The Sarasota County Starter Kit provides new (and existing residents) with a guide to living on the Suncoast. In this webinar, get the basics on what to grow (and how) during our steamy, stormy, summer season.
More Starter Kit information: http://tiny.cc/ufsaraext_starterkit
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so my name is Mindy hanck and I am the community and school garden coordinator for Sarasota County extension office um so a lot of the folks that um I pair with are growing primarily vegetables herbs edible flowers that type of stuff a little bit of fruit trees um uh but not as much of that um and then I am accompanied by Dr Rod greeter who is our sustainable agriculture agent um hi Dr rod and and you’re going to hear from him uh in a few more slides So today we’re going to talk a little bit about some of the resources because we can’t cover everything in half an hour and so if you uh hear about something that’s a little interesting to you that you want to learn a little bit more um that way you can leave with some resources to explore that and some of that’s going to be shared in a follow-up email on a Blog as well um because not all of the links are posted in the PowerPoint and then also we’re going to talk about some things you can grow some things to avoid growing and then some of the other um tips and tasks and things you can do during the summer months both in and outside uh go ahead um three slides I think because we talked about this as well um and we talked about that all right so um one of the things that I’ve encountered a lot is people buy these beautiful tomato plants that are at stores uh a lot of times April through June you see these big beautiful plants they look great um people are really excited to grow U like a beef steak tomato plant um and the timing is not right so uh please put the big beautiful plant down save yourself sometimes they’re like $20 even um save yourself some money uh instead either buy some fresh tomatoes from the store so you can enjoy those a lot of those are um you know made in Florida and they’re actually coming up on harvest um if it’s an arim tomato you can save seeds from it we’ll get into that a little bit later uh but you can instead save the money spend it on veg and herbs of things that you can plant right now or buy seeds for those beef steak tomatoes that you can put out later and we’ll talk about that um and this isn’t all about tomatoes I have a two-hour long web I can point you towards if you want to dive deep into tomato growing next slide so yeah those types of plants are typically going to go out August through October um so August September is ideal because it’s nice and warm and you get a lot of growth um and then as the plant gets bigger and you start to get those blossoms um that are ready to be pollinated the nighttime temperature drops enough that you can get some nice pollination and that’s the main issue here it’s not that the plants don’t necessarily grow it’s just the pollination when it’s hot and humid at night is really lackluster disease pressure is high so if you really really really must have a tomato right now um I know Rod had just put in a tomato a tomao not too long ago some folks will do Everglades Tomatoes which is kind of like a current tomato um that type of thing so um next slide so how do you know when it is the right time to plant a vegetable um here in Florida is it you’re on a vegetable guard like whether you’re watching a Youtube video um you’re seeing a sale at the store uh it’s very very tempting I still struggle with this that you just it’s it’s a deal you are you don’t want to pass up so um I would suggest just tempering using your resources um so that if you are so inclined and you want to spend money on growing food um that you’re either purchasing some of the materials that you can use later um or that you’re purchasing materials that are appropriate for here right now um so uh and there’s we’ll get into a little bit but when talking about Garden planning I haven’t found a garden planner where you can do the full layout and the suggested plants that’s necessarily completely accurate for our area if you have found one and you think it’s super awesome and you want to put it in the chat you’re more than welcome um so we can share IUS resources when I say IUS I mean Institute of food and agricultural Sciences which is us here at extension um this is one of them so what can you plant in June um when you look there’s an infographic for this for every month in Florida um and so June you’ll notice Central South which one are you we’re on the cusp so your yard it may swing a little bit One Direction or the other um when they put this out they basically said South ofate Road 70 is South so they consider us South um it’s early June and if you love something that’s in the central zone and you want to kind of give it a go um and maybe it’s not in boiling Sun I’d probably still try it um but I want to um I do want to mention so if you’re not familiar with some of these vegetables definitely go ahead give them a try before you plant them and one of the ways you can do that is and I will Pro I will mispronounce this in my apologies chaote is uh it’s it’s in the gourd family and you can eat it raw you can eat it cooked uh you can per instacart um or any web search you can find some of the grocery stores that carry that uh produce right now and buy a few taste a couple if you really like it you can actually plant the fruit is how you plant it um so that’s something that you can find in some of the stores I think um I think Sprouts Save A Lot a few other ones have had it uh recently so uh that’s something to explore you get a chance