End of Summer

The huge poke weeds are in bloom with lovely white jiggly blossoms that will then turn into shiny black berries beloved by the backyard birds. The season is changing slowly into fall. Though it still hits ninety degrees in the middle of the day, evenings are cooler.

Truth be told, it's beastly hot to do any garden work, but we know we must get the vegetable garden in by around labor day in these parts of Central Florida or we'll be caught by the January freeze. I have learned to plant lots of things that can stand a light frost - broccoli, collards, peas, lettuce, kale, chard and carrots. The left over peppers, tomatoes and eggplant from summer die dramatically at the first hint of freeze.

Last week we sweated out there in the garden, weeding, restapling the deer fence that had been torn down by the heavy morning glories, (a mistake!) and mulching with hay and grass clippings. A few days later, I put the collard and broccoli seedlings into holes I poked in the thick mulch. For the row crops, I hoed a thin strip of mulch away to sow the seeds. Later, as the plants emerge, I will add compost and more mulch. After renewing them with a few bags of new potting soil the raised salad beds have been planted with lettuces, chard and celery. In this heat I have devised a cover for them made out of old black screening that had once been panels over the pool but had rips. Still good enough for the garden. (Don't waste anything!)

I used to want at the start of gardening season to have a freshly tilled new area. Straight rows, no weeds in sight. Tidy. Problem with this was that the weeds very rapidly took over! The soil wasn't getting any better and it was hard to keep the garden watered since the soil was open to the blistering sun and beating rain.

I happened to read a book called "Lasagna Gardening". Talk about an epiphany! Naturally, things fall from above: rain, leaves, pine needles, dust, sunshine, blessings. Earth wants to be covered like a Muslim woman. This works!

I started out with my weed patch, kind of daunting as a prospective place to grow food. I took the always voluminous piles of newspapers and covered the whole garden with thicknesses of them, hosed everything down, covered it with anything I could find in the way of mulch - sawdust from the furniture studio, hay from a neighbor, mulch from a tree we had cut down and shredded. After a few weeks I put in the vegetable garden, poking holes in the mulch and noticing that worms had arrived in force.

That's history! Now, I just have to put mulch on the weeds as they sprout. The armadillos and deer were a major problem for a few years. I tried all kinds of dried pee from various predatory animals (bought at some cost from garden products catalogs), and sprays, and tying soap on stakes. What ultimately worked was that my husband installed a proper fence that was buried more than a foot deep, and I found that his old neckties fluttering from a wire above the fence scared the deer away. (They now eat the roses!)

It's important to rotate the planting of your vegetables from place to place in the garden with each new season. I keep notes on what was planted where, so I know to get the tomatoes in a bed they have not seen in a couple of years. Another tip: beans and peas do very much better if you put bean inoculant in the rows as you plant the seeds. You can get this at any of the seed companies.

So, I am smug with those vegetables like new born kids. You never know! Last spring I bought twenty seeds of a special heirloom tomato cultivar. I planted them in little seed starting pots and watered them with my sweat. Later, I planted them in the garden. Immediately, the tomato hornworms attacked, eating all the vines down to sticks. The rest of the modern robust tomatoes did fine by Florida standards. Much later, I noticed that my husband's garden of shrubs had a volunteer tomato plant, more robust than any tomato of the season. Throughout the wiltingly hot summer, this tomato plant thrived on neglect and set many fruits. This brave tomato must have grown from a seed from the compost we put on the shrubs. Our kitchen bowl is still full of these funny looking heirloom tomatoes and they are a daily addition to the salad.

Being here, out in the boonies, is the greatest gift. Growing stuff, vegetables and flowers, admiring the wild flowers so prolific right now, watching the swamp fill and seeing otters and ibis and alligators and deer every day. Quincy, our four year old grandson, comes often. He's getting to know the territory, riding his bike way up the road, looking for the butterfly chrysalises and tree frogs.

Time to go look for the bats.