I grew up in Florida, I know it is hot in Florida. I know summers are getting hotter. Gainesville is in North Central Florida. That means that we haven’t historically been able to grow the tropical fruits that you can even two hours south in Orlando. We have just enough freezes that your mangos or avocados tend to die back in the winter if not heavily protected each year. I have had a number of mango trees that are now compost and avocado trees that are the same size as they have been every year since they continuously start over. Now, I know there are more frost tolerant varieties of some of these trees. I recently bought a couple of more frost tolerant avocados that will hopefully do well. I did, however, plant these during the drought right before I went out of town and they are now trying to recover from that neglect. I have some neighbors that have large, fruiting avocados that seem to tolerate or yearly freeze quite well. One is even thriving this year despite multiple 20 degree days this winter. As the weather grows warmer and the number of freezing days decline, Gainesville will likely be able to increase the variety of tropic fruits we can plan, while also decreasing some previously productive crops.

I keep a garden journal and am not super diligent about recording in it. However, a noticeable trend is every year I note that I wish I had started my seeds earlier. This is certainly true of my spring garden. I just started some seeds for my fall garden. For now, I have planted some tomatoes (roma, big red, heirloom), bell peppers (California Wonder), and Seminole pumpkins. I also planted some cow peas on a trellis I have. I did all of this on July 16th so we will see how that turns out.

Right now in the garden there are zinnias, sunflowers, crepe myrtle, and cosmos blooming. Some sungold tomatoes are still growing, but the plants are no longer thriving and I pulled most of them out. I have peppers continuing to grow (jalapeno and bell) and the collards continue to grow though they have a lot of pests. My herb spiral is doing okay, though some of the herbs bolted and are done so I need to start new ones for the fall. I am eager to plant many greens this fall and am going to try to extend that growing season quite a bit this year.

I have a new compost pile situation going on – which is fine but I want to continue to play with it. I have various cacti and wildflowers going and I’ve been cleaning up beds. So much to do, a third of an acre feels much bigger than I thought it would. Hoping to explore new garden approaches in the coming year that allows me to add in veggies within flower beds.