to taste it and actually literally plant the fruit of it to grow it it’s a big Vine you’re going to want a trell and support it so when you’re looking at your landscape consider where you might put that um you can do amaranth amaran grows really well here um just know if you plant amaranth and you let it go to seed you will have amaranth uh into perpetuity um pigeon peas something and then I would add um like pineapple and things like that uh papaya I don’t put those in my veggie beds because they’re rather long lasting um those are things you can put out in your landscape um same thing for Chote if you have an nice fence that you want to Trellis it to and tropical spinaches are very productive um and we’ll get into that in just a minute go ahead next page I have to talk faster so the tropical spinaches the they’re undern names like longevity spinach Malibar spinach New Zealand okan cerum um and none of them are going to taste exactly like a spinach um but they will tolerate our heat and they will produce um foliage that you can eat um you can plant sweet potato and eat that foliage as well um some of these plants take a while to produce so if they may take three to four or so months to actually produce like your sweet potatoes um the bonato and like calabaza they may be taking up how much space in your veggie bed and if it’s not in production like if it hasn’t gotten ready to harvest yet you may actually be postponing when you put out your next crops so um so just be aware of that because now we’re going to look at you saw what was available to plant in June just know that list isn’t completely all inclusive there are some other things that you can try to grow in Florida um some of them um oh let’s see here yeah just mentioned about pineapple pigeon pea Rosemary those types of things you don’t have to put specifically in your veggie beds um we talked about Chote spinach you can buy seeds online frequently go ahead um we’re talking about the considerations of what you plant now can put off what you can put out in late summer early fall when your options are wider so go ahead and we’re going to show you what that looks like so here’s the infographic of some of the things that you can plant in July you’ll notice it’s very similar to what it said for June um and I understand you might be looking at a screen of a certain size so these are some of the things that we’re going to share to you as follow-up resources and then uh go ahead see how August opens up a little bit more under the southide when it’s talking about like your eggplant and your peppers and okra gets added back in um and some of your tomatoes and things like that so um because those are your some of your warm season crops so just be aware what you’re putting in if you’re putting it in your sole growing area and it’s something that you know like a like a sweet potato that takes a long time to produce just have an idea in your mind of when you want to plan out your crops uh for fall and just um kind of work backwards that way so you prioritize what you’re going to eat and use the most and go ahead and you’ll see now as we move into September a a lot of options are added so that’s the main reason I mentioned it’s great if you want to grow um produce in summer a lot of what people are harvesting in summer is sometimes planted in um like in that spring window of time so you can still grow some things um but it’ll start to um impact what you put out in fall and I would say if with the Chote if you go and buy that at the store um there’s lots of fun recipes on YouTube um explore that because there are so many ways you can prepare it it’s rather benign in flavor which is kind of nice it makes it versatile um and it can live a few years uh so um you know again that’s something to add somewhere in your landscape where you can leave the plant um you can also grow some herbs you can do Ginger that does really well in less light so if you an area of your yard that is not getting adequate light and you want to grow food that’s something to put there you can do cumin summer Savory basil mexicon rosemary um Rosemary will last for years so I don’t necessarily give it a spot in an edible bed um that can go in your landscape you can do maragold that type of thing and a lot of people enjoy planting fruit trees um this time of year because they’re trying to get it close to rainy season um as we’ve seen we haven’t gotten a lot of rain so just know that you’re going to need to water to establish so that may mean you’re watering every day for a few weeks then to every other day um and use a rain gauge so when it does rain you have an idea how much rain you actually got don’t plant your fruit trees too deep and make sure that whatever you plant for a fruit tree is going to actually fruit in our area um so they make low chill peaches and various other things but you don’t want to buy like a rabbit ey blueberry which is appropriate for like North Florida and put it in your yard here and wonder why it’s not producing as much go ahead rad all right so you can be incredibly productive with your garden in Florida um allow that it’s probably going to in include higher effort than up north simply because um we do have longer growing Seasons but a lot of our transitions are in our hotter our hotter months um and we do have more disease and pest pressure so allow for that also we have candd soil so a lot of times you’re needing to do some form of amendment um to build up your organ organic matter uh so that your plants get adequate nutrition and we we regularly rely on irrigation um because um our rains are sporadic and they usually aren’t falling during the peak months um of when people are growing from