New Addition - Passion Vine

That right there is a teeny little passion fruit on the brand new vine I just got. Welcome to the family!  I had a question before on whether or not every passion vine made fruit or not. I never did find a definitive answer online but I noticed at the store that there were 2 different tags on the plants. One plant said passion flower.One plant said passion vine.

 
 The plant that said passion vine had the little fruit on it and it was the only one left. All of the other plants said passion flower and there was not a fruit in sight on any of them. Coincidence?   The 1 year old vine I have now has big beautiful flowers and no fruit. I thought at first that maybe it just needed a season to mature then set some fruit. But then why would this tiny little plant already have a passion fruit on it? 

Even if my hunch isn't correct, the flowers are so amazing that I won't mind having another vine in the yard.  But imagine if the new vine does get a fruit or two, how cool would that be?

New Addition - Blackberry

Woo hoo! Thornless blackberries!  The agriculture extension office in our area says that blackberries need to be planted in the fall and then over-winer to establish roots prior to the spring growing season. I've been wanting a blackberry patch for the past 5+ years and just never got around to it, until now......

There is so much conflicting info on the internet about these berries. I've read that they take over the entire yard, then immediately read another person say theirs didn't. I've read that they propagate underground with runners and then read that is only true with wild blackberry varieties. Supposedly, the domesticated brambles only spread if the tip of the branch hits the ground. Then I read that was not accurate. At this point, I have no clue what to expect. Which may be a good thing, keep a little adventure in my life! 

So these fellas went into a brand new mini raised bed that The Hubby set up for me.  They went in about 2 months ago and I'm just getting around the introducing them. I'm surprised by how they looked when we first bought them, they look pretty bad in comparison. I'm trying not to freak out! I keep telling myself that they're settling in and not supposed to be doing much growing.....

 Maybe I'm overly hopeful?

So Pretty

 Spring has sprung!  The trees think so anyways. 

Seed Starting - Echinacea

My current fascination is with growing things that are ornamental as well as useful.  The beautiful and medicinal echinacea plant meets the criteria. These seeds are from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and are one of a few packets purchased recently. The back of the packet recommends cold stratification to increase the germination rate.  Huh? After a few quick internet searches, I discovered that some plants need the chilly, wet winter months to encourage the seeds to get started. Cold stratification is just a fancy way of saying that. Hmmm, so these babies need a cold, wet environment to wake up? OK, I can do that! In the refrigerator that is.

Here are the seeds in a nice moist paper towel ready to go into a zip top baggie and then into the chilly refrigerator.

I'm supposed to be checking on them every now and then to see if they're sprouting. As they spout, I'll plant them in some soil.  One site online says the cold stratification process can take 3 months. Can that be right? That seems like a long time. I guess we'll see.......

More Berries

The strawberries are really starting to come in now.  There are by no means enough of them to actually make anything, but they're super nice to nibble on. I often wonder how many plants we would need to produce enough for some jam.  I sure do love some homemade jam (hint hint Sis#1).  You can see behind the flower up there that we have lots coming in, but they'll all ripen at vastly different times. No matter, I'll just keep nibbling away.

Frost Follow Up

 We worked some real magic in the garden this past week and we got the plants through the frost with very little damage. Up there is a picture of our grass. It was just starting to come back from the last deep freeze but didn't get very far. Now it's all dry and crunchy back there.

But in the boxes, it's another story. Just look at 'em!  Nice and green and perky. You can even see the strawberries that were happily ripening while nice and toasty.

I thought that the Christmas lights plus the sheets was a bit of a lucky fluke last time. But I'm a believer now! Convinced, I tell ya! There was a small section on the very top of the hot mess above that didn't get covered with lights and it was the only section with real noticeable damage.  It was covered with a sheet but it goes to show that just sheets would not have been enough.

This is the tip of a jalapeno plant that shows some frost damage but the thing is still rockin' and you can even see a little white flower in the background.

Here are some close ups of the tomato plants. Because they're zoomed in, it probably looks a little worse than it is. There are only a few stems here and there that are freezer burned.

Couple more shots of the tomato plants. In the one below you can even see a tiny yellow flower. It's from the grape tomato vine that's growing out there, still flowering in February!

I knew I heard some snapping and crunching when we were wrappping the plants up. Each time we tugged on the sheets, we were snapping branches. None of the major ones were abused, it was the tender upper most shoots that snapped.

 Overall, I very highly recommend the sheet plus lights trick. We got this garden through  two consecutive days of 32-33 degree weather. Not too shabby!

Frosty Florida Round 2

Here we go again!  Saturday and Sunday night are supposed to be in the low 30's, way too chilly for any fruit bearing plants.  The last time we had "near-freezing" temps and only got into the low 40s. Now, they're calling for a "hard frost", complete with red flag warnings from the National Weather Service and all.

So we brought out the sheets, clamps, clips and Christmas lights. 

