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Square Foot Gardening

FL tips on sq.ft. garden

18 years ago

Hi, just completed digging an 8x8ft garden plot. Now am working each 4x4 area with compost & manure. It's been very hot and only able to work early morning or evening. If anyone else on this list is from Florida that has done the Sq.Ft. gardening I would appreciate some tips. Thanks

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Comments (5)

Ray Scheel
18 years ago
I'd suggest switching - immediately - to a no till, smother (with cardboard / newspaper) and fill (with compost) approach to building new beds. I've done it both ways with no notable differnce in garden output, and the no till smother route is the only sane choice when building new beds in what is essentially an outdoor sauna.
Flamona
Original Author
18 years ago
Thanks Ray, But I already have the plot dug and completly weed clean. Read about the no till after I had already dug it out. I am waiting now for a little cooler weather. (outdoor sauna is a good discription of the weather lately)before I start to plant.
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Wow, sumognat! You have your own horse manure factory!!! When I dig my beds, I take out the depth of a shovel and replace it with everything you mentioned. Perhaps if I were younger and stronger, I'd go 2 feet deep, but I feel like a wacko as it is. Though the soil does become black in several months from all the added organics, my big question has always been "what happens when the roots extend beyond the amended area into the native sand?" So I guess I'm saying to go for the 2 feet if your back and pocketbook can hold up. I'm sure you can get good topsoil & compost in bulk. It's cheaper that way. I get my horse manure compost for free from a horse farm down the road. This year she said she "sanded" her stalls more which made the compost very heavy. I know she thought it was a good thing (and I don't know for sure that it wasn't), but I gasped at the word 'sand'. After all, I worked hard to get rid of the sand, and now I'm adding more! I don't know anything about horses or their bedding needs, but I do know the straw will pull nitrogen from the soil so you need to add extra nitrogen. I use a lot of Milorganite. The worms love it. I use Rose-Tone or Holly-Tone because that's what Lowe's carries, but I occasionally get a big bag of Purely Organic from a man in the local rose society. I use cottonseed meal, blood meal on occasion and lots of alfalfa in preparing the bed. Last year I used up a 50 lb bag of greensand in the beds I dug. It adds potassium (N-P-K: 0-1-6). Florida sand is typically very deficient in K. I found a company called Fertrell who had a local rep who sold their organic products out of his home so that's where I got it. I use Mycorrhizae - microorganisms that you add at planting that greatly enhance root growth. I sprinkle them directly on the roots before I put the plant in the hole. I also use "Vitamin B-1 Plant Starter" by Lilly Miller (from Lowe's.) This is very unscientific, but I forgot to use it once and several of my potted up roses withered and died. :(( At least it's cheap. I have limey sand so I use soil sulphur. I mostly grow own-root Old Garden Roses. I have a few on Fortuniana but 20 times as many on their own roots - Chinas, Teas and Noisettes. Hope this helps. Sherry
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colettecookie
18 years ago
Flamona - If you're interested in timing, here's a post I placed regarding the timing of plantings...it may help you know what to do next. :)
Good luck!
~Colette

Here is a link that might be useful: FL Gardening Forum - September/October Planting
kris
18 years ago
Flamona,

I'm doing SFG in TX but I'm grew up in FL. I remember from gardening as a kid with my mom that nemotodes are a huge problem there. Try to get nemotode resistant plants esp for tomatoes. Plant lots of french marigolds and then turn them under for decent marigold control. The best method is actually covercropping with marigolds and then turning the crop over before planting tomatoes and then plant marigolds with tomatoes. It has to be the right kind of marigolds. Below is a link about texas seeding. Since we get as hot or hotter you could use the seeding times for the areas that meet your temps for your area. I gotta say, as hard as it is making a bed in FL, in TX clay gumbo soil it's 1000x harder. In florida you will also need to get lots of nutrients into your soil-so lots of compost. FL soils are lousy for nutrients and that affects flavor.

One thing that's better in TX is the humidity, FL air is like swimming through soup by august. That hurts some plants, some just can't take the humidity and are too succeptable to mildews. I wonder if you need to give a bit more room in FL in a SFG to account for the humidity by giving the plants better circulation. My MIL says that Black Kow compost is Spectacular.

As for what you can grow, I'm in a colder area than you and I'm still planting beets, turnips, radishes, lettuce, greens (get into the greens its so cool-I'm working on Kale, mustard, lettuce (red salad bowl, green salad bowl, delicato, oak leaf (red and green), black seeded simpson), claytonia, corn salad, arugula (two types), swiss chard (bright lights is georgious), spinach, endive, raddicchio. Most of the greens grow lousy in the summer cause of the heat so winter is the time for us. Herbs are great in FL-parsley, basil-in summer grows HUGE, texas tarragon (tagetes lucida-has a mil diff names but it's a tarragon knockoff that tastes great, grows pretty flowers, and grows good in FL)..most every herb works in FL but some lavendars have trouble.

Green beans grow great and are easy. My neighbor used to grow huge stands of snow peas the winterish time they were delicious. My MIL grows broccoli and brusselssprouts in the winter. I think now would be the time for you to plant strawberries-they have nemotode probs too.

Texas seeding by region

Oh and Floridata is an AWSOME online tool for you. I use it all the time.

Floridata

Oh, for zucchini, I really couldn't do without this year, and had to devote 4 squares-I put it in the corner but It should have been a whole block for zucchini, and I really think that this would grow well in a pot with all of it's leaves spilling over the side ofthe container. That would have been more efficient. Or get the italian vining kind, I'm gonna try it next year.

Have fun, you'll find the hardest thing is what not to plant.
delta_charlie
18 years ago
Hi Flamona, and the group.

Flamona, I hope this is not too late but I think you did good on digging out the floor of the bed. Root Knot Nematodes are such a problem for us in Florida that I feel it is well worth the trouble of digging out the floor of the bed when making a new bed. I hope you went with a raised bed? Digging out the floor, dumping the first 6 or 12 inches of RKN infested soil and replacing with compost and other OM should really help get the raised bed off to a great start.

I hope this helps, DC

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