like September through April we had a nice uh we had some nice rain over the winter time but it wasn’t um normal I would suggest exploring different methods because maybe you look into self-watering containers maybe you look into deep tissue water culture maybe you’re growing in the ground maybe you’re growing in a raised bed um very maybe you’re doing edible landscaping uh there’s lots of different ways that you can grow here um and you just kind of want to match it for what suits your space and your interest and um energy level and then ration allow any of the projects that we talk about that you’re going to be um doing it in smaller spurts so unless you’re really used to doing a lot of work outside um and as the temperatures heat up you want to allow that projects may not be like done in a day unless you have a lot of people involved you’re going to want to ration those projects out so that way you do less and more often so that way you’re not overheating go ahead R okay thank you Mindy and I see there’s some comments and questions coming up in the chat please continue to put uh your comments in there and questions and we will Circle back after we cover off the content here to answer those questions so we’ll keep it moving uh smoothly here so as uh Mindy has talked about what can you grow now we’d also like to talk about what else can you do with that plot that you might normally have vegetables growing from September through May and but you want to take the summer off for the very reasons that Mindy just mentioned it’s too hot and uh someone being someone who has already been flirting with heat exhaustion this uh early summer uh it’s only going to get worse right we all know that for the next three four five months so I generally like to take the summer off and do other things and not try to to beat the heat so one of the things that you can do on your plot uh is to cover it so what else can you be doing to that plot to make your gardening success in the in our winter season September through May more successful one of those things is covering so this can uh accomplish a lot of different things for us so you can cover to suppress weeds as Mindy said if you’re doing amaran or you have red root pigweed as a weed uh each one of those plants that has a adequate moisture and and sunlight can have hundreds of thousands of seeds on that plant so if you don’t take care of it you’re going to have those seed those seeds in your seed bank for the next decade or more so cover it to help prevent the weeds we’ll talk a little bit more about what some options are there you also might want to do some solarization we’ll talk about what that means cover cropping uh that’s a rage that a lot of people are talking about now is is how do I get uh continuous ground cover to accomplish various things we’ll talk about a lot of the pros associated with that and also some things to think about and then we’ll talk about the sheet composting many of us are familiar with more traditional backyard composting or Verma composting using worms but there are some kind of DIY ways to go about composting too and it also serves in covering your garden and we can talk about if you want to do have some crops out there which ones can be kind of double purpose so they can maybe produce uh something edible through the summer but also can help suppress weeds add nitrogen and various other things so generally covering for weed prevention uh you want to you want to stop the weeds of course right so we can cover it and you can cover it with cardboard with newspaper with uh tarp there’s lots of different things you can use a weed fabric but you want to make sure that it is is going to stop the weeds from coming through so if you’re going to use a mulch or something make sure that it is thick enough concentrated enough to stop the weeds from busting through it if we’re going to use other sheeting well then it’s got to be thick enough too that it doesn’t break down it doesn’t get poked uh and it doesn’t just degrade in the field and thick layers of cardboard are also another way Mindy and I did some demonstrations at uh Culver house community garden here in Sarasota County probably a year ago on doing what we call lasagna gardening or using coverings such as cardboard over the summer and it works it does it might look a little unorthodox uh your neighbors might say what do you got all that cardboard out there for but it it’s serving a purpose and it’s a inexpensive way to toh do weed cover now if you’re going to use cardboard or or even light plastic or uh newspaper you’re going to need to wait it down bury the edges pin it down uh you know throw some uh throw some grass on top of it uh you know uh you’re going to want to make it stay in place and before you do it though you’re going to want to thoroughly we down that that spot because you want it nice and moist because what you want is a lot of that weed seed in your seed bank in your soil to emerge or germinate and then die off and if you’re going to use a waterproof plastic make sure that it’s sloped in a way that the water runs off of it and you’re not creating ponds and areas for mosquitoes we got enough of those already another way to do that is to do what we call solarizing and this is to use clear plastic and what this does is allows the sunlight and of course you want to moist it down again water it down before you do it so that you can get germination as much as possible and then that sunlight goes through that plastic acts like a greenhouse and heats up that top to 4 to 12 inches of soil and Cooks it now this will help control nematodes depends on how hot you get it it can also control other pathogens and it can