Jane,

Tomatoes are just finishing up for the season. I'm originally from New Hampshire and it took me a while to get used to everything being backwards or so super early it seems backwards. I start my tomato seeds inside the house in January and plant them outdoors end of February - beginning of March (depending the weather). The summers in Fl. are too hot for tomatoes to set fruit, the flowers need an overnight temperature under 73 degrees for the flowers to set fruit. You can try growing tomatoes for a fall crop by starting seeds in September and try to beat the frosts. There is one kind of tomato that will grow all during the summer but they are the size of grapes but taste delicious and they are great in salads. The wild native Everglades tomato. You can ask if anybody has seeds for you on GW, or type 'Everglades Tomato' in eBay, I see 100 seeds for less than $5 on eBay.
I now have 40 earthboxes because of the nematodes in my soil so I grow all my veggies in them. They work great for me inside my pool screenhouse which keeps out the bugs.

Lou

Jane

I second what Lou said, he explains so well. Keep the earthbox ready for the fall season. Only truly summer crops we can start now, sweet potatoes, cowpeas, butterbeans, okra,etc.

Silvia

You might be able to grow some chiles or greens in your Earthbox - I have chicory & an arugula that grows year round. & yes, it is okra, sweet potato & cowpea (like black-eyed peas) season.

You can also position the box so it gets filtered sun in the hottest part of the day...

Here is a link that might be useful: FL Veg. Gardening Guide

This post was edited by carolb_w_fl on Sun, May 26, 13 at 10:56

I am a northern transplant and last year was my first summer. I had already planted several varieties of green peppers seeds when i heard that it was "too hot in hte summer to grow green peppers" I live in St Pete, so just 30 miles north of you.

I also grow my veggies in "pots" actually the largest plastic storage tubs( I get from Walmart of 5-7 bucks each) drill holes in the bottom and fill with soil.

I have never had a bigger pepper crop in my 40 years of gardening. They actually stopped producing in the winter, I cut them back and they are producing again this year.

I have heard some people have luck with cherry tomatoes down here, so I cut back three plants i had fruit all winter. a red and a yellow and a paste type. They are flowering again now, and we will see how they do this summer.

Just planted Okra and sweet potatoes and watermelon. Other melons grow, but you need to prepare for powdery mildew and treat appropriately.

Obviously, you aren't going to be able to grow cool season crops down here in the summer.. peas, broccoli and the like. Best advice is to experiment. If its a warm season crop up north, why try and plant a couple of plants and see how it goes. What do you really have to lose?

I am VERY glad i didn't listen to popular advice on the peppers.

[ and yes, I have had some failures. cukes just mildewed.. Dahlias rotted ] but isn't some of the fun of gardening trying new things and the fun of success :-)

Thanks Muscle! Since I already bought 2 tomatoe plants, I'll stick them in anyway-no wonder they were practically free! What about green beans? Bush type?

Question, if you put the plants inside the lanai, how would the bees pollinate? Don't veggies need bees?

Don't like Okra, don't know what butter beans are, sweet potatoes say Thanksgiving. Aren't there any regular veggies you can grow now?

Jane

Jane,

I am the Bee - hear me buzz!. Each morning at day break I go around every newly opened veggie blossom that needs pollinating and do the chore by hand using a fine point artist paint brush. (and other methods I have learned) I try to grow parthinocarpic veggies (self pollinating) where ever I can, but a veggie I do enjoy that has no self pollinating counterpart I will do the hand pollination.
There are many veggies that have adapted to the hot humid short days of Florida. It takes a bit of research and trials to find out which will grow here in summer. I grow veggies year round (just not the exact ones I grew up north)
On your question about beans, try the yard long varieties of beans. They are a pole bean that makes a 3 foot long bean pod and will grow during summer. Bibb lettuce and Mesclun will grow in summer for the salad greens substitute. Butter beans are a type of lima bean - so on and so forth, you have to look for the hot weather southern substitutes.

Lou

I agree with Lou, try and see. Honest, I had more veggie failures when i tried to plant things this past fall, when i was supposed to. Total failures on root crops (carrots, cukes, and radish) planted in the fall. My peppers also stopped growing and producing in the winter. But lettuce, tomatoes and Swiss chard all did well.

