Fall & Winter Crop Update – Vegetables
Fresh Vegetables Grown All Year!
The Tropical Grower grows food. Wait, didn’t we already cover this? Remember the words: immensely satisfying and joyous, about eating food I’ve grown? Yeah, still true. Welcome to the 2nd installment of The Tropical Grower Fall/Winter Crop Update: Vegetables. We’re happy to be eating the fruits of our labor or vegetables, depending on what we’ve harvested.
If you missed the first installment, you can find it at: Fall & Winter Crop Update – Fruits & Herbs. As a quick update, we harvested our first tomatilloes last week. Absolutely lovely little buggers and tasty. I have finally broken my inability to fruit with the tomatillo. My family will still make fun of me for a while.
Cantaloupe
We also missed the cantaloupe with the rest of the fruits. It’s not its fault, it’s hidden under the giant broccoli. I have never had much luck with cantaloupe. My mom wishes I could get it to grow better. I’ve planted it in numerous places around Our Garden, and I finally thought I had found a good place in the new house beds when the cold snap hit. The whole plant died to save the one fruit, still small.
I’ve got my fingers crossed it will make it at the very least to a ripe fruit. I washed the seed pack with my shorts. I’m out of seeds. If it doesn’t make more, I’m back to buying them.
Broccoli
I first planted broccoli about 7 years ago. It has taken me that long to figure out how to grow a cold weather plant in a tropical growing climate successfully, and I’m still honing it.
First, broccoli is a crazy grower. The first couple of years I crowded the plants, planted them too close together. I got one spindly head and lots of leaves. It was the year we figured out, you can indeed eat the leaves, just like broccoli tasting lettuce or saute it like Swiss Chard and Kale. Yum.
In a tropical climate, you have to plan for the plant to be at least twice the size they recommend. It’s going to grow like it wants to live forever in that spot as a tree. Then, it is going to fall over while still standing up, no matter how you stake it, and the stem is going to grow sideways on the ground for a short distance before growing straight up again. It uses its big leaves to prop itself up while it is doing this, and I almost never find it laying on its side.
Harvesting Dec-July
Planting in September, our plants are ready for their first harvest in November/December and continue to produce into July when they die. Continually harvesting the heads is key. If it goes to flower, your chances of it dying are very good.
I planted 9 plants this year, one specifically for My Brother. Two are directly in the ground, 3 are in raised beds, and 4 are planted in gallon pots.
The two direct plants are the largest. One was pushing 4 feet and the other close to 3 feet high, about the same width, when I started harvesting them. The raised beds are a close second in size, and the gallon pots are normal, as grown everywhere else, size. I tried the gallon pots specifically for this purpose. I wanted to see if I could get larger heads on smaller plants. The results are mixed so far. I just did my second harvest on these as they were the succession plantings, planted later. The heads appeared larger on two, the other two about the same as the other plants, both harvests. I’d say that is the definition of mixed results.
Hurricane Ian
We had 3 plants in the ground when Hurricane Ian hit. They were small, and I decided to cover them with weed barrier cloth. Using their plant stakes to keep the cloth directly off the plants, I stapled the edges with garden staples, lots of them. If the cloth would have lifted or tore at all, it would have been bad. Think, cloth whipping baby plants to death. It didn’t, staying in place very well this time. It took a moment for these to recover, but they’ve done very well.
We’ve been harvesting once or twice a week since Dec. There are 9 plants. I’ve given My Brother 2 gallon bags of broccoli, leaves and heads. I have another one for him in the fridge. My Son and Hannah also got a bag along with some Kale in another bag. We had broccoli, roasted in the oven with garlic and salt, last night for dinner. It was yummy. Demand met.
Corn
As much as I enjoyed watching our 16 plants grow big and healthy after Hurricane Ian, we got our first cold snap at the end of December, about the time the first plantings were developing fruit and sent the second plantings into premature pollinating. Dang. We got 3 decent corn cobs, a bit small. Another 5 were half cobs. Definitely not the worst crop I’ve grown. Oh, how that makes me laugh.