cook uh weed seed but if you’re trying to BU build a soil health and build up uh concentrations and populations of beneficial soil microorganisms this can set them back too they also don’t like intense heat most of our so soil microorganisms like it uh that range about the same as humans 80 to 90 you get much above that and then they start dying off so be careful that solarizing can uh solarize your soil and kill it too and it may take a while to build up build back up those soil microorganisms and you got to deal with the plastic right a lot of this plastic isn’t a heavy heavy duty and that might rip and tear and what are you going to do with that plastic at the end of the season so you got to kind of plan through why you’re using it and how you’re going to use it and do it in an environmentally uh conscious way so I mentioned sheet composting or also called lasagna gardening and this is where you can use uh newspaper several layers of newspaper some cardboard and you put layers of greens and Browns greens and Browns on it so that they can break down any of you that do composting know you have to have the right carbon to nitrogen ratio there to get good decomposition so covering it in this way again uh in a very affordable way helps control the that weeds those weeds and helps you retain moisture as well now cover cropping refers more to Growing living plants on that uh on your plot to control erosion it could help with weed suppression it could uh help by having those green living roots in that soil profile also help improve soil fertility and improve organic matter but things like improving soil fertility and organic matter using cover crops are a long-term process you’re not going to do that one summer and suddenly have doubled your organic matter and improved your soil fertility it’s going to take repeated cycles of that to get benefits from that and when it comes to cover crops in wheat suppression uh cover crops can suppress weeds but if they’re not if you don’t get a good stand if it’s not thick enough you’re going to get the weeds coming up through the middle of it and you won’t have accomplished your purpose also with cover crops uh depending on what you use uh you might also be able to get some nitrogen fixation cooking by using legumes like cow or sun hemp and there too you’re only get going to get the benefit of nitrogen fixation and uh concentration of soil nitrogen that are available for your plants the next season if you have a solid concentration and good inoculation and a lot of nodules on those PL just because you have cow PE there if you don’t have the right soil inoculum and the nodules don’t cook out nitrogen it’s not going to improve your soil in so a lot of these things depend on how it’s done before you get the benefit for IT Sun Hamp is one that we are using quite a bit uh here in Sarasota and it can do the weed suppression it’s also a nitrogen fixer and it’s uh not a host for root knot nematode which we have identified as an issue here so if you have that as a problem root knot uh Sun hemp can help break that life cycle of sun hemp but it’s not going to happen again in one season and if you have other weeds come up that are an alternate host for root knot then you’ve not accomplished that purpose either so how you do these things I know I’m repeating myself and that’s intentional how you do these things also matters as much as the what you’re trying to do can I chime in R absolutely I’m a sucker for yellow flowers and the sun hemp has beautiful yellow flowers on it so um it does you need a tractor to move it yes yeah and that’s another good point there is if you’re going to use things like sun hemp it tends to be very Woody when it matures so you’re going to end up having to bury a broomstick and and have to deal with that and how are you going to work around it if you want to cut it and drop it or chop it and drop it how are you going to work around that with your planting and your tillage and and other things so uh there’s good practices in using things like sunet before you get the full benefit of it but they are useful to cover crops and the the uh uh things like uh lasagna garding gardening are for helpful for building organic matter and as Mindy said we have a problem with our uh flying Sands in Florida our organic matter generally is less than 1% I’m sure many of you are from up north where I come from in the midwest in Iowa and Minnesota our organic matter is from three to 5% down here we’re lucky if if we have a half a percent so anything we can do to build organic matter is well worth it and by adding compost and those types of things it can be expensive if you’re talking about a 4 by8 raised bed go for it you’re talking about half an acre now it starts to add up and you want to build that organic matter in the best way that you can nematodes they’re let’s just call them a little microscopic worm they can cause a lot of damage you may not see them killing your plant but you’ll see that your plants aren’t productive and you’ll want to dig them up use a little handheld microscope and figure it out or if you want to pull a sample we can send it into the nematology lab at UF in Gainesville and they can tell us whether you have nematodes and what they are it costs about $37 I think now for a sample but if you’re talking about a half an acre again that might be worth it a raised bed box maybe don’t worry about it just try the uh the sun Hamp or something like that to break the life cycle Mindy you want to take this one sure all right so if you enjoy being outside or doing that intermittently this is a really great time to assess your space and especially when it comes to runoff because as we do get