Hey Fellow Floridians - Year 2

[Fiishergurl]

Originally Posted by Zone9b

This season I am having my best Sweet Bell Pepper crop ever. I started off a few years ago trying to grow California Wonder in Raised Beds and they did horribly. Next someone from Deland wrote on a forum that they liked Orange Blaze. I tried those and they worked well but were relatively small peppers. Next I tried Carolina Wonder and Charleston Belle, nematode resistant varieties, for a couple of years. For me these did poorly and many plants would suddenly wilt and die. For this season I tried to find varieties that were very disease resistant and seeds were available in small enough quantities for a back yard gardener. My search resulted in Alliance, Early Summer and Touchdown. All three varieties seemed to do well, but to me it appeared that Touchdown produced the most followed by Early Summer followed by Alliance, however, this is based just on casual observation given that I didn’t count or weigh any of the peppers. Many of the peppers were quite large and thick walled.
For my peppers I never spray them with any pesticides of fungicides. I feed them occasionally with 10-10-10 garden fertilizer and routinely water them. Also, for the few plants I have pulled I have seen no evidence of nematode activity and I believe none of these varieties to be nematode resistant.
This season, I have given a lot of peppers away and still I have had more left for me than I ever had in past seasons.
Larry

Larry,

So awesome that every season is getting better. Pays off to keep at it until you find the right mix.

Ginny

[Fiishergurl]

I started my summer garden in Philly. Planted 8 tomato plants in the ground (Rose De Berne, San Marzano, Delicious, Black Krim, Berkeley Tie Dye, Cherokee Carbon, Brandywine Pink, Costoluto Genovese).

I know nothing about growing tomato plants in the ground and theres a lot of shade so not sure how this will turn out... :-)

Planted 8 like the one below...


And also planted Wes, Orange Strawberry, and Anna Russian in SWC pots pictured below.


Pickle Garden along the fence below. Marked up with pink tape so the yard person won't weed wack them... :-)



Wish me luck!

Ginny

[MarlynnMarcks]

Would be interested to know how those in the ground worked. i put 6 strong beautiful plants in the ground last year and they all died as did my peppers. Nematodes, I think. This year I'm growing all in pots the the tomato size is much smaller than I'm used to in Michigan,

[Fiishergurl]

Marlynn... me too! I just planted them yesterday so will keep you all posted. I am not sure if they will get enough sun due to really large leafy trees all around, but time will tell.

Ginny

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

[pkplatypus]

Unrelated question... What is this? Reddish brown centipede thing. Miami soil. Good or bad?

[maxjohnson]

It's easier to tell if you have a photo. But you might mean those red millipedes, or you could mean soil centipedes, which are tinier string like and burrowing. Both are beneficial to soil.

Those red millipedes are my main composters. I continually mulch some of my large containers over a year time and which yielded 6-8inches of millepede poops, so I don't fertilizer those containers. They work in the compost pile too.

The only negative thing I find about them is they might help take out weak transplanted seedlings. Sometimes it's the pillbugs. I can confirm this because I brought home some small wild strawberries plants, and found the leave branches chewed off the next day. I covered the plants completely above the soil and more was bitten off, I checked the soil in the bottom of the container and found two millipedes. But as long as they have brown foods they'll leave the greens alone. It's not a problem if transplanting healthier seedlings and direct sowing. Though it's a good idea to let the tomato stem grow stronger before covering it with mulch otherwise it may be chewed.

[ginger2778]

Originally Posted by pkplatypus

Unrelated question... What is this? Reddish brown centipede thing. Miami soil. Good or bad?

It is a millipede. I was able to get the photo from a link on my email blast. They can and do act like cutworms.

[Barb_FL]

Ginny - your PA garden is looking good. Must be weird for you to buy the plants.

Summer has certainly arrived in Florida now - mid 80s this week. I don't think I'm getting any more tomato fruit set; night time temps are consistently mid 70s now.

