March 3, 2018
Spring Seeds
Florida likes to tease our tropical plants a bit with a fake spring. It’s really the start of spring weather but we will have at least one more cold snap to remind us that we do participate briefly in the season the rest of the country calls winter.
My favorite plant (outside of anything edible and my personal favorite trio of roses, gardenia, and Camilla) type is bulb. In Florida, many bulbs thrive with minimum care. Our yard had a few worn beds of overgrown bulbs when we arrived. Year one was break them up and replant.
Year two is sprouting. (See how I love bulbs! Fast growing, hardy and results in a year!)
Elephant ears are one of my favorites, but this yard has two types of elephant ears, bananas, gorgeous lilies, fire-flowers, a yellow-red lily with a huge 6” bloom (just a green few in the picture here as tall, cup-like leaves with “spokes”), and the normal replanted ones like celery, onion, and garlic. Celery bottoms replant and grow until they are tired of being stepped on. We have one two-year pineapple and two newbies. Two garlic cloves are growing. Dozens of onions dot the design.
And we have what we call “bonus plants” these come from our fertilizer.
We fertilize with an organic mix of hay, biodegraded plant material, and chicken droppings. Since our philosophy is to waste nothing, our chickens end up eating a lot of kitchen scraps that include seeds. This often leads us to wonderful “bonus plants.”
These gems are usually milo, wheat, millet, collard, eggplant, citrus, pepper, or tomato! We’ve noted cucumber, sunflower, and pumpkin as well. When we find a tomato, we baby it. Usually, though, the next day the lizard hunter has trampled it even though the gardens are strictly off limits. Any lizard who makes it to the house or the garden is safe!
But this spring we were babying one tiny tomato in the front porch garden when today, voila! ~ ~ We discovered this literal bed of tomatoes hiding under an elephant ear! We’re so excited we haven’t figured out if we want to attempt to dig them up and separate them while they are small or just leave them in this area they appear to like. (I’m beginning to believe a single chicken must have eaten an entire bag of tomatoes last season!)
All of our young pullets are finally hens, laying and regularly producing so we have an average excess of 10 dozen eggs a week! Now our chickens pay for themselves and the dogs! (The money we get from the market for our eggs pays for chicken feed and dog feed.) I love the seeds of spring!
(So does Lucas, who had to have his picture taken without his dirty shirt.)
Thanks for reading!
Type at you next time…
~Nancy Tart