rain you can look at where is the water moving on your property um and also how does your property drain and so this helps you decide um if you’re growing food and you want to consider food safety um which ideally you do it kind of gives you an idea if you’re getting run off from somebody’s dog kennel is that going to run off into where you’re growing your veg um that type of thing or is the rain uh coming off the roof going to be pounding onto veg um and also are you retaining moisture in certain areas more than others uh because there are some fruit trees that can tolerate that better than others um same thing for your veg so this time of year um as we do get rain it is going to be a really good time to go out and assess your drainage um you can look at your space evaluate your lighting uh measure your space you can ant try to anticipate seasonal differences we have a longer day uh during the summer months um and the Sun is more directly overhead um whereas in um like fall through spring it starts to get more into the southern side so you would want to avoid anything big um like a big grand oak on the south side of where you want to grow veg um because that’s what I encounter in my yard it makes it fun um and so you can kind of evaluate the different spots in your landscape because a lot of things are right plant right place and then also with uh food uh right time so what are those places that you have available what are the things that you want to grow and where do you think those things will match up you can install your beds your fencing your trellis you can do various different things tasks like that um especially if you live in a community where maybe there’s more people here um during the winter months and they don’t want to have con you know construction or disturbance um right next to them uh sometimes summer is a great time to get some of those projects done also service repair um your equipment your tools your beds that type of thing um you know give everything a run through um and then if you were growing something and you didn’t write down what you grew I’m always operating with the idea I’m going to remember I will not remember so if you haven’t pulled up all your plants yet and you do remember what you had out it’s a great time to kind of just make a little rough template and note down what you had and where you had it if you are wanting to to practice any rotation of your crops um if you have old brasas you haven’t pulled out yet and they have seed pods on them like you can Harvest some seeds you can your arugulas your mustards some of your other brassas you can cut them up and bury them down as they break down um it kind of works to um nematodes don’t like it so they start to evacuate that area uh which is great you can do the same for marigolds uh and then also if you start to see a lot of weeds in your mulched paths you can rake off the The Mulch that’s still good dig out the soil like basically the mulch is broken down to a growing medium and you have weeds growing in it so you can actually dig out that decent soil put it in your raised beds um so you don’t have to purchase as much soil and then just reapply a thicker layer of mulch and that also helps give you a little bit of time so you’re not constantly having to go out and weed as often over the summer and then if you have anywhere where water can pull um some of the uh like the polyethylene sheeting or the tarp sometimes they’re not um sometimes they work because they’re not porous but if you have a shady or areas where water can pull you just want to make sure it’s not an area where you can have mosquitoes breeding um and then if you if you can’t hand you know you can buy mosquito dunks things like that that would address that um as well if you can’t alter the the area and tip your pots over and stuff just another followup comment too on the arugula and uh marigolds and controlling nematodes again it’s got to be complete otherwise you’re going to get partial control and you’re going to be disappointed so we hear these things of oh use marigolds but you have to do them in the right use them in the right way over time to get the benefits they’re not a silver bullet yeah and none of these would be for eradication it’s just for some some control to mitigate so hopefully you’ll have some some um improved production in Fall um and if you the other thing too is if you are going to be composting or sheet composting or anything and you know you have nematodes you get a lot of nodul on your roots that type of thing just don’t compost that roots and and add to the problem remove those and dispose of them uh you can make your planting plan for the upcoming year that’s a fun thing to do in air conditioning um and next to a resource like the internet um and books so what do you want to grow when do you want to grow it um make a plan you can do a lot of succession planting in Florida so make those ideas of like hey if I think this plant is um this plant will be able to be harvested at this time that’s going to open up that space what would you put in that space after that I tend because there are so many options I tend to get stuck and by the time I get unstuck I’m I realize I could have planted and grown something and eaten it already so my suggestion for that and what I’m going to do this year is as I have any spots to open up if it’s the right time for baby lettuce or baby Brasa some of those things you can start eating within three weeks from when you sew it same thing for radishes I’m going to plant those out as a filler um and that way have something growing so by the time I’ve made up my mind I still have more food and I put something in um that’s going to you