Travels of Jackie and Randy: Gardening in Florida

It's HOT. That sums it up.

We will landscape everything eventually but I wanted to plant something now, even though it would be temporary. We are still digging up the grass in the front yard, section by section, and dumping rocks or mulch on it to keep weeds down until we are ready to landscape. But it's looking so much better already than it used to.

Randy found some Purple Heart growing wild in a corner of our yard and decided he really like it. So we transplanted bits of it around the Crepe Myrtle tree, and it's growing like a weed. Which it is, in my book.

I am still determined not to have any plants next to the house, in hopes of discouraging the tiny little geckos from trying to get into the house. They are very plentiful here and I don't mind then when they're outside, but I don't want them inside. So only rocks go near the house; I don't even want mulch there. But next to that I put a row of Marigolds. Marigolds seem to be the plant most hated by mosquitos and other insects. So Marigolds it is.

Along the side of the house we put in a small garden of flowers and vegetables. I painted an old step ladder, Randy nailed some pots onto it, and we filled them with kale, Nasturtiums, and greens.

Next to that we set up a wooden trough that I found in a yard sale (Randy never knows what I will drag home from a yard sale!).He set it up on some PVC pipes that I painted, and I filled it with lettuces. When they died out from the heat, I replaced them with greenery that is hearty enough to survive a Florida summer. In front I put a lovely pink flowering viney-thing; it's my favorite thing here, so far.

In the back, nearest to the canal, we set a black Elephant Ear. I thought it might be too temperamental to grow but it seems to like it here, and has doubled in size.

Whenever we want to plant something in the side yard, Randy has to get out his reciprocating saw and saw in the dirt. The reason? Roots. They are everywhere, and just one inch below the surface so there is no avoiding them.

And some of them are huge. Things growing near the canal apparently get big roots.

Because we were thinking of Illinois planting schedule, we put in some tomato plants in late spring (which we have since learned is too late in the year). Since we wanted to avoid the tomato-eating pests who consumed our sole tomato plant last year, we decided to grow them in pots this year, which at least gets them off the ground. We put four Beefsteak tomato plants into four Home Depot buckets, and I poured a gallon of water on them every single day, trying to keep them alive through June.