You can find the full update of the fall/winter corn crop at: How to Successfully Plant Corn
Green Beans, Pole Beans
We had 8 plants produce enough to serve fresh green beans from Our Garden to our entire family for Christmas dinner. How cool is that? I harvested three large bags a couple of days before Christmas, trimming back the vines. They were a bit crazy. All but one of the plants were healthy and ready to grow.
Lifting the weed barrier mat, I added fresh fertilizer, mixing into the top 2 inches. I removed the sad plant parts and trimmed most of the larger leaves, also looking sad.
The vines had little clusters of new leaves, and I was hoping for a second round. Unfortunately, the second cold snap has them looking drab with no flowers. If they don’t appear to be going anywhere by the middle of February, very soon, I’ll rotate the bed to a new plant who will be happy in the nitrogen rich bed. Beans are like that.
Radishes
If you’ve never grown radishes, they’re one of the quickest, easiest, grows in my opinion, like green beans. From seed sowing to harvest, we’re turning them in about 30 days.
I planted radishes in the new raised row crop beds a couple of days before Hurricane Ian hit us along with my first round of corn. In my defense, we thought it was still heading towards Tampa at that point. It’s in an area filled with what I like to call Black Sand. I grow root vegetables successfully, particularly carrots, in this mix.
They came up a couple of days after the storm, and I got my first harvest by the end of October, above ground. Yes, you read that correctly, I’ve been growing radishes above ground, no matter how many times I buried them. Hum. It apparently has something to do with the dense consistency of the Black Sand. Covering them with mulch, the produce was not affected at all.
I wouldn’t call radishes yummy, but they definitely add something nice to salads. Instead of hitting the area again with seeds and new plants, I chopped the green part off (you can actually eat this part too) along with the stem to replant. Most of the green part dies while it is rerooting, but the radish bulb you harvest grows right back. I’m turning these about every 30 days.
Figuring It Out
Now, being a grower faced with a challenge, growing root vegetables above ground, I couldn’t resist. I’ve been trying the plants in some different places, shot some video, and generally trying to figure it out. I’m planning a post as soon as I have a little more information. See the weirdo on the right? That one was mad I keep burying the root and grew that funky stem.
Cauliflower
This is my first year growing cauliflower. It is not one of my favorites, but My Mom likes it. I usually will only eat small bits of the head cut up in salads.
We have 3 plants in Our Garden this season, 2 in raised beds. The 2 are very large, and the other, planted in a gallon pot, is normal size.
The one in the row crop raised bed just started producing a head. Since these were all planted and lived under the weed cloth with the broccoli during Hurricane Ian, I thought we’d have more heads by now, but these are turning out to be very slow growers. Good to know, about 4 to 4 1/2 months in Our Garden.
Cabbage
We have several varieties of cabbage planted around Our Garden. The normal heads of cabbage are super slow growers in my experience. If I plant them in September, I might have a head by the end of spring, beginning of summer. Sometimes, the next year. I planted 2 this year, both are acting weird and already have heads. They seem to like the gallon pot, cluster arrangement. Our Garden also had 2 I planted the September before last. Besides never going to head the previous year, the Hong Kong Orchid tree fell on them during Hurricane Ian. But, yes, they are alive. In fact, they look super healthy for the first time in a while. I could have pulled them out of the ground, but I didn’t need the space.
Expanding Our Varieties
This year, I also planted Red Cabbage and Michihili Chinese Cabbage. I’m looking for something with a little faster turn-around time. We eat both of these, and with more space and time to grow, they seemed a good addition. I will still always grow traditional cabbage. We are just looking for some supplemental food.
The red cabbage is growing beautifully, so much so it started stealing all the water from the irrigation head. I had to raise the head out of leaf reach to get water to all the other plants. I’ve harvested the outer leaves several times to put in salads and coleslaw.
