My Seeds of Change garden is underway and not a moment too soon! The heat and humidity is slowing creeping back and a long, hot Florida summer awaits!
Gardening in Florida from the end of June through mid-September is very difficult due to the high heat, humidity and bugs, so when my Seeds of Change seed packets arrived in the mail 10 days ago, I realized I needed a multi-pronged approach to this whole gardening thing.
I first went through the seed packets and selected the vegetables and flowers that would have a good chance to grow well in full sun in my outside garden.
Here’s what I picked:
I really wanted to grow some lettuce too, but lettuce doesn’t grow too well in the heat, so I decided to grow that indoors in my garden window plus a couple of herbs:
Here’s how I set up my garden window – the lettuce and endive are planted in the pot on the left and the marjoram and basil are in the pot on the right:
The garden window approach is working so far – the herbs and lettuce have already sprouted and are growing!
I decided to plant the veggies and flowers for my outside garden in some empty egg cartons perched on a window sill to sprout the seedlings first and then I will transfer to the garden sometime this week.
The picture above shows how they looked as of this morning. Not bad for a gardening novice!
I’ll be tweeting and facebooking all about my garden’s progress between now and my next gardening post, so follow my updates along with the other Real Food Media bloggers by being a fan of the Seeds of Change Facebook page and Seeds of Change on Twitter as well. The special Twitter hashtag #sowingmillions is set up especially for everyone to tweet about their gardening successes, problems, and questions.
Happy Gardening!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
That magnolia tree is in full bloom right now! I just love the smell. It is my favorite tree by far in my entire yard!
And magnolias make the best trees for climbing! 🙂
Hi, I live in Zone 7b and we pretty much only grow okra, sweet potatoes, peppers (they stay alive, but don’t produce much until it cools down in the fall), melons, corn, peanuts, purple hull peas, and sweet potatoes in the summer. I grow my food crop of tomatoes in the spring and preserve them for the rest of the year. We nurse a couple of tomato plants during the summer.
We basically have two short 3-month growing seasons in the spring and fall and get a break in the winter and summer, unless you have a hoophouse for the winter. Cruciferous vegetables grow only in the fall, except beets and chart work in the spring also. I have to cover rows for the crucifers in the winter. There are some salad greens that work throughout the winter. Everything else is spring and fall only.
So little is written about growing veggies in the south. I hope there is an Elliot Coleman or a Steve Salomon in the south and he will be writing a book someday soon.
BTW, I heart the deep south. We vacation at the gulf coast in Alabama every year and seeing the cypress trees and the magnolia tree outside your window made me smile! We will be down there in two weeks!
We’ve had a few days already at 92F or so! Sometimes in June before the afternoon T-storms start for the rainy season, we can get close to 100F during the day! Not sure much of anything edible can survive that! I will hope we don’t have that kind of heat before the rainy season starts this year else my outdoor garden will be *toast*, literally!
You should try Jericho lettuce. It did fine in our 80-90° heat and high humidity here in TN. I’ve always wanted to grow hollyhocks! Can’t wait for photos!