OK, Now I am not so patiently waitng

Hey everyone,

Another chapter in my failed attempts to  be a successful gardener. (I still enjoy it though)
Just pulled up six squares of cucumbers because of some fungus. I didn't get one cucumber. Most everything else, okra, corn, beans, watermelon and tomatoes (well not so much tomatoes) and butternut squash are growing. Actually everything is about four feet tall. It has been WEEKS and not one bit of produce. I have had some flowers and bees and all the stuff you should have, but no "fruit". ZERO!

Most everything looks pretty healthy, better than previous seasons and those produced a decent amount. Any thoughts, advice? Should I just give up and grow grass and citrus? (I have doing really well with those).

Thanks and blessings,

Gary

Around here, heavy seasonal rains change the pH of the soil. Amending it with lime can help flowers set fruit. I've seen dramatic positive results when using it. I have no idea if pH could be your problem, but it's at least something to check.

Prolonged, excessive heat can also make flowers drop or fail to set fruit, as can nights that are too cold. Around here, we can sometimes get both. What's your weather been like?

Hey Marc,

We have had decent amounts of rain here (North Central Florida), probably more than what is beneficial. One thing you mentioned that struck a chord, much of my compost is comprised of oak leaves. My understanding is that these could move the pH to the acidic end. Not sure if I read that or saw it in a dream.

Thanks,

Gary

In my neck of the woods, when the temp goes above 85, all bets are off. Just about everything stops growing unless they are under shade.

Do you know what kind of fungus your cukes had? That would be good info so you can be armed and ready for the next crop. You are planting more, right? Get a pack of seeds and shove em in there.

I use Marketmore due to the high humidity here causing powdery mildew.

CC

Here in the ATL, it's pretty much a wash right now...  Waiting for it to cool down a bit...

Well it is certainly considered hot there in Florida. 90-95 everyday and the upper 70's at night. I LOVE IT! Of course we have been getting a bunch of rain as well. So from what I am hearing I should be holding off on expectations and look to September. October 1st is when we usually feel the first "break" in the weather.

I do have okra, corn and tomatoes which I thought would be good through the hot summer months. We have acres of corn in the area right now. "Knee high by the 4th of July" so the saying goes.

This is the wrong forum, but any suggestions on what to plant and when going into the fall?

As always, you all are so helpful.

Blessings,

Gary

Gary, From what I have read, this is the stressful time in your area and things should pick up towards Sept-Oct ?? Yolos, Cajun Pappy and Dstack are in your "tropical" zone so maybe they can help. As Cape Coddess stated, throw some more cucumber seeds in and stand by with milk or Neem solutions to fight the mold.

Once the temperatures in Gatorville drop to the low 80's for highs, I would consider planting many varieties of heat tolerant greens.

Ounce for ounce, greens give you the most nutritive value and save you the most money on your grocery bill.

Here are some of the greens I love and can grow in our jungle climate, albeit in different months than you will have in Central Fl.

1. Jericho Romaine Lettuce
2. Mustard Greens
3. Lacinato (dinosaur) kale
4. Collards
5. Turnips
6. Parsley
7. Arugula
8. Swiss chard

As for cucumbers, this has been a tough season for ours as well.  The burpless long cukes look more like they should have the number 6 emblazoned and sit on a billiard table.  Our pickling cukes are not the right size, but they are developing okay, while our extra long Chinese cukes look like green licorice whips rather than the batons they are supposed to resemble.

This is just another one of those hard summers thanks to El Nino.  However, it could be a saving grace for our friends on the drought-stricken West Coast.  All the Californians here will welcome the heavy rains this winter, as long as the rains don't wash away their properties.

I am supposed to be in Gainesville November 7 to see the Gators and the Commodores.  I hope that really nice organic vegan takeout cafe across from the Krystal and near a Waffle House by I-75 is still there.

As always, great information and support. I will throw in some more cukes and see what happens.

As far as the vegetarian restaurant Raised Bed, it is still there. Vegan-to-Go maybe? I know where you are talking about though.

Thanks again everyone!