The Michihili Chinese Cabbage I just planted. Technically, I believe it would be a spring crop.
Banana Peppers
I almost proved we can grow banana peppers year-round this year. Stupid Ian. It wasn’t entirely the Hurricane’s fault. I also got a bug in my seedling nursery. I never identified said bug, but the chewed seed leaves were obvious. The low number of sprouts based on the number of seeds I planted, some not at all, might have been the same bug eating them instead. Ugh. Since my last plant died at the end of August and I didn’t get another in the ground until October, theory not proven.
Peppers in general grow well here. They even like the summer heat if you can get their roots dried out on occasion during the summer. My family loves peppers, and I grow different varieties for them in February, but this fall I was working against getting plants established before the cold snaps. If I’m unsure, I’ll only grow a couple. Since I’m only partial to banana peppers, it’s what I planted.
In general, the winters are mild, not cold. Peppers don’t love it, but they don’t hate it either. If you plant them in plant groupings during the winter, it keeps them warmer.
Fall Winter Crop
At the beginning of October, 2 banana pepper starter plants went into gallon pots. Usually, I plant these directly in the ground, and they produce literally banana sized peppers. These were much smaller, about 3 inches, but I’ve harvested a steady supply, about 1 a week, since the end of October. They also both got a bug or mildew, not sure which. I use an organic that treats both, and they surprisingly came right back. Not usually the case, but the plants were young and strong.
Celery
My mom has basically told me I cannot grow enough celery for her. She wants it everywhere. I’m chuckling to myself at the moment. Who knew? But I guess it does appear often in the mix.
While my celery crop has consistently done well once I figured out how to grow it, not so much this year. It wasn’t the hurricane. The culprit this year was that pesky nursery bug. I know I saw seeds sprout. They just never got to seed leaves. Only one made it into the ground, or in this case mound.
Our one and only is growing on the north side of the hibiscus mound. These things take forever. I have another 10 sprouted in the nursery waiting to get big enough for the spring planting.
Eggplant
There are numerous eggplants planted around Our Garden this season. Unfortunately, only one has produced so far. The eggplants never reached full maturity as something started munching on them, all of them. Dang. I really hate it when that happens.
Mostly, we have had pretty plants and flowers that get bugs. I treat, and they come back. It’s not surprising, bugs get bad after storms. Standing water and displacement tend to do that in tropical environments, and bugs are always an issue here. Storms trigger their tiny bug brains to reproduce, and they do, horribly. Organics are only marginally effective in those conditions.
Eggplants are notorious for attracting bugs in a normal growing season. In fact, one of the grower ladies I take advice from, plants eggplant as a bug amusement park next to her other plants like sweet potatoes. She is sacrificing them for a better crop of the neighbor plants. I’m pretty sure I did this unintentionally this year. We’ll see. I currently have flowers and plants starting to look healthy again.
Onions
These white onions were planted late, end of October, beginning of November. I planted white onion and red onion sets, baby onions, I purchased this year. The white onions are doing great. The red onions, 9 of them, did not sprout. Those and another 10 rotted in the bag. I have another 15 I’m currently trying to force. They look healthy, but have no sprouts.
Garlic
Technically, garlic should have probably been included with herbs, but it’s a bulb. It requires growing like a bulb, not the leafy greens of most herbs.
I planted individual cloves this year which have produced what look like green onions. Every once in a while, I’ll pull one out of the ground and we’ll cook it with other veggies for a garlic flavor. I’m considering purchasing some starters and pulling these all out of the ground. I do not believe they will ever produce clove heads.
Carrots
I eat carrots everyday, no lie, I miss maybe a day or two a year. It is one of those plants I will never grow enough to satisfy my demand. Currently, there are 4 different varieties planted for the fall/winter season.
Using best grower practices, I did succession plantings. This is where you plant in stages so the veggies will ripen over time instead of getting a single crop all at once. I’ve harvested a few over the last month right on schedule. Yummy! There is nothing like freshly grown carrots, and I will have a steady supply for the rest of winter into spring.