know make good use of the space that I have and those seeds are very affordable and then um where are you going to buy your seeds and your starts uh it’s a great time to do research as far as um you know what businesses you want to support there’s a lot of seed companies out there and a lot of them give really great information um but when it comes to uh crop descriptions uh just remember they are selling you something uh so f focus on the words that you think are relevant to you so um I some folks buy only from seed companies that they that they consider Southern I I’m pretty uh Broad in in where I’ll purchase seed from but I will look at words like slow to bolt heat tolerant disease resistant those types of things um to make sure that it’s something that I think is suitable for here and then I can also cross reference with IUS um so that way I don’t buy rhubarb um because it’s not worth the torture here so uh definitely make use of some there and also some of those seed companies give really great tools uh that you can use um look in the different side menus and also at the bottom of the web pages uh things get buried there and they have comparison charts so when you’re trying to decide between your crops I tend to go for a shorter day to harvest because I’m greedy uh and I figure the less time in the ground uh the less chance for disease to interrupt my ability to eat it take advantage of sales um there has has been a lot of Nationwide you know type of sales in relation to gardening um so I bought some elevated beds online at like half price uh I think over the Memorial Day uh weekend um I there Botanical interest had a really good seed sale some of the other seed companies will have uh seeds on sale as well uh so take advantage of those things uh while you can some of the box stores have done sales on mulch and soil um garden beds um and then Rod you you were able to take advantage of some of the the plants that were on sale um I think did you mention you got tomao and a few other things yes we did we got the Toma planted uh a week ago and they’re going gang busters they like it a little warm yep so so you can take advantage of those things you just want to cross reference back so that way you’re not you know sometimes some of the stores may have cold season crops that um things were ordered in mass and and aren’t necessarily for here um also watch out for online ads because I don’t know if this happens to you but I know it happened to me and at least one other person I know probably a year or so ago um it gave me a lead on some on a material like a like a trellis and an elevated bed and I the price was beautiful um and but it was a company I didn’t know and I and it popped up as an advertisement I forget in Facebook or Google of something and um because it must have known what I was searching for and so I got suckered I I bought something that never arrived to my door um and I know at least one other person that happened to so uh just remember sometimes it’s great because you get stuff fed to you that you want to that it’s helping you skip a step but if it’s not a company that you’re aware of just do some due diligence before you give them any money uh that way I save you money SP my own um you can buy veg seeds um or you can or also vegetables with seeds that you want to save from um this is more applicable if you get into like heirloom type things in that um it’s going to be open pollinated so it might taste reminiscent to what you actually so you might find some heirloom tomatoes in the store things like that you can practice seed saving from that um you can save seeds from other veg that you eat um it just may not taste exactly like what you ate um so uh I know there’s a gardener that um she save seeds from just about everything she eats and she has a very productive garden plot it’s not the way I would have normally have gone about it but she she really makes it work so um so that’s another thing that you can consider doing them seeds have to be mature um that type of thing another comment I would make here and this is something that Mindy and I go back and forth on is the the need whether the seed needs to be organic and whether it’s better to be heirloom that’s a personal preference but keep in mind that heirloom seed uh they stopped improving it and breeding it many many many years ago if it was ever uh selectively improved so it may not have the best disease resistance drought tolerance insect resistance don’t put all your eggs in one basket and plant 15 heirloom tomatoes and then be disappointed because they all uh you know get a blossom and rot and that’s not really a a disease it’s more of a watering and calcium thing but uh that they’ll all be susceptible to one thing also on organic you’re going to take away all of your tools if you think that you have to grow it organically it’s a personal preference if you want to do that but also be wary that you’re you’re leaving those plants open to disease weeds insects and other things so just be conscious of that decreased margin for air in your garden yeah and a lot of times and there’s Clarity of like a hybrid doesn’t mean um GMO or anything like that if people are concerned about that type of stuff um hybrid just means like it’s not going to be open pollinated where if you’re saving seeds from it it may not taste exactly like what you ate um I namely like to do it because I don’t want to I I enjoy buying seeds um but I also want to be economical so sometimes I’m going to mix it up with things I can save seed from and reso and then other times I’m going to buy seeds especially if I’m looking for um something disease resistant like people sometimes struggle with basil