Nature Coast Plantaholic. Permaculture enthusiast. Synergistic agriculture.
Don't plant eggplant in a raised bed unless it's in a dedicated planter for it. In FL, if we have a mild winter, eggplant is perennial. With the growth on this behemoth and the flowers on all my veg, I should be getting crazy amounts of eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, and more. Sadly I see no pollinators around.
I have a behemoth eggplant, variety Listada de Gandia or Graffiti. It doesn't like to set fruit and the fruits are very small. That may be due to our drought and high heat, wven though they've been watered regularly. To my shock, I noticed the calyxes also bristle with sharp spikes. I will be pulling this variety, despite all it's leaf growth, and replacing it with leafy greans of some sort.
I just *love* these beans. They are crowder peas (related to yard long beans) and grow great in the heat. They aren't day sensitive and started producing early, before the vines even started climbing!
What enchants me most is their black and white coloring when dried - they remind of splotchy black and white cows!😍
I believe these are called Tohono Papago.
My son made a discovery - what on earth are these monstrous looking things???😱
Apparently they've infested my edible cactus pads....
Blackberries are coming in. These blackberries are in their third year and finally catching. I can't wait to see how they grow and produce over the next few years.🥰
We finally found a way to cook name root (diascorea alata, yellow variety) that my kids like enough to fight over who gets some.
Now I'm excited because it's no longer just survival food to have it growing all over our property. It's good eats!
I ended up with name planted next to ube and didn't like the way their bulbils were so easily confused, so this year I began digging them when the stems started popping up. A few broke off in the ground, but for literally zero effort I now have around 10-15lbs of starchy food.👍 I infinitely prefer ube, but I'll happily grow this for emergencies.
I discovered my semi-farm kids had way too much fun with the electric net fencing.😳
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Ready to ship and plant out!
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Bought some malabar spinach at the asian store and started rooting the stems. I'm looking forward to planting these out in the garden and on the fence lines.
What to grow in May:
Dark green: direct sow
Light green: seeded in pots/start cuttings
We get excited and do too much. There’s a sense of urgency and we have very big dreams. We did this in 2018 after the Great American Farm Tour. We reintroduced everything! Plus cats and dogs. Looking back it was too much. But we survived. This quote a good reminder from “grandpa” Joel. Slow down, specialize and trade the bounty.
If you were promised PMN Mott grass to swap, they are just about ready to ship!!!
Going to call this syneristic agriculture tan!😆
I loove the fact that we have mulberry trees because the kids have so much fun picking them.
Awwwww, yeah. Pigeon peas. Two varieties.
It's May (in a few hours)! Check out what you can get away with planting and seeding in May.
I heavily recommend researching the varieties of fruit trees that are best disposed to succeed in your area or getting with someoone knowledgeable on the subject if you find yourself daunted. You can use this chill hour guide to determine which varieties can handle your climate.
What do you like in a food forest? Here's mine:
> Upland/lowland components
> full sun and part sun
> harvest year round with something always in season
> dwarf trees for ease of maintenance and harvest
> tight spacing/tree tip overlap as happens in a real forest
> planting temperate varieties that can easily handle south of me
> planting subtropicals that can easily handle north of me
> natural setting with fruit tree guilds - forest, not orchard
> planting cut and come again perennials
> planting set it and forget it food plants
Pigeon peas harvested again. Looks like I'm going to be able to harvest all summer.😍
What's growing on...
Blackberries, eggplant, fennel, okra, bananas recovering from being mowed. Beans are coming on strong.
That moment you realize the taro your husband mowed made a comeback and is plugging away.🥳
Share of hands 👋 who else is dealing with an aggressive mower who can't tell the difference between plants? 😆
PMN Mott sprigs have been prepped to root!!😍
If you're looking for an awesome green mulch with excellent, soft foliage, great tillering and regrowth, and it won't spread, send me a message and I can reserve some for you. Just pay shipping. FL residents only!
I'm spreading the PMN Mott word!😆
Similar to tithonia, PMN Mott puts out rootlets at each node when it's ready to propagate.
We haven't been watering our pigeon pea (3-4 different varieties), so the pea size isn't as preferred - however, for set it and forget and oh-wow-how-are-you-still-alive plants, these are great (until they get hit with a frost😡).
We picked some today (the ones that rattle) and harvested by beating them in a pillow case (both fun and cathartic so win/win). We ended up with enough to do beans and rice.
However, years ago, we planted pigeon pea on our side of the easement (in Hernando). My miserable neighbor called code enforcement on us. I explained that it acts like a rain garden (mopping up water from the swale), so the state actually encourages use of the water (seriously, there's a tax break, look it up) and keeping it on the property and since it doesn't interfere with the flow of the swale it should be fine and he was fine with it, said good job and left.
We had so many pigeon pea one year off four plants (right before we moved) that we covered one of those full size glass outdoor tables with a four inch layer of them. That's some food growing. And that was a little north of county line so if you're in Pasco, the odds are more in your favor for their survival.
In theory, this would bring central Florida into a more temperate climate until about 2050, instead of sitting the fence between subtropical and temperate.
With that in mind, you might consider purchasing perennials that are friendly to colder weather and would do well in north Florida/southern Georgia as well as here. Persimmons/pomegranates/olives/certain citrus come to mind.
Regardless, don't be the starving person. Prepare for food shortages by planting perennial/ long-lived annual high calorie foods that you can easily restart from babies/cuttings like name/yautia/cassava and calorie dense foods that have a chance of surviving FL and keep a long time like Seminole pumpkin and tatume.
The Sun is going through a stage known as a grand solar minimum. This is where the solar activity that ignites solar flares or sunspots has decreased. It’s a normal cycle and one that has been lin…
Spring Hill, FL
https://synergycentralflhomestead.substack.com/, https://synergycentralflhomestead.substack.com/publish/podcasting/syner
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This monstrosity should be giving me fruits like crazy.😡 I give it until fall. If I don't see fruit production, it's getting the wack.
When your neighbor is a growing queen, you offer to help her harvest gandules, and she sends you home with abundance. 🙌 #blessed
#permaculture #foodforest #growfood
Growing an edible landscape is not necessarily just about human consumption. We also grow food for our livestock, fertilizer for our trees, green mulch to chop and drop in place, and bamboo as a sustainable lumber source for animal pens and fencing. Growing these things take time so don't expect a quick turn around time on stuff. One of the things I love about slow food and the process of #synergistichomesteading is the way it forces us to be patient. Frustrating when the burn season won't hurry up and end so we can plant, but also good because it really brings it home how much farmers are dependent on the rather mercurial weather conditions. #ediblelandscaping #ediblelandscape #foodforest #syntropicfarming #syntropicagriculture #agroforestry #permaculture #integratedsystems #sustainablefarming #slowfood #ancientagriculture #ancientfarming
After harvesting these seminole pumpkins after a frost killed the parents, I was told they won't be any good and they'll stop developing. They certainly wouldn't keep. They were green when they were pulled. As it happens, they continued developing and are now almost all completely buff with nice hard shells. I'm sure it doesn't always happen that they continue developing, but apparently, if you harvest them close enough to finished, they'll keep going for you. Not a massive number of seminoles, but I'm happy to have been able to harvest any at all.
I've just reached 500 followers! Thank you for continuing support. I could never have made it without each one of you. 🙏🤗🎉
Somebody get me an id. This is too cool.
This bug tho. #florida