We can grow root vegetables
Planting carrots for the first time about 3 years ago, I got a banner crop my first year out. It was a shock, and I was kicking myself for not planting more. The first time I checked a plant and saw orange, there might have been a yip. I literally did not believe I could grow a root vegetable here. Boy was I wrong.
While I have not tried directly planting carrots in our natural ground, growing these in pots and raised beds is a breeze. I’m still surprised by it. I even direct-plant the tiny seeds. They grow in Black Sand: garden compost, minus the particulates – the chunky stuff, and sand. It looks and feels exactly like black sand. Carrots love it.
I plan to rotate the beds as the carrots get mature into the February plantings. I’m just not sure what those are going to be at the moment. Currently, I’m trying to replant the leafy green part and stem to see if I can skip the seedlings.
Snow Peas
We’ve been growing snow peas for years in Our Garden. The crop is always small, very small. Most years I’ll get a few pods. This year we harvested our largest crop, about 10 pods off of two plants. There is a way to grow these well here. I just haven’t figured it out.
Sweet Potato
As a tropical grower, I have shied away from sweet potatoes, root vegetables in general. Images of them rotting in the ground filled my head. I was wrong. We can grow root vegetables, but I’ve been struggling with the sweet potatoes since last February when I bought some slips for spring planting.
Now, I’d like to say first, I absolutely rock growing sweet potato vines. I took over 2 whole fence lines, the back half of my new house beds and a bromeliad bed, last spring. We got a single sweet potato from 15 plants. Too much nitrogen in my soil. This includes the pot I filled with plain ole yard sand.
I keep reading how finicky these vines are for most people. One person said theirs wouldn’t grow if they planted them in windy conditions. Huh? They didn’t mind the summer storms, the rain, or the heat. I even chopped off all but the main vine coming out of the ground, repeatedly, on each of the plants. Our vines are not fragile in any way. In fact, they grow like any of the other invasive vines here. Crazy.
Hurricane Ian
After Hurricane Ian, the vines were in a whipped state, mostly vine stems. Pretty much everything in Our Garden lost their leaves. And I want to be real clear about this, they would have completely grown back, no problem. However, I made the decision to pull them all out of the ground and replanted fresh slips. I’ve been growing vines for slips along the back fence line to plant later. That’s when I got my single sweet potato from the Spring season.
The slips have grown nicely, not a crazy vine overtake of the area, but I still have no sweet potatoes developing in the ground, that I’ve found. It is possible I haven’t found them. I didn’t find the one I had until I dug up the whole vine, but I doubt it. I’m thinking I need to burn all the nitrogen in the planting beds before I start getting decent crops. This is a ‘still trying’ crop.
Spinach
We had lovely spinach plants for a couple of months. Just when they were ready to start harvesting leaves, the bugs got them, little itty-bitty black bugs. Idjits. They died, both the plants and the bugs.
The second round, 2 more plants, are still small, but they appear to be growing healthy in 2 totally separate locations. There would be more, but I had problems getting the seeds to sprout or a bug was eating them as previously discussed.
Lettuces
I put lettuce in the ground all year. New plants like old go to seed almost as quickly as they’re planted in July and August. If you catch them quickly enough, you can have young lettuce in the summer here. Otherwise, we have actual lettuce the rest of the year. My problem is getting enough of it in the ground.
I just harvested 2 heads of Cimmeron, a head of Romain, a head of Oakleaf and two heads of Buttercrunch. It’s not that I wanted to harvest them, but they started to go to seed after the last cold snap. Unfortunately, I’d completed the first harvest on most of these and the second round was coming up when the cold snap hit. I just went out and pulled them all out of the ground. So, we have lettuce. The question is can we eat it all. I may have to start making To-Go bags.
