I hope to be back to gardening soon. Will not be as productive as yall are. Been busy teaching dogs and now peeps. Don do you two have any help with all that work?
Sometimes the grandkids who live in Alaska come to help. We just had a visit from son #3 and his family, who now live in Missouri, and they helped clean up prior to winter's onset, but they were only here for a week. We will have to scale down too as we become less able. We intended to do that in 2020, but Covid changed that. I doubt we will get livestock again, but we did get a few chickens. Marie, build growing tables if you can. It is like having tall raised beds, We already have that in our greenhouses, and one of our friends has their entire garden above ground. The only disadvantage here is that perennials don't overwinter in the tables as well as in the ground, but you wouldn't have that trouble in Florida.
Don we did have a couple growing tables plus a metal shelf we used in the greenhouse. But the greenhouse needs covering so not in use, we may just cover raised beds and not use GH again anyway. Thats good that you two can still do all that gardening. I stopped with the gardening and decided to make trails thru the woods an clear vines off fence and trails.
I meant that you could make growing tables for use outside. My friend has multiple greenhouses, but has three large growing tables outside. I Florida, I would just use the greenhouse in winter or in the marginal seasons. If you have a good bit of land, you could make a moving greenhouse that would allow you to start warm season crops early and move the cover off to allow the crops to grow outside. Your winter is probably about like our summer.
We have tried both sand and sawdust, but found keeping them in a refrigerator actually works best for us. We have a root cellar that I went to great pains to build years ago, but when we stored our crops in there, mice and voles got in and ruined a good bit of produce, so it hasn't been used for years. We store what cannot fit into a refrigerator in bins on the floor in the coolest corner of our heated garage.
Oh ok but hubby wants to do some work on the van like raise the roof so we can stand instead of bend over when in back. And I'm not able to do any building, but that is a great idea. It sure sounds good though, Our summer can get hot but winter can reach into single digits here, it got down to 5 F several years agio.
I understand, but things like kale, and leeks, and even some cabbage, can tolerate those temperatures in a greenhouse even without heat. I plant some things in my unheated greenhouses here in March, when it is much colder than anything Florida has to offer. Lettuce and spinach grow well, although some greens do better if planted earlier and are just kept alive through the winter.
I do need to start some seeds soon, maybe I'll feel better tomorrow. Also, we don't need a roof on the van put that energy into getting some crops in the ground.
We did well with cabbage this year. Generally it starts looking a bit sad after a while when it gets colder but take off the outer leaves and Voila! pretty cabbages again. This year our brussel sprouts were late. But whereas last year, somebody ate them off the stalk, this year I might get some whole ones. I love brussel sprouts. Maybe a bit tall for growing tables
hmmmmmmm Ours would freeze in the garage. Last year we put the potatoes in the basement. By spring it started looking like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers as the eyes turned into vines. We have a room off the family room that is not heated but if we put produce at the doorway to the house, the produce (mostly apples) makes it through most of the cold. We didn't put in carrots this year. No more horses. Nor beets, and I am sorry about that. But last year a critter ate the root crops from the tops down. Very disappointing. Pulled up the tops and most of the bottom was gone.
I think we had voles get to a few beets, but nothing major. Before we put in the electric fences, moose would get in and pull out all the beets. They didn't eat the beets or even the tops, but would pull them all out of the ground. They would also take one bite out of every head of cabbage, but never eat an entire head. The cabbage was the real reason we put the fences in. We have no livestock either, but we never had horses; too expensive and they didn't do great when the snow got over 4 feet deep. We have friends with horses, and they would sit in the barn for 9 months eating purchased hay.
Nope, you can grow Brussels sprouts on tables just fine. Height is not an issue, but width can be. Bush squashes takes a lot of room, but the vining types can be trained to a trellis just like melons or pole beans.