Finale

Well it is the end. After a semester of toiling away in the garden it's all done. The growing season has come and passed and all that will be left is dust and ash. And by that I mean decomposing remains, that was just a nice rhyme.

I believe the growing season was not the best that it could have been. We could have had another two weeks had it not been for that freeze we received. This part of Florida certainly is colder than the southern part, influencing the amount of time we have to grow.

One thing that I struggled with was that some seeds did not sprout. I would have really wanted my garden to look great and even but because some didn't germinate, seeds that I replanted were weeks behind the other plants. I also faced a bit of pest infestation. White flies were on my squash leaves and those caterpillar things were going to town on my squash fruit and bean leaves.

But overall, it certainly was not bad at all. I harvested quite a few things: unripened tomatoes, eggplant, squash, cilantro, radish, and okra. Very unfortunately I did not get to use them because 1: I am a lazy piece of trash and 2: I didn't know what to do sorry them. But it's the principle of growing my own things that counts. Right? Right?

Overall, it was quite an enjoyable experience. Just please, less weeding!

Harvest Part 2

Most of my plants will probably die in the freeze. There are some preventative measures such as plastic covering and giant fans. Personally, I have prepared for the freeze by wearing sweaters. Like I usually do. I have not investigated my garden post Tuesday. What I am picturing is a frozen wasteland with dead and dying remnants of my plants.

But I did harvest what I could before the freeze: tomatoes, some type of bean, and cilantro.

So what I have in my pantry and fridge is: squash, eggplant, radish, and the above. And I have made nothing. I don't know what to do with it and sadly I am a lazy piece of you-know-what.

Waiting Game

The most noticeable change in my garden is that my squash is in what appears to be grave conditions. Unfortunately I did not snap pictures but the leaves seem to be decaying  and it is unlikely to produce any more fruit. The best option apparently is to let it succumb. I actually still have the squash that I harvested sitting on my desk in a paper bag. One way to use squash is to make it into a pie.

Shamelessly stolen Taken from this site, ingredients required are:

• 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch single crust pie
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 tablespoon butter, melted
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 2 cups hot milk
• 2 pounds butternut squash (I don't think I grew butternut...)
• 3 eggs

The steps:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). In a small saucepan, cover squash cubes with water. Bring to a boil and cook until tender, about 15 minutes. Drain, cool and mash. Measure out 2 cups of mashed squash and refrigerate remaining leftover amount.
2. Mix sugar, salt, and spices. Blend in milk, squash, eggs, and butter or margarine. Pour filling into unbaked pie shell.
3. Bake at 425 degrees F (220 degrees C) for 40 minutes or until a knife blade inserted in the center comes out clean.

I'm not sure how the cold weather is affecting my crops. Tomatoes, radish, eggplant, peppers and cabbage seem to all be growing.

Awaiting to be harvested: tomatoes, eggplant, radish, and some herb that I forgot the name of.

Harvest Part 1

Previous class I learned about the reason why those weeds are so annoying. Weeds dedicate their entire lives to reproducing as much as possible. They out compete other crops and create a very large amount of seeds to propagate themselves. Their seeds can spread through water (rivers and oceans), earth (gravity), fire (forest fire activation), and air (wind). It seems like the Avatar has some competition.

But the time has come. The first harvest of the season!

I was very excited to take this squash home. But I have a small issue. What do you make with squash? Also I have never eaten it before so I have no idea what it tastes like. I guess it will be a surprise. 

In other news, my tomatoes have finally been staked. Hopefully this will make them become more lively.

Plant Products

In the garden I performed the usual routine of weeding and spraying my plants with pesticide. Sadly my eggplants are not in great shape at all.

I watered them and hope that they regain some vitality. But today I discovered the culprit that is behind the holes in my bean plants.

These leaf rollers made their home in my bean plants by..well...rolling up the leaves. Here's hoping that they will be destroyed by a treatment of BT.

In other news, it appears that okra, squash, and eggplant are doing well. The squash is even flowering!

 

Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants all possess fruits that are harvestable while okra yields edible seed pods. Cabbage is harvested for buds, squash for its fruit as well, and radish and beets for their root. I assume cilantro, parsley, and basil are grown for their leaves, and beans are grown for their seeds.

Time Management

It feels like there is so little time in the garden. Most of my time is spent getting rid of the constantly returning weeds. I had to rush to plant both regular and red cabbage in lieu of carrots. I also rushed to fertilize everything, as I hadn't done so in two weeks and I felt that some of the plants were in great need of it. I am greatly concerned that my tomatoes are nearly parallel to the ground now. I attempt to support them against a pile of soil but that does not seem to work. However, squash and okra are coming in nicely. I came back Tuesday to do some more weeding and planted some sunflowers.

