing 'Bonar' as an extremely cold hardy crop.....years ago I gave seeds to a rural farmer east of Tampa.....we had a BAD cold front that made Tampa BROWN with severe cold damage.....his 'Bonar' was not even touched by a sustained 14 degrees! John

I have moved Water Wise Container Gardens I made from recycling bins from the south bed to my kitchen garden beneath the drastically cut back avocado tree, filled each with wonderful compost from very old five gallon Water Wise Container Gardens, and begun planting seeds like these 'Evergreen White Bunching' onions. The addition of about 20% Publix cheap no fragrance cat litter back then did wonders for this soil due to being made from calcium bentonite clay.

I don't watch local TV, but I saw David Whitwam's latest segment on FaceBook. Smart nice man.

http://www.fox13news.com/good-day/218561811-video

Here is my fifteen year old West Indian avocado tree a few weeks after a VERY severe pruning and, as Oliver Moore suggested, a girdling but with the bark not removed. In the mean time, with all that dense shade removed I am back to gardening in the Water Wise Container Gardens beneath! The new four foot tall goat fence keeps the chickens finally out. I would love it if I FINALLY got fruits from the tree as I planted that pit back then to celebrate my new home in Tampa after fifteen LONG years in Denver.

I have SO many green Raja Puri bananas I will see if I can peel them to make tosotones as done with the plantains in the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-chQCzVI1c

Today I cut back easily 80% of a large 'Potato Mint' (Plectranthus species) that had sprawled over much of my northeast street flower bed before I apply Mills Magic Rose Mix organic fertilizer and give the bed a deep watering. I was disappointed that the very center of maybe 20 inches across is where the tubers seem to be growing. The cuttings will get composted. I have never grown this before so hope I enjoy the tubers. John

I am testing four more varieties of garlic that MIGHT actually produce bulbs in Tampa after so many of us having tried so many types over the years, from Cuban to many types of Creole. In Denver garlic was a weed it produced so well! I LOVE garlic....I can't cook without it, so this morning while planting I ate a clove of 'Early Red Italian'. Good flavor but surprisingly mild despite the huge size. Here in Tampa since the 80s I have used the tops like "chives" since I never get any bulbs. If you have never tried fresh raw garlic leaves, do, just by planting a whole bulb from the store. In Denver I grew them in pots each winter in my south and west windows. John

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.

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.

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.

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

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.