Around the Garden
| May 29, 2012 | Posted by Guest under Gardening, Produce |
By: Amy Campbell-Smith, Division of Food, Nutrition and Wellness
Watermelon
The Fresh for Florida Kids Food Garden is producing so many fruits and vegetables right now. Here’s a recap of what we’ve seen so far!
There’s a sizable watermelon on one of the vines in the back of the garden! And a bunch of tiny melons are strung like Christmas lights along the vines. They’ll grow quickly with all the sunshine we’ve been getting.
The vines on the left side of the back garden are cantaloupes, and they are loaded with tiny fruits!
Our butternut squash are doing really well. We counted 6 squash, with one starting to turn cream-colored. They won’t be ready until around September though. By then we’ll have a truckload!
I saw at least 4 baby zucchini, 3 baby pattypans, and a dozen crookneck babies in the squash/cucumber bed.
Speaking of cukes, we’ll have those for a while. There are bunches of tiny cucumbers on the vines, and we picked 4 today!
The zipper peas, also known as crowder peas, are starting to come in. I picked some black-eyed peas and I saw 6 or 7 zipper pea pods. You can tell them from the black-eyed peas by the lack of the purple blotch on the bottom of the pod.
Potato
Every day a tomato or two ripens…go out there and grab one!
We also have potatoes…but they won’t be ready until the potato plants start dying off. Right now, the leaves are still photosynthesizing the sunlight, turning it into energy which it puts into producing big fat edible roots. Yum!
There are tons of eggplants growing too. We’ll have more than enough to last us for a while.
That’s about it for this week, I’ll have another garden update soon!
For more photos, click here!