here um and uh you can buy Downy M do resistant basil online really easily so and it does really well um and then uh Rod um or I can feel this and then if you want to talk about the soil we did talk about the importance of irrigation um for production it’s good to have a reliable source of irrigation whether that’s you holding a hose and having a backup friend if you’re traveling um and which is a lot of times what we have to do with the Community Gardens uh but if you’re if you’re at home and you have the ability to put in um an irrigation system system there’s some very um minor ones that you can install yourself um and so that’s something to consider and there’s these are free right now these resources um learning about irrigation and setting up drip systems so um so we’ll be sending those links to you as well if that’s something that you’d like to explore just a comment on soil real quick uh if you’re new to gardening in Florida or you’re starting in a gardening in a new area in your yard or somewhere else you don’t know what that soil is like so spend the $5 $10 to do a soil test we can uh determine your pH and uh uh solinity here at our Sarasota County extension office but I strongly recommend you spend the $10 or $15 send it to uh University of Florida soil lab in Gainesville and they’ll tell you what the pH is uh whether uh it it you know the salinity ALS p and K and the micronutrients you can also have the organic matter determined and also the cad exchange capacity which identifies how well that soil can retain the nutrients and we are concerned about that of course in our Sandy soils because if the soil doesn’t latch on to those nutrients where do they end up in our groundwater and then in our estuaries and everywhere else and we red tide and we all know the the story there but uh this during the summer is also a good time to figure out what you need to have to amend your soil to make it the most productive and I’ll send um in the follow-up there’s going to be um a lot of links and resources one of them is the organic vegetable gardening uh guide and the main reason I’m including that one is it clarifies definitions of things so it helps you um when you’re shopping but it also has a many useful charts at the end and it talks about um the different nutrient values and um and pH of some of the different soil amendments um so then that way if you are making your own blend um or you discover that you’re shorten something it kind of gives you an idea of of what you might want to use um so we’ll include that and some of it actually it has you can just go through the list and says whether or not it’s excellent um or suggested for different things so um so you’ll get that in followup um and then additional things you can do I don’t know if you have any like kids visiting in your life this is a really great time to put them to work um so if they are visiting you and you have sometime indoors you can do things like making seed tape so a lot of times like lettuce seeds and baby barasa seeds where you sew them um or carrot seeds a lot of those things they the seeds are very small and they roll around and you’re out trying to plant them directly in your garden um and sometimes when you’re doing that it’s still rather warm out and um I like having having kids do this because it helps them with fine motor and Counting um and they have something fun to do and then later on you’re not scrambling chasing after Little Seeds rolling everywhere so um and sometimes it’s toilet paper and glue it doesn’t have to be anything super fancy and then other people if they’re doing a square foot template um they might be putting it um mapped out on that as far as how many seeds they want sewn in that square foot so that’s a fun thing to do with kids or you could do that as a date night if you like um I find the super small seeds more challenging so if I can uh have a kid help me that’s that’s great um you can also look for takeout containers at home things that you could use for seed starting um you know you can make paper pots stuff like that you can explore um like say you really want to grow something but you don’t want to be outside you can explore growing sprouts and micro greens um you can pretty soon it won’t be too long from now you have time to order seeds if you want to and learn how to do seed starts um inside for what you want to put out later uh so you still have some time to do that uh and I’ll share resources on it and then also explore the plants in your landscape what might you want to propagate from do you have a banana and you have how many in the in the cluster and you want to separate some out and and gift a banana to someone or spread more out on your landscape um there’s various different things maybe you have lemongrass or or you know gingers Etc maybe you have things that you can practice propagating from and also for cuting and stuff like that so U lots of things you can kind of do to um explore um growing more food and more plants in general and go ahead um you talked about soil test I think that went backwards oops all right um You can also if you have a cool space where you don’t mind sharing space with worms a really great way to um start like you can get rid of food scraps um while simultaneously um getting the worms to make worm castings that you can later use in your garden um that’s something that you can explore doing you just don’t want to do it outside in full sun because the earthworms will bake uh some pop folks have a shady cool spot on their patio um other folks have a cool spot in their garage some people will keep them indoors um but you can make bins um and we have classes on that uh I would pick a few crops