My squash is still suffering from white flies. I sprayed them on Monday with neem and performed another treatment Tuesday. Some of my beans seem as though something is consuming their leaves, so I treated that with BT. There are many ways to prevent the spread of pests and diseases. One such is to make the environment less favorable for the pathogen. Another is to use disease resistant crops. These are passive actions. We use active actions in the garden when we spray our plants with neem and BT.

Weed City

Weeds have invaded my plot with an army!

 I spent nearly all of my time in the garden tearing out those pesky weeds and there was still some left over. It is certainly not fun to repeatedly bend down and back up again to pick them out. But besides that, my garden looks relatively healthy. The plants have grown larger and leafier.

I also noticed white flies congregating on the underside of my squash leaves so I sprayed the plant with a natural pesticide in the hopes of getting rid of them. One thing I neglected to perform was to replace an okra seed that had not germinated. 

Florida benefits from having bodies of water on both sides of the state. This greatly regulates the temperature of the state (more-so at the edges than in the middle). Also since it is very south, it experiences warm weather for much of the year. This extends the growing season over more northern states. Precipitation has both positives and negatives. A positive is that it is free water and irrigates crops. A negative is that it can cause problems during the harvest season. High humidity allows plants to retain water within their tissues.

Signs of Life

Returning to the garden, much to my delight, life has sprung up in my beds. But not all of the life is favorable.

Weeds were everywhere! Initially I attempted to dig them up from the roots. But I quickly realized that this would take a very large amount of effort. Instead, I tried to pull out as much of the stems as possible and hope for the best (although they will likely be back in full force when I return). It is possible to obtain genetically modified plants that are resistant to the pesticides that kill weeds. But it would be prohibitively expensive and pesticides in general are not "nice" to the environment.

The plants that I am excited about are these sprouts:

Okra

Squash

Bean Provider

Bean Yellow Bush

Bean Yellow Fillet

I am very happy to know that I already have green in my garden. But I would have been happy anyways because I have transplanted these into the beds:

Tomato

Eggplant

A benefit of transplanting is that the plants were likely selectively bred for favorable traits such as product size, harvest size, and hardiness either through conventional breeding or genetic modification.

I also fertilized the sprouts (minus the beans) and transplants by creating a ring around each one about two inches deep, placing a thin layer of fertilizer, and covering up. This will provide the plants with essential nutrients for them to grow.

I can't wait to return next week to see the progress.

Manual Labor

We finally began building up the beds and planting our seeds. But before that, we had to learn a little bit about transplanting versus direct seeding. Direct seeding involves planting a seed directly into the ground where it will go through its complete life cycle. Advantages of this are that it is cheaper to obtain large amounts of seed and the plant is immediately exposed to the outside elements. Disadvantages are that some seeds are not guaranteed to germinate and some seeds may grow into weak plants that will not survive.

Transplanting is when a seed is first grown in a controlled environment and then moved to a permanent location. Pros are that freshly germinated plants avoid unfavorable weather, weak plants can be eliminated, and transplanting extends the growing season. Cons are that it is more expensive and the shock of moving to the external environment could reduce yield.

After learning this information, we get to the fun part: the garden itself. A couple of hours of manual labor had to be done building up the beds so that the danger of collapse is reduced.

I was unable to do any planting Monday, so I returned the next day near noon to lay my seeds. Making sure that the seeds were not too deep or shallow, I planted okra, squash, parsley, beet, the three types of beans, and cilantro. It was surprisingly laborious, having to squat and stand repeatedly. But I cannot wait for the payoff.

Day 0: Planning

Well here we are. College! In choosing my electives, I noticed a little line on the course page that said "Vegetable Gardening." And immediately I knew I had to take it. I have always had an interest in growing crops. A few years ago, I had moderate success growing a tomato and a pumpkin plant. I'm even subscribed to the gardening subreddit. It gives me pleasure to know that I can explore this interest in a college course.

I am highly satisfied with my garden plan. I am a science and mathematics type of guy, so I attempted to coordinate my garden by the plants' properties. The first row is "red": tomatoes and red bells. I attempted to make the second row "green" with okra, jalapeno, cubanelle, green bell, and an outlier of eggplant. The third row is a slight mixture: carrot and radish which are dense, followed by cauliflower and squash. Finally the fourth row contains herbs (basil, cilantro, parsley), beans, and beets.

I cannot wait until I begin to plant my crops.