Gary

Go Vandy! Root 'em on, RB!

Gary,
 I feel your pain! You would think that being in the sunshine state we would have the best gardens ever. Summers are nothing but tough! I have no idea how the early settlers did it.  Don't sod the garden over just yet, there is still hope. Timing is everything down here, if you miss the planting window your plants will grow but not produce much. The U of F IFAS has some great vegetable gardening guides. Just as things started looking real good my spring garden was decimated by rodents this year. I think they are under control now and I have a few seedlings in the ground to  test. Been work to get the beds ready & some seedlings in the starter pots.

Florida Vegetable Gardening Guide Check out the planting calendars toward the end.

Florida Vegetable Gardening by Season

Tomato's are a spring & fall crop. Start your seedlings now as you want the plants in the garden & ready to set fruit in October.
The good news is you are in the perfect area for Blueberries. Plant a hedge row of them and you will have fresh fruit in the late spring & a pretty hedge the rest of the year. HOA should be able to gripe about that.

I also like to listen to Tom MacCubbin on the radio am radio Sat mornings. His website is Better Lawns 
Tom also has a few Florida specific gardening books out & a weekly posting in the Orlando news paper. Tom Digs
Hope this helps you some.
 Craig

Hey Raised Bed and Scorpio Rising, sorry graduated from UF and funny thing is I am currently in Grad School at FSU! That makes for an interesting game day especially in November. Actually, I am much more a baseball fan and really don't follow that too closely.

TCgardening... thanks for the information. Yes, I have those documents and use IFAS regularly, but will concede much of the time it raises more questions than it answers for me. I think mostly because it isn't SFG specific and I do not know enough at this point to discern that. Like fertilizing and such. SFG says we should not have to do that. The schedule is great though and that is probably my biggest issue. I am always late.

Thanks everyone!

Gary

GO SEMINOLES !!!

yolos wrote:GO SEMINOLES !!!

I get it, we are all fans! Lol

Some of us are not fans.  For me, it is a paycheck as part of the working media, or in my case working advanced statistical metrics.

I am a fan of the majority of the other working personnel at the venues.  And, guess what?  I do talk gardening before games and have relayed the merits of SFG with many others, especially the farther South the venue.

I have never been to FSU, but it is the land grant college in the Sunshine State and thus should have a rather exceptional agricultural school.  You could probably blow their minds by demonstrating how much more efficient a garden that has been planned by a Civil Engineer is to a garden planned by some farmer centuries ago.

I would love to know how this global warming theory is received down there.  As I recall from my days as a guest on Chuck Harder's For The People Radio program, Florida's citrus map has shrunk in the last 100-125 years.  At one time, oranges thrived as far north as Valdosta, GA, but now, they cannot survive even in North Florida.

If you are a fan of computer ratings, I am one of those stats geeks that post ratings to "The Prediction Tracker--www.thepredictiontracker.com.  My ratings are called "The PiRate Ratings," and I am also a presence on the Massey College Football Comparison Rankings at "http://www.masseyratings.com/cf/compare.htm".

Starting in mid-August, my own sites will be active once again at:
www.piratings.wordpress.com
www.piratings.webs.com

FWIW, my ratings have been more accurate than Sagarin and Dunkel among many others.  I learned my craft from Vanderbilt professor Dr. Edward Litkenhous, who had the Lit-ratings for many years.

Now, some day I may try to devise square foot ratings for the different vegetables and rank them by best to worst to grow in a square foot garden.

Today, Cayenne Pepper would be rated number one in the PiRate Raised Bed League and picked to beat Long Cucumber by at least 5 TDs.  Long Cucumber needs to fire their gardener (me).

If you want Long Cucumber to have any chance at winning, as well as retaining the love of the local citizenry and the support of the local business community, you'll have to build it a taxpayer-financed new stadium. Start by floating a $85-million bond and granting 25 years of tax concessions and work your way up from there.

Go Long Cucumber!

I am the Director of Institutional Research at the local State College. Although not a “statistician”, I do rely on basic statistics quite often in my work. Moving beyond that level produces confusion by the recipients and a lot of work that essentially goes unused.