that you really really want to grow explore those more deeply um because it kind of gives you a leg up to know if there’s something particular that um that they prefer uh more than others and if you’re ever wanting to know how to grow something if you type ifas and the search word so if you type tomato IAS or um cucumber IAS you’re going to get UF information there and sometimes it can be very technical if they’ve done a lot of research on it and it might be more geared towards a grower uh but if you put video or blog with that sometimes you’ll get um videos about it or a really relatable blog with additional resources linked Ralph Mitchell the agent out of Charlotte County um his blogs are really cool and a lot of times he’ll talk about some edible crops Tia syv out of Hillsboro County does the same and there’s a whole series about Florida friendly edible landscaping um with lots of really great information and then for books from the library I love going to the libraries especially in the um in the summer and uh Stevens mccubbin Bowen and style they all have um books um that uh you should be able to find um and then uh I love looking at seed cataloges too I have to rein myself in um and this is also a wonderful time sometimes during the the cool months during season when our population is higher we have a lot of questions and we might be at a nursery or a box store and we might not get as much time with a person to ask as um all the questions that we have uh sometimes during down season it’s a really great time to go back to those same places and you may encounter folks that have a little more time to talk to you um and have conversation about some of the products that they sell um some of the plants that they sell um and so I would take advantage of that uh and help that inform your experience of of what you want to grow um and the businesses you want to support for that I would still double check the zones um because sometimes we stretch it and then go ahead Ron uh the the seasons as those of you that have been gardening in Florida for a while know that we have very distinct Seasons right what what do they call it may a hot hotter hottest and still hot or something like that that’s Minnesota in in talking yes that’s my interpretation but uh obviously there are things that fit better to the rainfall patterns the day length and the heat profile so in the warm season beans tomato things that like a little bit of heat are going to do well the cooler season maybe November December January beats and brasas and then it starts to warm up again and you can start to do the beans and tomatoes uh during the summer Southern peas ochre sweet potatoes we have a plot for our beginning farmer program that we’ve started here in Sarasota we are doing some uh sweet potatoes some okra seanol pumpkins we’re trying some watermelons we’re having a little bit of problem with some anthos we uh planted some to Tomos we’ve also got some Asian vegetables some tropical beans we’re trying some different things to see what’s going to work the best during the summer here but we’re also doing cover crops and covering and uh doing lots of different things so the seasons really matter here’s a great publication from uh ufas as Mindy has been uh trying to turn you on to our Publications because they’re research based and unbiased we’re not trying to sell you seeds or or M microbials or mulch or anything like that and this is a very detailed uh guide on what to plant when by North Central and South Southern parts of the state and it tells you uh you know when to plan it and how to plan it so we have the link here and you can go and download that yourself I have a hard copy Mindy has a hard copy we give away a lot of these this is probably our go-to reference for growing edible vegetables in the State of Florida all right and that was essentially it um okay if you’re unsure of what you want to plant i’ go back to the um and you really do want to grow food I’d go back to the June reference um and also some of the herbs and then um look at some of the recipes because sometimes when I’m waffling I I look to see what I can make with certain you know with certain crops um and that kind of helps me decide how excited I am about it and whether or not I want to go to the effort to do it um and there’s some things I’ll be I’m going to try some uh like red leaf amaranth and um and I have some tropical spinaches and a few other things I’m going to uh put out but I’m not going to go too crazy because I’m really looking forward to August and September so and I just stuck the link to the Florida vegetable Gardening Guide back into the chat somebody had requested that yeah and that one does not get so too much into some of the summer ones um but looking at I if you Google EAS summer or heat tolerant um those types of things that that tends to pop up some more um but that guide is our go to and then I’ll include other things where you can just plug in your zip code and it’ll tell you what to plant uh for summer it put just sweet potato you know it wasn’t as elaborate as even the infographic um but uh it is also a time where you might start being able to find some of the summer crops um if you are wanting to save seeds from like seminal pumpkin and calavaza and that type of stuff you might be more likely to start seeing some of those crops at Food stands or um at local groceries if you’re looking to save seeds from some of those crops so all right I’m not seeing any additional questions so if there’s something somebody asked that we didn’t answer or put the link to please um chime in and otherwise we will say good night or goodbye good afternoon um thanks everybody appreciated it