Saying Goodbye

 It's time to say goodbye to the fall/winter garden, making way for the spring/summer garden.  This has been the most difficult decision for me. Up in zone 6a New York where I grew up, there was one growing season defined heavily by the onslaught of winter, frost and snow.   When the ground thawed, you planted. When the frost came and the snow fell, it was time to pull up the garden until next year.Simple.

Here in Florida it's a much different story. There is no major frost, there is no major snow fall, no extended period of damaging cold temperatures.   So what's a girl to do?   Hem and haw until the last possible moment, that's what.  I started by looking at the garden, really looking to see if there was any reason to keep it going. The green parts were all lush, perky and thriving but after a few weeks of really looking, I noticed that there were very few new flowers coming up.  Only the grape tomato was really showing new flowers, everything else was just chugging along. So that was the deciding factor, lack of new flowers. No new flowers, no new fruit.

As I was ripping out the plants, I was very relieved to find all sorts of hints that I had done the right thing. The jalapeno and banana pepper plants were getting more and more mold spots and the tomatoes showed increasing signs of cut worm damage on the leaves and young tomatoes. 

 Going, going, gone....

This is the right bed all neat and clean. The left bed still has strawberry plants in it that I'll keep for the time being.  Out came the irrigation system so we could add some goodies to the soil.