For the record, I'm still picking cucumbers from the Sweet Success plant (sowed in mid-late March) The beta (the oldest plant sowed probably in January ) has few, the Snow (pickling type) is ready to get pulled up.

I've been covering all of them at night with tulle. The leaves are really crunchy on the Snow and Beta.

All cuke plants produced a banner crop. If they were a tomato plant, they would definitely be determinate because once they are done, their done.

I also have new young Beta plants to see if they will produce fruit during the summer. The bigger one is flowering now, but still male flowers. I'm seeing less bees around. Once the original Beta is done, this EB will be rolled into that spot which I can shade easier if needed.

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Off to make Gazpacho soup now.

[kayrobbins]

Marsha, what food mill do you recommend? My friend just gave me 50 lbs of Rutgers tomatoes and I would like to make some sauce instead of just freezing. The reviews on Amazon are all over the place on food mills so I want to be sure I get one that works well.

[Fiishergurl]

Originally Posted by Barb_FL

Ginny - your PA garden is looking good. Must be weird for you to buy the plants.

Summer has certainly arrived in Florida now - mid 80s this week. I don't think I'm getting any more tomato fruit set; night time temps are consistently mid 70s now.

For the record, I'm still picking cucumbers from the Sweet Success plant (sowed in mid-late March) The beta (the oldest plant sowed probably in January ) has few, the Snow (pickling type) is ready to get pulled up.

I've been covering all of them at night with tulle. The leaves are really crunchy on the Snow and Beta.

All cuke plants produced a banner crop. If they were a tomato plant, they would definitely be determinate because once they are done, their done.

I also have new young Beta plants to see if they will produce fruit during the summer. The bigger one is flowering now, but still male flowers. I'm seeing less bees around. Once the original Beta is done, this EB will be rolled into that spot which I can shade easier if needed.

---
Off to make Gazpacho soup now.

Hi Barb,

It was strange to buy plants but at least there was a place close by with some decent choices. Everything up here is so different. Also i dont know if my plants are getting enough sun to do much. The lot the house is on has a huge tree canopy which blocks out the majority of the the sun the majority of the day. But it will be fun to try.

Ginny

[ginger2778]

Originally Posted by kayrobbins

Marsha, what food mill do you recommend? My friend just gave me 50 lbs of Rutgers tomatoes and I would like to make some sauce instead of just freezing. The reviews on Amazon are all over the place on food mills so I want to be sure I get one that works well.

Kay, this is the one I got. I bought it at bed, bath, and beyond, around $20. There wa a learning curve with it, the grates need to be convex in the bottom, and it spring loads to push the bar into the locking slots, once you do it, it's very straight forward from there.
Raw foods dont work, you have to cook your sauce first, then just ladel and crank. About 3-8 turns gets a full ladel through the sieve. The skins need to be rinsed out a few times to unclog it if you are doing a full batch. I use the one with the largest holes, some seeds get through.
I didn't read reviews, but I am quite pleased with the speed of the processing,and consistency of the sauce.

[kayrobbins]

Thank for the information especially how to correctly assemble it. I like the price of this one. Looks like I am going to be busy.

[Barb_FL]

I used my food mill (circa 1975ish) last week and used the base for gazpaucho
and did the boil/freeze bath - freeze tomatoes yesterday to store tomatoes.

The food mill worked really well; and the boil/freeze bath when not making sauce went so fast.

Thanks both for the tips.
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Has the big rain started for anyone yet?

[maxjohnson]

I'm getting a bit greedy. Tomato was supposed to be done for me by April, but there is a long year left. I started some Sungold (very pricey, probably will never buy again) and Ambrosia Orange UBX. I'd like to see if the Ambrosia is a better taster. I'll be surprised if any of them will survive the nematodes and whiteflies though.

[ginger2778]

Max, you can get about 50 seeds of SunGold ( they say 30 but its much more) from Tomato Growers Supply for around $3.50. Typically you get 100 % germination on them, and you only need just a few plants, really I find it to be just pennies. Why pricey?