I do not know a lot about FSU. I attend via distance learning from here in Gainesville.

I am sure the Ph.D.’s at FSU or Gainesville balk at SFG, and I am not remotely educated enough about SFG to offer a convincing argument against their centuries old tried and true methodologies. (In their minds anyway). I have seen enough on this forum and the little success I have had to know that this method works, so I am sticking it out and simply chalking my failures to just not knowing enough. Just as was mentioned in this thread, summer heat. Shoot, the package said summer crops.

Honestly, my bigger frustration comes from going to a local nursery to buy supplies, “talk shop”, and get some guidance and basically being treated like I am an idiot. I am not sure if it is because I am from a lack of experience position or just that I would subscribe to something as ridiculous as square foot gardening. That is generally when the conversation goes south.

The global warming issue is strictly along political lines from my experience. As far as the orange production, the biggest reduction was in the 80’s(?) with the Citrus Canker scare. I used to drive from Cocoa Beach all the way to Georgia and see rolling hills of orange groves horizon to horizon. Especially along I-75. Then came the Citrus Canker scare and these groves were burned to the ground with many family farms going out of business. Today they are still empty or have housing developments where they once were. Some of them are planting other crops now or grazing cattle. Now, you generally do not see orange groves until Indian River County or Southern Brevard County.


I would love to see which plants gave me the best “chance’ of producing!

Hey, I get the whole "paycheck" thing.

And honestly, I am not qualified to comment on any of the science that is being cited.

I was just rootin' for my Commodores.  Go Vandy again! We are usually the underdogs....lol

I work for the State so we are not allowed to talk of global warming.

Back to the garden,
 I just added 18 bags of Black Kow compost to my beds, only got 3 of the 4 beds done. The fall planting is coming up real soon, so get ready for it now, beans, tomatoes, summer squash and the such will all work. Your area is more temperate than mine so some of the fall greens should do real well, Kale, spinach, lettuce.  
 For the miserable summer crop we are really limited. Seminole Pumpkin if you have some room for it to sprawl, yard long beans, Red Thai Hibiscus, sweet potato, Pooh Kheera cucumbers, Malabar or New Zealand spinach. Personally I have had no luck with the New Zealand Spinach. You can also just solarize the beds for the summer. Focus on the better seasons like fall & spring.
 The soil in your beds may need some help, have the local extension office check it out. How much sun do you have?
 Also consider adding some of the fruits that do so well on your area, blueberry, persimmon, plums...
 I keep planting different things and some of them do quite well, others not so much. My muscadines are finally producing and I just planted a Sweetheart Lychee tree.
 Good luck with the gardening!
 Craig

Interesting this topic came up today. We decided that we are going to build on the property we own in Port Charlotte in about 5 years. We had the remnants of a hurricane drench us the last couple of days and it got me thinking about the torrential rain they receive every day in the summer. With the heat and the rains and the critters I was wondering how I would have to change my gardening choices. Gardening in the subtropics must be a fungal challenge.

Welcome seamammal,
 The west coast of Florida can be quite different than the east coast. This year we are in a drought & they are getting soaked from all the rain. The mid-summer gardening can be brutal but the rest of the year is a blessing.
Craig

Welcome also seamammal,

Yes, North Central Florida is getting swamped as well. I swear it feels as if it has rained everyday for the past month. And not showers, downpours. I am thankful though, we do really need the water.

As you may have read, I am pretty new to all of this and it has been frustrating. As TCgardening pointed out though, outside of summer I have even had some luck.

Gary

TCgardening wrote:I just added 18 bags of Black Kow compost to my beds, only got 3 of the 4 beds done. 

Hey Craig,

How does this fit in with the guidance of five different compost types for SFG? Or is that simply as a bed starter requirement? 

Thanks,

Gary

Gary
It is all that is readily available here.
Craig

Thanks Craig...

Yea, stick with the good stuff. I used some "cheap" compost one time and it ended up being mostly dirt/sand. Not much organic matter.

Thanks,

Gary