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

The Honeybee Garden

For the last couple weeks work has been progressing on the honeybee garden which sits approximately 30 feet behind the hives.   Last weekend we planted the milkweed flowers and various other plants we had been accumulating.   Also there were many seedlings that were ready to plant so those were added to the garden.  Most of the seedlings were various varieties of sunflower but there were also Moringa (edible) and papaya seedlings.  I'm finally getting the hang of starting plants from seeds which is much more gratifying than store bought plants.

A couple hundred bulbs were also planted in the garden including many varieties and colors of iris, gladiolas and a bunch whose names evade me now.  A bag of mixed flower seeds (honeybee mix) was also sprinkled over the entire area.   If everything grows as planned it should be very beautiful.

A couple of days after mowing the lawn with that riding lawnmower, several bees kept harassing me as I worked in the yard.   Even when I wasn't even close to the hives a few chose to be quite annoying.  Fortunately I was able to send them to bee heaven and it's been back to normal since ... kind of.  The one very large hive by the chair where I used to sit and watch the bees seems to have a million guard bees hanging out on the landing entrance area.  They don't seem to like me sitting there any longer and let me know it.   It's like a bunch of gang members hanging out on a street corner and then I come along.  A few of them want to show off in front of the other guard bees and have a good laugh as the lumbering human gets chased off.  It's so humiliating ....

The original 2 raised beds are doing well but the new one is just ok.  That one didn't get enough good compost and soil so it's going to need some extra TLC.  Most of the plants are doing very well and we've been getting plenty of fresh tomatoes which is our favorite.  And it looks like the mustard greens will be ready for picking soon.

Growing corn in Florida should be interesting

Slightly challenged raised bed

Brussel sprouts

The rain barrel system has been tweaked and a level indicator was installed.  It rained right after it was installed so watching the indicator rise showed how quickly the rain barrels fill up.  The plumbing with the new pump was also completed and works very well.  Only thing that still needs to be installed is a backup system which will allow me to hook up a hose to city water in case the rain barrels run dry and the irrigation system needs to run.  The (new) irrigation system will be installed later this week and should automate most of the watering.  Because it takes a lot of time to water all these plants and you can't ignore that task.

A few more gardening lessons learned the hard way

The mini greenhouses we made seemed to be working so well and produced many healthy looking little cucumber plants.  The cukes were beautiful and I was just getting ready to permanently remove the tops from the mini greenhouses.  But I waited a day too late.  They ended up getting baked and wilting which was a big disappointment.  A few may survive but this was another one of those lessons the hard way.   But something was learned at least.

The other big disappointment was these low pressure soaker hoses that I spent so much time installing.  Once mulch goes on top of them, they stop working and clog up with the dust from the mulch.  A complete waste of time and money.  Fortunately these (Mr. Drip / Mr. Soaker Hose) were bought from Amazon and I'll be able to get a refund.  It will just be a real pain to pull them out of the dirt and put them in a box to return. 

It's virtually impossible to find others using them.  One person said hers stopped working which made me suspicious and had me monitoring the hoses closely until I determined they were complete junk.  Now it's back to the drawing board to come up with a hands free irrigation system to keep our plants watered.

Rain barrels working well with low pressure soaker hoses

The rain barrels are filled and the plants are thirsty.  So the next step is to get the water to the raised beds and come up with an efficient irrigation system.  One local gardener I bumped into at Home Depot was showing me pictures of his garden and recommended using soaker hoses instead of drip irrigation.  He told me that it's more of a long term solution that works regardless of how you space your plants.  He didn't have a rain barrel system and used city water so soaker hoses hooked up to a pressurized system are much different than low pressure soaker hoses and a rain barrel system.

One option was to hook a pump up to the rain barrels and make my own pressurized system but a simple system was more what I wanted to build.  After extensive browsing the internet, there was one video about a soaker hose system hooked up to rain barrels.  The guy seemed pretty happy with the system but it bothered me that there wasn't more youtube videos or websites talking about the rain barrel soaker hoses from Mr. Drip / Mr. Soakerhose.  And there wasn't much else out there that worked on low pressure and rain barrels.  So I wasn't sure what to expect when the two 50' hoses and fittings arrived in our mail.

The first thing was 3/4" PVC pipe from the rainbarrels were ran underground to the garden area (about 25-30' away).  Then a 50' section was installed in each raised bed.  One bed was installed and tested it and it really worked well.  After doing the second section, I was surprised to find out that both of them hooked together worked just as efficient as running one. Plenty of pressure and moisture delivered to the plants. This system is just right for my setup as you cannot attach a standard soaker hose from a hardware store to a low pressure rainbarrel system.  And you cannot use the rain barrel soaker hoses with pressurized city water or it will blow them out.  Here's a video of the system in action.  (sorry about the smudge on the lens)

In the future the plans are for adding 2 more raised beds and a dual outlet irrigation timer if I can find one.  Otherwise it will be 2 separate timers.  Timers I also discovered are picky about water pressure and this system will need a low pressure timer.

I have been so busy there wasn't any time devoted to blogging about the plants I put in this week.  It's a work in process and the cold weather earlier in the week messed me up.   Tomatoes, kale, chard, onions, califlower, peppers, mustard greens, and a few others were planted.  It's all starting to come together.

Pineapples and the first red tomato

Yesterday was spent getting a trailer full of finely ground oak mulch from a large stump grinding.  It was free but took a good bit of work and time.  The mulch will come in handy.

The nice thing about the Florida Bee Farm is it's a place where I can move a lot of our home plants.  Especially the ones that haven't reached their potential because of giant oak trees around our house that provide so much shade and limit the sun.  A couple strong honeysuckle plants were transplanted to be in close proximity to the honey bee hives.  Honey bees love honeysuckle and I have a feeling that will be one popular flowering plant back there.

I also moved a couple pampas grass plants that were really doing poorly.  If they thrive they will look very cool around the lion.  Hopefully the full sun will revive them again.  And today half of our  pineapple plants were moved to the bee farm.  Even in almost full shade they have been producing pineapples for years.  Can't imagine how they'll do in the sun.  All the pineapples were simply started by whacking the leafy top off and sticking it in the ground.  They don't produce a lot but when they do, the pineapples are delicious.  That is if I can get to them before the critters do.  In the pineapple patch is also a banana tree that we bought last weekend,  just because ...

Pineapple (and one banana) plants

The bees are really doing well in their new homes.  Today I removed the sugar feeders I put in them and added frames to the upper deep box.  Maybe it's a little early to do that but I'm going to give it a try.  I stood and watched the bees coming and going for awhile today and noticed that the ones coming into the hives were loaded down with pollen.  I didn't realize how easy it is to see the pollen that's hanging on the side of their legs.  They all were loaded down with pollen so sugar feeding is off the menu.  It didn't take them long at all to adapt to their new homes.

Almost ripe tomato

And last but not least.  Our first red tomato !!!!!  Maybe a day or two more and we'll be munching a fresh tomato from the garden.  Yippee dog !