 It was awfully windy getting this together so we clamped it down tight any way we could. These are some type of clamp from our garage but we used office binder clips as well. The binder clips are an amazing way to keep things clamped down and they're pretty inexpensive compared to other garden specific clamp products.

Don't underestimate the capabilities of a good old fashion knot!

 We kept the Christmas lights out just for this exact purpose. We have both strings and nets of lights but decided on only using the nets. Between the plants and wind, the nets got tangled a little bit the last time we tried this. I'd imaging that weaving a string of lights trough the plants and then trying to get it back off would be just too much work.

The plants grew quite a bit from the last frost so the sheets didn't quite reach this time around. If I had planned better, I would have gotten some cheap used sheets at a thrift store to dedicate just to the garden.

Sorry lettuce the sheet just does not reach!  I didn't dare to pull too tightly. I kept hearing little cracks and snaps as we were working so I know some stems couldn't stand the pressure as we tugged and clipped.

 It sure is a sight at night!  And we didn't neglect Ruby either, we wrapped her up for the freeze as well.

What the Heck?

Three tomatoes with holes? What the heck?  It looks like some smarty pants birds have found my not-so-secret garden. I tried keeping this damaged one on the vine extra long to draw the criminals away from the other good stuff ripening but it got really moldy really fast, so it had to go.  I've been picking the tomatoes a little early and letting them ripen on the counter until I figure out a fix.

I've read that moving things like balloons and flashing light such as reflective tape can scare the birds away but it's only temporary.  Online suggests the only real fix is to drape bird netting over the plants. Do all roads lead to bird netting in Florida?  It wasn't too long ago that we were looking into bird netting for the cucumber and pickleworm fiasco.  Well, I gotta figure out something quick cause there are some real beauties out there waiting to ripen.

Salsa Eatin'

Remember when I said that I had a problem and just wanted to look at the canned jars and not eat the contents? Well, Hubby has no such limitations. He literally was eating canned salsa the night after I canned it. The. Night. After.  All of that work!  And to add insult to injury, there's an open jar of store bought salsa in the fridge.  He 's the yin to my canning yang, I never want to open them and he wants to open them immediately.

Can It!

We had a bunch of tomatoes that were piling up so I made some roasted salsa. It's pretty isn't it?  It's made from tomatoes and some roasted banana peppers from the garden.   I searched high and low for a safe salsa recipe since tomatoes are in the borderline pH zone and found this little beauty.  The salsa tastes great, very similar to the type that a local restaurant serves. Mine came out a bit liquid-y because I used a regular tomato and not a meatier plum type. Next time, I'll definitely take most of the seeds out to reduce the liquid. Live and learn!

Aren't these jars cute? We scoured the thrift stores looking for used jars but there are none to be found anywhere.  I mean anywhere and we looked hard. So we wound up at Walmart and even those shelves were picked over with some sizes completely gone.  But we were lucky to find some and snagged a few of these cuties.  Can't wait to do more canning, it's really enjoyable. My only problem is that I want to look at it and not eat it!

Garden Update

Garden update, yeah!  It's currently in the 40's in zone 6a. Yikes! And that's actually unseasonably warm for up there.  And down here......we're growing tomatoes!  You can see a few peeking out from in there.  That mass to the left up there is the hot mess I mentioned in an earlier post. It's one cheery tomato plant, two big beef tomato plants and three mini bell pepper plants. They've merged into one big mass of greenery.  There are two huge stakes that are five feet high, 4 tomato cages and three smaller 3 foot stakes in there somewhere. The mini bell peppers are loaded up on the plants but they're not ripening, I think the hulking mass behind it is throwing too much shade.  To the right is the lettuce bed which shows no sign of stopping.  The only sign of decline is that all of the marigolds along the front had to be pulled out from the last frost.

 This is the second raised bed that has 2 banana pepper plants, 2 jalapeno plants, 1 big beef tomato plant, six strawberry plants with assorted runners and a bunch a peas climbing up the lattice. Yeah, that is one tomato plant there, just one. It has completely outgrown it's cage and is leaning heavily on the trellis next to it. 

Here's a close up of the one tomato plant that shares the strawberry bed. It's completely loaded with fruit, they just keep coming. We're a tomato success....in January!

Pineapple Tops

Here are the pineapple tops that I have growing in some pots in the yard. I'm a little bit obsessed with these guys these days. I'm still fascinated with the whole process and I eye up the pineapples in the store and wonder if there is an empty pot at home.  I have 4 growing right now, but I see many more in my future!  When I first plant mine, they do get quite a bit brown before they perk up and start throwing out new bright green growth. The one up top is a few weeks old.  The one just below was planted a month or two ago. You can see the new green growth in the center. 

I think I'm gonna trim these guys up and take off all of the brown leaves. They don't look so hot in these pics but they seem quite happy in person.

The plant below is the oldest of them all, probably a good 3 months old. You can see lots of nice new green growth coming from the center.  I look forward to watching them slowly grow, even if they never produce a pineapple they'll at least be really nice tropical plants!