As I have stated in other posts, I am limited in that I can not plant veggies in-ground in my neighborhood. So instead I am going with container gardening. 5-gal container gardening with Self-Watering reservoirs attached to a rain barrel. I am doing my reading and trying to figure out the best way to go about this, so far it seems I am going to be limited to small variety tomatoes with this setup. While I do my research I thought I would ask my fellow Floridians for any experience any of you might have in this area. Sorry I'm late to the party, I did see this post last week but was at work, and Big Brother blocks PB so I could not see Silvia's wonderful pictures ;-) Personally, I'm not a big advocate of self-watering containers (buckets), tried them but too much anaerobic action in the water for me, probably my Zone 10 heat. Since this will be your first venture into this I have five suggestions to make: 1) Buy Husk Cherry Red mater plants from the Big Box. They are dwarf indeterminate plants that do well in containers, only grow to 4' so easy to stake in a container, are very hardy and wonderful producers. 2) Buy the $6 4 gallon terra cotta pots from Ikea, they would be double that price at the Big Box and will serve you well. 3) Buy MG potting mix, but not the moisture control mix 4) Get a 50lb bag of garden lime from the Big Box and supplement your potting mix with extra calcium. 5) Get a 2lb bottle of Dynamite control-release fertilizer from the Big Box and supplement your potting mix until you have a good feel for container veggie gardening... DISCLAIMER!!! It would be a lot cheaper to buy your tomatoes from the store (but they won't taste as good ;-) These suggestions will significantly improve you success at a first trial ;-) These are not the best example of Husky Cherry Red plants, I had them left over from the fall, didn't pot them out of the 3oz cups until 60 days, then 30 days in the 16oz cups, so they were already 90 days old before they went into these Ikea pots...a testament to how hardy this cultivar is, they would normally have been three times this size and loaded with cherry tomatoes. You can grow these too, short-day onions do well in containers as long as you don't let them dry out too much. Broccoli does well in containers too, but you won't get production like you would in a garden...we don't eat these, I grow them strictly for the bees, each head will produce 200 flowers which really helps support them. These are carrots, but I just pulled a row of icicle radishes, love to grow both in containers. You can also grow cukes in pots, I have mine inside the pool cage since I can't beat pickelworm so close to the water. My favorite parthenocarpic cuke so far is Sweet Success, for it's production, taste and cost of seeds. These plants are four months old now and on their last legs, time to start some more for the fall. I don't have much room and I'm surrounded by water in a very close proximity so I struggle to grow anything successfully. For this reason I focus mainly on tomatoes, everything else is a plus :-) :-( Tom

Really complete looking garden - fruiting fig, veggies and palms. You must be Italian.. lol. I am half Italian. Please post the flower when the basoo blooms. Usually a protected fig tree with small pruple figs survives our winters well. I notice the older it is the more hardy. Being protected by the house on one side really helps it to survive a bad winter. Last winter may have had bad snow but the temps were OK for zone 7 fig trees to survive. I find repeated or severe ice storms are real fig killers - but only to the roots. They come back in zone 7. My fig and tracky palm are crowding each other as well. I keep trimming that side of the fig.

Yippee! Mariann, I am so happy to hear that you are going to Well-Sweep. Their catalog had lots of stuff I'd like to try - especially the scented geraniums. I'd love to get some of those for my sis. I really hope you enjoy your trip and get some great plants. You deserve it!!! Although the debris in my yard is slowly but surely decreasing, the heat has been unbelievable. When sis got sick and the trees fell, I just didn't have the heart to get into the gardens. I was so sad to see my babies under all that stuff. Thinking about my sis, I just couldn't bear to go out and look at struggling plants. But lately, I've been peeking around a bit. I'm amazed that some flowers are still going strong, and others are recovering on their own. My Ruds are gorgeous as are the zinnias. I have two kinds of JMG that amaze me each time I go see them. I have variagated KMOGG that I wintersowed that is absolutely beautiful! I wish I had sown more. I must figure out how to harvest the seeds. I've harvested some seeds from a yellow 4 Oclock and a broken one too. I also have a vine white lady that is right at the gate that I love to see when I enter each day. Other things blooming away are several types of amaranthus, cosmos, and dahlias. I guess God's been out there doing the gardening for me. Isn't that wonderful?!?! I am looking forward to the fall when I hope to rebuild some beds and get my hands in the dirt again. So, what's blooming for yall? I was happy to see yall posting before our little thread went off the page. Fran, How are you? I see your swap is going strong. I can't imagine shipping anything in the heat we've had lately - over 100 degrees. Bunny, You doing ok? I miss talking to you since I've been away from the computer so much. Kids doin good? Have a great Friday tomorrow and a nice weekend. Nik

Thanks so much everyone for the welcome back. It does look like there's a lot of people moving in right now. Congratulations to all of you. I cannot wait to have the house ready enough for pics. Right now I'm on dial-up so trying to post pics would be a nightmare. Seems Verizon now cannot get our old DSL service transferred to this house for another 10 days! Apparently their computer needs to "run it's program" which so far is into it's second month. Maybe I should go to their office and dump a cup of Starbucks on their computer to speed it up! But I'm SO GLAD to be posting again and just oh so thankful we're IN! Allison, I sure hope 2 years from now we're out there enjoying that porch. The weather here has been almost 90* and very humid (rained yesterday). But the evenings cool off and after unpacking boxes all day it's really nice to go out there even if we are sitting on beach chairs (we gave all our patio furniture to our son)!!! twitchy, I don't watch Paula Dean so I don't know what her refrigerator looks like. Our hardware is coming from the Roseland Ice Box company and it takes 4 "moons" to get them. Wouldn't think some tiny latches would take that long...crazy! I've put a link at the very bottom of this post. It isn't exactly what our's will look like but close. The hinges are the same but I'm choosing different latches. amyks, Yea, the RV campground was interesting to say the least. We had bear, coyote, bobcat and deer while we were there. I know there's cougar in the area but we didn't see one. There's 5 bears that would take turns every night raiding the trash cans. That campground is only 1/2 mile from my home and so we have them here too (seen tracks). I told DH we have to make sure our trash is secured. I don't want them thinking we're a supermarket. A friend lost one of her dogs not long ago from a bear and I sure don't want my "babies" (both g-kids and dogs) to come up on one. lorraineal, You're probably the smart one to get it a bit more finished than we did. You have to be getting up pretty darn early to brave SD's morning traffic to get the house open for your subs. Although I want our subs to get this done so we can get on with making this house into a home, I'd give anything right now to just sleep late one morning (like today!) :) Here is a link that might be useful: Roseland Ice box company hinges