There is still one Oakleaf in the ground, not quite ready for first harvest, and I have a whole second set of starter plants ready to go into the ground. There will probably be a small window of no fresh lettuce. Dang.
Kale
We have a lovely Kale plant we’ve been growing for years. It had two buddies that died this year in the storm. But it came back, and I planted two new buddies to grow with it.
The trick to keeping the same plant alive is to only harvest the outer leaves. I’m the only one in our house that admits to liking kale. If you cut it into thin strips and add to a coleslaw or saute small cuts, my family will eat it. Otherwise, they won’t touch it. Since our demand is small, harvesting only from the outside works. If you need a bunch, probably not as effective unless there were more plants.
Harvesting throughout the year, the plants will start to look spindly in the late summer. I cut the center part with the newer leaves and about 4 to 6 inches of stem, and replant it. It reroots and a healthy plant starts producing new leaves.
Swiss Chard
We love Swiss Chard at my house, and I grow some huge leaves. Literally, one leaf is enough for a whole 3 person salad. Crazy right? Because of the seedling debacle or seedling bug, I only planted a single plant. While it is possible for us to get by on a single plant, ours got bugs.
They ate all the baby center leaves leaving the outer leaves before I got them sprayed. So, no Swiss Chard. I left the outer leaves to keep the plant alive. It seems to have worked as we have new baby leaves coming up.
Lima Beans
We grow Lima Beans and have for years. My Mom’s husband loves them, but I never get a big crop. It’s entirely due to the lack of plants. If I planted more, we’d get a full dinner in one season instead of me saving dried beans until there is enough. Grower error.
There is a lovely 4 plant crop this year. Because we harvest dried beans, I leave them on the plant until the pods start to dry. Now, you have to be careful if you use the dry on the vine method. The pods like to pop and throw the beans all over the place. Luckily, I believe we have enough for a dinner this season.
Cucumbers
Cucumbers are a favorite in our kitchen, and we’ve been growing them, like tomatoes and basil, since Our Garden got its first load of dirt. Priorities.
9 plants went in the ground for the fall/winter growing season. I direct-plant cucumber seeds until I get a plant, usually the first time. All are dead, and we’ve had no lovely cucumbers this season. They grew happy and flowered. Some of them even had little baby cucumbers on the vine. Everything died after the 2nd cold snap. I thought there was one survivor, but it died too.
Cucumbers do not like cold, and planting late was a roll of the dice. I knew the deal. But I’m a grower, I kill a lot of plants. Hope doesn’t mean things go the right direction. And in their defense, they all survived the 1st cold snap.
Since the forecast does not call for another below 40 drop in temperature this year, I decided to be a wild woman and throw some more seeds in the ground. Starting my succession plantings early. I’m hoping an early crop is in our future.
Artichoke
When I set up the new row crop raised beds, I added two 2.5 gallon open ‘bucket’ pots (so technically raised beds) between the beds for a long-term plant. We decided Artichoke should live there for a while, and I dropped the new starter plants I grew in the nursery the first week of Oct. These are supposed to grow for a number of years.
They got bugs, both of them. Nasty ones. I ended up treating both of them, twice, with the organic stuff. I dislike spraying anything directly on the food, but there was little choice. Only one of them survived. It is looking healthy for the first time since right after I planted it.
Winter Squash – Spaghetti, Beets, Parsnips
All dead. The Spaghetti Squash died with the cucumbers. In hindsight, I should have harvested some of the lovely flowers we enjoyed all season to throw in a salad because it was the only thing we got. I’ve actually seen the flowers stuffed with soft cheese and deep fried. Boy do I wish I would have gotten to try that.
The Beets sprouted but they never grew. I’m going to have to do some more research on getting those going. They did not like directly planting the seeds, most don’t in our area. I’ve got more sprouts going in the nursery. The Parsnips never came up even though I direct-planted seeds twice, before and after Hurricane Ian. Seeds with overly long germination periods do not do well in tropical gardens. I’m currently forcing sprouts for the spring season.
