Bye Bye Spring; Hello Summer

Bye Bye Spring; Hello Summer

Greetings from Woodapple Farms.  Here in Central Florida, spring gives way to summer in the blink of an eye. Time to shut the windows and turn on the air conditioner. Planting in the gardens is finished and now we tend to weeds, manage pests & disease, and hope for a harvest.

We are die-hard gardeners who have had years of great successes, and also massive failures.  But…..every spring we try again, hope we have learned from our mistakes, try to repeat our successes, and anxiously watch for the harvest.  This year is no different.  We have added a variety of heirloom tomato called Everglades and are also enjoying a volunteer sweet yellow tomato from year’s past.  Our winter and spring kale and lettuce are all but finished, so we are busy using what we can and gifting to many of our friends.  Our peppers are busy producing lovely California Wonder Bells and Sweet Banana peppers.  If we can keep the chickens off, we should be in good shape with these two varieties.  Cucumbers have been a bit of a challenge as the garden snails seem to love the little seedlings.  However, we have increased our snail hunting and trapping efforts and are hopeful that we can have a few for pickling.

Red Banana Peppers

The subtropical, heat lovers that we have planted in the high tunnel are in their glory with beautiful clusters of bananas hanging from the stalks.  The key limes are happily getting larger and about to outgrow the screen cages we have placed on them to protect from Huanglongbing (HLB), more commonly know as citrus greening or yellow dragon disease. Starfruit, jackfruit and soursop are getting bigger every day, and we hope to get the moringa into the ground soon.

Bananas

So as you can imagine there is never a dull moment here and not much down time for us, but we wouldn’t have it any other way!

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