Watch My Food Grow ~ A South Florida Raised Vegetable Garden

Florida Backyard Raised Vegetable Garden

Mushroom or Toadstool?

June 10th, 2013 by Lila Steinhoff
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It’s Raining, It’s Pouring…

It has rained pretty much every day for three weeks. Even though South Florida is considered semi-tropical, this is still way too much rain. The usual summer pattern is a near daily downpour for 15 minutes mid-afternoon, then the sun is back and  it gets humid.

Humidity Brings Non-edibles, Too

The torrential downpours combined with the heat are causing a bumper crop of fungi in the yard.

fungi

Fungi

When I was child growing up in the 1950s, fungi fell into two categories… mushrooms and toadstools. A mushroom was the fungus you could eat, and a toadstool was the one you didn’t touch. I have since learned that they are all mushrooms, but some will make you sick or dead.

fungiFungi

Today, the term ‘toadstool’ is still around and still means use caution. My personal thoughts on this are NEVER eat mushrooms that you find growing in your yard, the park, etc. Buy them from people who are paid to know the difference between edible and poisonous mushrooms.

Beauty Without the Chlorophyll

Green plants have chlorophyll which allows them to make simple sugars for nourishment. Mushrooms/toadstools have no chlorophyll, so they have to get their nutrients from compost, rotting vegetation and animal dung.

fungi

Fungus

The ground here has been wet for so long that there is a lot of rotting wood and vegetation, and that means mushrooms are sprouting.

I ran across some really pretty mushrooms earlier this week. Some were the usual shape and were growing on the ground. Yesterday, I found some very tiny ones that were growing on the roots of a strangler fig that was cut away from a palm tree last summer. Click on any picture to make it larger.

fungiFungi

The tiny balloons of white in this picture are a section of the mushrooms that cover an area the size of a quarter. As an afterthought, I figured a quarter lying next to the mushrooms would make a very good illustration of size.

withered fungiWithered Fungi

However, this morning when I got to the tree, all the mushrooms had wilted to strands and turned black over night. I was out there with the quarter anyway, so I stuck it in the picture.

 

 

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Rain Ruining the Garden

June 1st, 2013 by Lila Steinhoff
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Too Much of a Good Thing

May was a wet month with 15.6 inches of rain… most of it coming in the last 10 days. It is still raining and is supposed to continue for another week. The pool and my fountain have run over repeatedly, and my garden is way too wet.

Holes for Drainage

When the new raised garden boxes were built, holes were drilled into the bottoms of the containers.

garden box with holes in bottomDrain Holes in Raised Garden Box

The holes were drilled into the bottom to allow the water to run through. It prevents pooling in the bottom.

However, when it rains all day and all night for days on end, and the sun shines very little during that time, the soil is still too wet. This causes injury to the different plants in my garden.

Water-filled Bell Peppers

The red and yellow bell pepper plants are full of peppers that are beginning to change color, but peppers cannot stay on the plant until they have ripened completely.

yellow bell pepperYellow Bell Pepper

Too much rain has caused several of the peppers to rot hanging on the plant. They look okay, but when touched, the bottom falls away and the water collected on the inside drains out. To save the peppers, I am picking them as soon as they show a little color.

green bell peppersGreen Bell Peppers

If I can’t catch them soon enough to keep the bottoms from going soft, I will begin picking them green. Green peppers are just as good and way better than having them rot on the plant.

Rotting Squash

yellow squashRotting Yellow Squash

Too much moisture causes a fungus to develop on the squash and zucchini leaves and causes any new squash to rot before they are even two inches long.

 Splitting Tomatoes

split tomatoesTomatoes with Split Skins

Too much rain causes the skins to split even on tomatoes just approaching ripeness.

yellow pear tomatoesYellow Pear Tomatoes

Even the tiny yellow pear tomatoes have splitting skins.

The split skins do not ruin the tomatoes if they are picked and used right away. There are too few tomatoes to merit canning them, so I have made pasta sauce and salsa. I’ve given away a lot of tomatoes, too.

Since it is supposed to rain all next week, I will have even more. An old friend sent me a recipe for tomato soup. I’ve never made my own, but I am going to try it. I don’t want any of my veggies to go to waste.

 

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Mysterious Caterpillar

May 18th, 2013 by Lila Steinhoff
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What Kind of Caterpillar?

This morning, my neighbor and gardening partner, Jacqie, was inspecting the garden. He came across a caterpillar I had never seen before. It was chewing through our patch of parsley.

IMG_0921Black Swallowtail Caterpillar

IMG_0927-cBlack Swallowtail Caterpillar

 It was about an inch and a half long and beautiful to look at, and we thought it was  Monarch caterpillar.

Caterpillars Can Flat Out Eat!

This evening, I went out to see if the caterpillar was still there. Not only was it still there, it invited company for supper.

Black Swallowtail CaterpillarBlack Swallowtail Caterpillars

They had chewed several bunches of parsley down to the stems.

parsley stemsParsley Stems

It’s a Black Swallowtail

By the end of the day, we had been corrected on the type of caterpillar. A friend who works at the Palm Beach Zoo let us know that the caterpillar in our parsley patch is a Black Swallowtail caterpillar. Not only does this type of caterpillar like parsley, but a few of our other plants are on his list of favorites… carrots, dill and fennel.

Monarch Caterpillar

After finding out the actual type of caterpillar we had, I looked up a picture of a Monarch caterpillar. I understand the confusion on the type, now.

monarch caterpillarMonarch Caterpillar

The colors are nearly the same, but the design of the stripes is different. In addition, Monarchs eat only milkweed.

After looking at both, I think the Black Swallowtail is the prettier of the two. Of course, nothing can match the tomato hornworm for color… or for size. I found one last year that was four inches long and as big around as my finger.

I’ve decided that these Black Swallowtail caterpillars can have all the parsley they want. I just don’t want to see anything in the worm category on my tomatoes.

 

 

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