ENDEAVORING TO PERSEVERE

Seems like a good as any description of the sandpit garden. Endeavor- To exert oneself to do or effect something. Persevere- Continue in a course of action even in the face of difficulty. I like it. It describes the Sandpit garden exactly we are Endeavoring to Persevere here but are making headway albeit slowly.

The Amaryllis plants are up and blooming which is a sure sign that the cold weather is over here and the summer is fast approaching.

These bulbs grow easily here in South Florida and are left in the ground the entire year. These particular Amaryllis bulbs are many years old collected over time from the yards of relatives. They never fail to put on a flower show this time of year and are quite dependable.

Another South Florida special is the Croton plant. It is not very keen on cold weather but give it some heat and this guy is going to thrive.

This Croton was made from a stem cutting and is responding to the rising temperatures here with new growth. They are one of the easy plants to propagate from cuttings and are found throughout the Tropics. The leaves change colors in response to the amount of sunlight the plant gets and it will stand up to the tropical heat and humidity we will get here. It's one of the tough guys to have in a tropical setting.

One of the other plants that I have been messing with for the garden is the Four o'clock. I read that this plant is a good companion plant in the vegetable garden. Supposedly the bugs will eat the four"oclock leaves which are poison instead of the vegetable plants. So it is meant as a diversion plant for the bugs so the vegetables have a chance.

The bugs have not shown up yet but they will come with the warming weather. The Four o'clocks are a new experiment this year to see if they will help control the hungry bugs.

This Four o'clock pot has three baking potato size tubers planted in it. I dug them up from under my front yard bushes a short while back and planted them in this pot to contain their spreading.

When I first transplanted them the tubers had growth a couple of feet tall on them. Once in the new pot the growth immediately died down to the bare soil. After several weeks the tubers have sent up new growth to take a look around and try to figure out what happened and how they ended up here. I am also growing some more Four o'clocks from seed and hope to get some different color flowers. This plant in the picture will have yellow flowers on it once it grows up a bit.

On the edible side in the beds that I have been working on there are Collards ready to harvest some of the outside leaves. These Collards seem to be doing pretty well in the new bed to which was added lots and lots of last years compost. These were grown from seed that I started in homemade newspaper pots then transplanted out into the bed after they were grown up a bit.

This particular type are Creole or Georgia Southern Collards. They are a Southern staple and really good as a Winter green here in Florida. They are a heirloom really old type Collard that dates back before 1760 and was a food staple grown by slaves in the South. This type Collard takes about 75 days to harvest and tolerates sandy soil and heat which is just perfect for the Sandpit garden. These here Collards were started from seed on January 8th.

Another Heirloom that is growing well so far in the new vegetable beds is the Jubilee Tomato. It dates back to 1891 and is an orange-yellow Tomato. This type is indeterminate so it will produce as long as the plant remains healthy. Growing Tomato plants here is a roll of the dice but so far these plants are looking really healthy.

As a side bonus to preparing the new vegetable beds from the new mixed compost I have about 8 to ten sprouts from the Everglades Tomato plants. These have self seeded from the compost added to the beds. I was down to just a couple of these plants because they are one of my favorites and I never get around to saving their seed because I eat all the fruit first. So It will be a priority to save some seed from this wild cherry type Tomato that nature has provided. Now if I can convince my resident Mockingbirds to cooperate in the seed saving effort with the Everglades Tomato's. They love them too and it is a fight to see who can get the fruits first.

Anyway that's the update from the Sandpit for now. Here is a good you tube video that I ran across for today's times. Makes sense to me anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/user/donze52#p/u/52/u9l4l-cunSc

Hope that your garden is thriving and that you too are endeavoring to persevere.

---Sanddune---

SANDPIT NEWS 01-11-2011

Just like every year the fall season is the busiest here and January is the month that things finally slow down. It's kind'a like getting of off of the interstate after a long trip and finally being able to relax with the knowledge you made it and didn't get run over by some idiot.

As far as the garden the new year promises much the same challenges as last year. The main goal is bringing my dead soil back to life. I don't call my garden the sandpit for nothing. The soil is pretty much devoid of nutrients, has nematodes as well as soil borne diseases. All contribute to not being the best medium to grow healthy plants. It is apparent that building the soil will bring about the most positive change. This year my garden resolution will be to continue to add compost and try to Feed the Soil.

It has been two years now that I have stopped using any pesticides and chemical fertilizers and there is a noticeable difference. I have a lot more bugs attacking the plants than before but keep trying to learn organic methods to control them. My plan for this season is to use Neen oil sprayed weekly to try to head off the bad bugs and control the blights. Neem is a natural biological pesticide as well as fungicide that I have experimented with in the past with varied results. I'm holding out hope that if I can keep a weekly schedule with the Neem it will show results. Please feel free to offer any suggestions as to what organic products work that you use in your garden.

Some of my research suggested that companion planting Four O'clock plants will help control Japanese beetles. The Four o'clock plant is supposed to attract the beetle which eat the plants poison leaves. I happen to have some four o'clock plants that were brought down from Jacksonville years ago and were growing wild in the front shrubbery . I dug up some of these Four o'clock tubers and planted them in a container which will be set by the planting beds.

Best I can figure the container will help control the FourO'clocks from spreading which they tend to do and getting out of control. As far as if it will help control the Japanese beetles that like to munch on my garden plants we shall see. If nothing else these Four o'clocks produce nice yellow flowers. I always get lots of the hungry beetles here with warm weather. They like to fly around mostly at night and besides eating the plants like to land in your hair.

As far as the edible garden I started some Southern Collard seeds this week in little newspaper seed pots that I made up. The Collards will go out in one of the raised beds and will be my first vegetables crop attempt this year. I'm thinking that they will do well in the cold weather which is said to improve their taste. If I can keep the bugs out of them they should do well.

It is a fact that that a mess of homegrown Collards with a dash of pepper sauce is hard to beat. So I will be keeping my fingers crossed. So if the good lord is willing and the creek don't run dry some fine Southern Collards will be on the menu in the not too distant future.

--SANDDUNE--