My Backyard Florida Garden

In an attempt to live more in the Nexus, I've started something I've been wanting to do for years: growing my own food. Living in cities and traveling over the past decade have not allowed me to have my own green space. I don't have much of a yard now, but I wanted to give my green thumb a try.

Step one: Clearing the land

Our yard is small and covered with "weeds," i.e. mini oak trees from our neighbors over-hanging tree. I foolishly thought I could clear the land by hand in an afternoon. I was sorely mistaken, no pun intended.

Original plot covered with mini Oak trees

After hours and hours of labor, it wasn't looking much better

Too many roots

So I decided to try another section of the lawn.

It's actually a bit to the left of this, as I forgot to take a good before photo

This section proved to be much better

My hands were not happy at the end of the day.

Yes I wore gloves.

Literally took 2 weeks to heal

Step 2: A Raised Bed

After a little research I decided a raised bed was the way to go. I ordered one off Amazon, made from recycled materials, that wasn't too expensive.

"Greenland Gardener 6-Inch Raised Bed Garden Kit $23.44 Made from recycled plastic and wood. Product does not require any tools to assemble, assembles in minutes."

Amazon Prime 2 day delivery

Patented corner system: a snap to assemble (yeah, I like puns)

Requires 480 quarts of soil

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009IAOH0C/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Step 3: Planting the Garden

I bought sprouting plants from the garden center: 2 varieties of tomatoes, chiles, cucumber, zucchini and eggplant. All Paleo of course!

February 16th

Back row (in Sun): Eggplant, tomato, zucchini
Front row (in shade): Chilies, tomato, cucumber

Step 5: Water and Wait

Feb 23rd

Zucchini not doing well

March 11th

Definitely seeing some growth

We have chiles!

We have tomatoes!

April 21st

I had to add tomato cages because the plants are getting so big!

Cucumber not looking great

Lots of tomatoes

Chilies galore!

Maybe a zucchini coming in?

Eggplant flowering

May 1st

The whole garden

So many chilies, a couple just starting to turn red

A couple tomatoes starting to ripen

Lots of success with my yellow tomatoes, I had actually picked about a dozen the day before - delicious!

We have an eggplant

Cucumber doing slightly better

Pitiful zucchini

In order to get my zucchini and cucumber in better shape, I've ordered this climbing trellis. Will hopefully be able to add them before I leave on Friday.