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Organic Gardening

Just trying to meet everyone

11 years ago

Hi everyone, My name is Patmark/Mark and I live in South Florida. I am new to this forum and new to gardening as well. I have decided to teach myself how to grow my own food 100% chemical free, from organic seeds. So far so good. I am disabled and have three children (23,23,and 21) and a grandson who is 4. His name is Aydyn and he's my partner in crime and is absolutely loving learning about all the plants and everything involved in making them flurish.

This year I have prepared a 550 SQ. Ft. garden, and it will be ready for the plants next weekend. All of my indoor starts are ready for transplanting and I am very excited. Anyhow I just wanted to introduce myself to everyone, LOL I have a million questions. The link below will show you all that I have done so far and how I am progressing if you are interested.

I was truely amazed at how many fruits and Veggies can be grown here in South Florida. I assumed when I started researching, it was going to be too hot to grow anything but citrus down here. My garden will have a fruit section with watermelon, cantalope, honeydew, blueberries,blackberries, strawberries, bannanas, and pineapples.

In the Veggie section I will be growing Lettuce, Tomatoes, gr.onions, red onions, egg plant, broccoli, bannana peppers, bell peppers, two kinds of corn, peas, beans, carrots, beets, swiss chard, zuccini, and cucumbers. I am planting Marigolds, and garlic in the cinder block holes surrounding the garden as well. Anyhow I think this post is quite long enough for now so I will talk to everyone later. Here's a link to pictures of my progress so far:

I would very much appreciate your comments, advice and tips for organic gardening, as well as meeting everyone.

Talk to you soon,

Patmark/Mark

Here is a link that might be useful: My Garden

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Comments (5)

feijoas
11 years ago
Hi Mark, welcome!
I don't know the form of your finished garden, but I'm a big fan of beds that are small enough to be easily reached without standing on them: they're really productive and simple to manage.
terrene
11 years ago
Hi Mark, the veggies in your containers look like they're doing very well. I am curious what is the plastic for covering the garden bed in your yard? Are you solarizing?
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Patmark
Original Author
11 years ago
Hi terrene, that's exactly right. I had the bobcat remove the sod and get rid of it. Then I had him dig out 18 inches of soil and level it so I could install my weed mat. He then put the soil and 2 pickup truck loads of cured horse, and cow manure mixed with straw. I then covered the entire garden with the 3mil clear plastic to bake the soil or solarize it as some people call it. So it baked from the 2nd week of June until I installed the irrigation Monday of this week. The reason the plots are covered at this time is to keep them dry until I have gathered the rest of my materials that I will need to build my rows in the plots for planting. It will be much easier to mix the loom and stuff in when the soil thats there is dry. Once I have done that I will moisten the plots and do my planting. LOL I hope that answered your original question, I tend to be long winded sometimes. I will talk to you soon.

Mark/Patmark
terrene
11 years ago
Wow a lot of work you have done! I hope your plots bear tons of "fruit"!

What was your purpose for doing the solarizing? I've heard that it's used to kill weeds and weed seeds, but you already had the sod removed. The downside of solarizing is that it also kills all the soil microorganisms.

I've tried it here with limited success, because the areas were part sun and the sun is a lot weaker up North here.
pnbrown
11 years ago
Mark, what I don't like about your plan is that by baking that stuff and drying it most of the bacteria and tiny animals have been killed and will have to re-colonize once moisture is introduced. So fertility will be much lowered. I know that 'solarization' is a strategy for killing off nemotodes but it is a case of cutting off the nose to spite the face. maintaining high fertility will control nematodes.

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