Last summer I did have an egg plant that flowered but never set fruit. Kept it thru the winter, and it didn't fruit then either, so likely it was the plant.

Last summer I had many more failures with flowers than i did veggies.

I live 3-4 blocks from Tampa bay just north of downtown Saint Pete (very close to sunken gardens). My climate is pretty mild and not extreme. I didn't freeze at all last winter and temps stayed above 40, but also my high temps never really got above 94-95 at the house. Most days in the low 90's. I know away from the water you get colder lows and higher highs. Depending on your location in Sarasota, temps may fluctuate more.

I am very much an experimenter.. so I like to grow things I shouldn't be able to . I had fresh limes and lemons in Michigan and PA. Challenge here is cool loving plants. I am going to try to "summer" some of my more delicate plants indoors this summer to see if i can keep them alive thru the heat.

I also did find I was moving many of my plants into partial shade by mid summer.. even what I thought up north as "full sun". They almost always did better for me with some shade.

You can plant Yard long bean, bitter melon, winter melon, summer squash, water melon, luffa and opo gourd.

This post was edited by JCTsai on Mon, May 27, 13 at 14:54

I start my tomato seeds on July 15th and put them in the ground on September 1st for the fall garden season.

TheTradition,

You are correct, when I just now looked back at my post and saw I had said to start seeds September I realized my error. Thanks for correcting my error.
I agree, start tomato seeds indoors mid July and transplant outdoors around September 1st. This gives them a good start to beat the fall frosts.

Lou

Maybe I'll try the tomatoes in a shady spot, although these Florida bugs give me pause! I took an orchid, growing under a tree, to my patio to clean it up and was crawling with ants. Disgusting, I had ants running up my arms, legs, all over me! I flung the plant into a rain barrel and the ants swam, climbing out of the barrel. It was like a horror movie!

Jane

Jane, I started a pineapple plant stuck in the top of compost pile and had the exact same experience when I pulled it out to pot it up after the roots had started. Ants everywhere!

Whats bothersome is that many of my plants come inside when the nights get cold, as they did a few months ago. I thought my orchids would benefit by growing under a tree, getting lots of air and making it easier for me to water. Little did I know they'd be crawling.

I'm shocked how I couldn't drown the ants. I have a large 55 gal. drum I use as a rain barrel. Since we haven't had rain forever, it is only a third full and full of tadpoles (don't ask). Anyway, I dumped the orchid, in the wood basket, down into the water thinking the ants would drown. They immediately started running up the hanging wire onto my hand. I never saw so many charging ants. Some had wings and they were swimming across the barrel running up the sides heading straight for me.

None drowned and the tadpoles didn't even eat them. I know they all got out. I left the orchid floating for hours. It was still full of ants when I pulled it out.

How the heck do you get rid of these insects? How would I bring the plants in when the weather turns cold?

Having second thoughts about those tomatoes...

Jane

Short of a thermonuclear device I think the ants are here to stay. The ants are running around all over my Aquaponics grow bed herding the aphids on my plants. I think my only resolve is applying tanglefoot around the base of the plants.
Tanglefoot is like that sticky goop they put on flypaper and you can buy it in tubes (like toothpaste) or little tubs (like coolwhip).

Lou

I gardened in NY for over 40 years. My houseplants always went outside for the summer. Before bringing them back inside I always dunked them in buckets of water to drown any ants or slugs. Always worked, never had a problem.

NY ants drown!

Florida ants swim.

So how do you deal with your vegetables? Are they crawling in ants?

Jane

I use the garden hose with a pressure wand tip and blast the fruit clean of ants & bugs just before picking the veggie. I have learned doing this during harvest keeps the screaming and hollering down to an acceptable level when I bring the vegetables into the house and place them on the counter top. I didn't like looking into the face of a wild woman wielding a knife shouting at me about ants & bugs. (She is from NYCity)

Lou

Could be worse... she could be from Jersey.

I may be a N.H. hayseed but even I knew better than to marry someone from Joisey!

MOO

Figures!

Jane