Mrs. Chippy's plant world and edible landscape design

Debra from Mrs. Chippy's plant world

 Last week I took an incredible road trip to visit Debra from Mrs. Chippy's plant world and edible landscape design in St. Petersburg.  She had a large diverse collection of beautiful tropical edible plants throughout her entire property.   No wonder, she's a master gardener and practices natural organic permaculture gardening principles.  This tropical paradise was loaded with honey bees feasting on all her flowering plants.  The bee in the sunflower image below was completely covered  in pollen.  I wish I had a better camera to show the mess she was making.

honey bee completely covered with pollen

Debra sells red wriggler worms and was able to set me up with a nice worm casting / compost system.  With this system the worms will make super food for your plants and provide a powerful compost that makes the best compost tea.  Plus the worms multiply.  More worms = more compost.

Getting up close and personal with my compost

I had purchased her worms through the Indian Rocks co-op but incorrectly placed them into my compost pile which I later found out was a very bad idea.  Thinking it through, I quickly realized the mistake and dumped my two compost bins and manually went through all the compost looking for worms.  Since it was the next day, three hours of sifting only yielded about 20 worms or so.  They blend in so well.   Debra was a great help and quickly set me on the right track to raising worms correctly.

In addition to learning about many exotic plants I traded honey for plenty of cuttings and plants to bring back to The Florida Bee Farm.  It was a blast learning from an expert.    Here's a few pictures of Mrs. Chippy's plant world.

Seeds and cuttings

Networking with other gardeners is a great way to expand your garden in an economical and educational way.  Because spending time with other gardeners can be a good opportunity to learn about plants you haven't worked with in the past. 

I met a really good gardener the other day and was lucky to be able to walk through her garden with her while she showed me many interesting varieties of flowering plants.  Many plants that bees and butterflies thrive around.  I swapped some honey for seeds, plants and cuttings and also learned a lot.  I only wish I took the time to take some pictures of her garden because it was beautiful.  But I had my hands full, taking notes, juggling plants, cuttings and seeds and labeling baggies.  The icing on the cake was she had four chickens that ran around while we discussed gardening.  Interesting because I keep thinking that having chickens might be fun.

One of my favorite plants was her exotic balloon milkweed plant.  It looked like a milkweed plant with a big ole balloon hanging from it.  And the balloon was full of seeds.  I planted about 40 seeds so hopefully there will be balloon milkweed in our Honey Bee Flower Garden before long.

Balloon Milkweed

Just about the whole day was spent potting seeds and cuttings.  The nursery / Florida Green House was completely full so some of the Purple Cherokee tomatoes got to graduate out of the nursery.   Stage II Tomato growing area is also filling up again so it's about time to build some more container plant growing areas.

Greenhouse / Nursery filling up

New arrivals

Happy plants