Easy plants to grow

One of our kids came home from school last week talking about how they planted a sweet potato in some water and it made "pretty" leaves. It got us to thinking about when we did that as a child and started wondering if there were any other easy plants. Here is a list with instructions and/or links on how to start some "pretty" plants.

Carob: This plant puts out oval leaves and the seed inside the pod taste like chocolate.

Peanuts: Peanuts grow up and then they turn and go back down into the soil. Very cool to watch!

Anise: This plant can be used in salads or cooked with meals. It taste like licorice.

Cherimoya: This plant produces a heart shaped fruit and has a flavor combination of strawberry, pineapple, banana, and yogurt.

Genip: This fruit has a favor cross between a grape and a mango. It is said to quench your thirst on hot days.

L&D
The Vegetable Hatt

Growing Sweet Potatoes

This year we have decided that we are going to try and grow Sweet Potatoes. So we got to looking around on the web for information and came across this site. Now along with some other sites, it is said that you can get some organic sweet potatoes and basically make your own slips. So for a little fun this time, we are going to try it. We went and got some organic sweet potatoes yesterday and will be starting the process of making our on slips today. We will keep you updated. Have you ever grown potatoes?

L&D
The Vegetable Hatt

Starting the seeds

We will be starting our seeds soon and found 40 small pots at the dollar store today to start our new seeds in. We have drawn out our garden plots, as we use the square foot gardening system, so we always have lots of plants. We will have 24 cucumber plants, 32 leeks, 4 squash plants, 32 onions, 32 carrots, 8 cayenne pepper plants, 8 hot peppers, 16 Kentucky Wonder Beans, 8 okra, 16 corn plants, 4 bell pepper plants, 16 black bean plants, 8 cherry tomato plants, 8 large tomato plants, 4 zucchini plants, 16 english peas, 16 snowbird peas, and 8 jelly tomato's. That will also still leave us 8 open spots to put something else in, if we desire. We planted 20 strawberry plants in one of our slotted pots the other day. We will also be planting asparagus, potatoes, and sweet potatoes this season. What will you be planting?

L&D
The Vegetable Hatt

Our Plant Layout

Well we finally have our plant layout page set. After many weeks of looking for a sample, we finally decided on making our own. You can look at it under our links or just click here. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. As of right now the only veggies listed on there are the ones that we grow. As we try new things we will add them to the list. Also you might notice that it is broken up into 3 parts instead of the normal 4 seasons. Florida is such a strange state that sometimes you do not know if you are in Fall or Winter, Summer or Spring, so after much debate we broke our gardening time into 3 parts. So far this gardening time has worked for us. December to March, April to July, and August to November. That will give time for seeds to grow, completely produce, and some time to even go to seed. On some plants we have even been able to do succession planting. Let us know how you plan your plants.

L&D
The Vegetable Hatt

The First Blog

This will be my very first blog. Sure I have written many other blogs on Myspace and Facebook, but this blog is different. This blog will be about our garden. I have been growing veggies for over 20 years now, but for the last 2 years the vegetable patch has been here in Central Florida. Home of sand. LOL We moved from the Georgia/Alabama state line, from a little known place called Columbus. In Columbus you deal with Georgia red clay and with about only 4-5 months of growing time. So moving to Florida was a growing shock. We live on an acre of land with most of it being behind our house. We have a small veggie patch with 4 1/2 raised beds and then we have around a half acre in what we call our very back yard. We hope and are in the planning stages of turning the very back into our own little sanctuary. As for the garden patch it has strawberries, spinach's, lettuces, collards, onions, turnips, broccoli, and cauliflower planted in it right now. We are still getting use to planting in sand, but the raised beds have pretty much fixed that problem. We also use the square foot garden method that helps us to have lots of space.

So you may ask yourself why we decided to make another blog with all the blogs out there in the world wide web. Well about 6 months ago we started looking for more information on planting in Central Fl. We wanted more info from people, not books. Now don't get us wrong, we love books (more then you will ever know lol) and books are full of wonderful information, but sometimes you want to hear it (or read it) from someones own mouth. Someone who lives in your town or at least near you. Well we looked and we search, but the closes we came to was a blog from Orlando about 45 miles away from us. Also that blog was about flowers, not veggies, and I can't grow a flower to save my life, but I have a green thumb when it comes to veggies! Now Orlando is not THAT far away but anyone who has lived in Florida can tell you the weather between this neighborhood and the next one can be two different things. If you happen to know of a vegetable blog, please let us know!

So after about a month of thinking about the pro's and con's of doing this blog, we decided to go for it. What could it hurt? It can help other people out there with info of growing veggies and if nothing else it can give us a written diary of our gardening experience. So we hope that you enjoy our gardening blog and come back often!

L and D
The Vegetable Hatt