Joseph’s Coat rose, blooming at Florida Forest Gardens at Rose Hill, near Aripeka, Florida.
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These pictures are of our Legacy Loquat, an exciting new variety that we will be propagating for sale. This variety flowers around December and fruits between February and March. The fruit is very sweet and many of the fruits are seedless or nearly seedless. We hope to be able to offer these for sale in one-gallon containers by the late summer of 2023.
Here, at Florida Forest Gardens, we are super busy! We are well into our rainy season. I love Florida weather all year, but the rainy season is particularly lovely because everything grows so well.
I am heavily engaged in plant propagation and planting and in researching and applying all I can about soil fertility, particularly following the JADAM and Korean Natural Farming (KNF) methods.
Meanwhile, my son Josiah has been busy supporting my efforts, particularly through his building projects. He converted and upgraded a decades-old shed with a new roof and deck floor, a safe, dry place for storage. He also has built me two carport-style greenhouses. These structures are a long-term, temporary hub for the majority of our forest gardening projects.
Almost daily, we are receiving truckloads of tree mulch. The picture above, from this morning, shows what we have so far, about seven loads. That’s less than half of what we are planning to receive. The rain will help the mulch break down into fungal dominated soil. That is exactly what we want in a forest garden. Wheelbarrow load, by wheelbarrow load, we will spread that on top of what Josiah spread last year. In doing so, he found some basketball sized clumps of mycelium which he made sure to break apart and place strategically around the property underneath various wheelbarrow loads.
Every truckload of tree mulch translates into many wheelbarrow loads, and that translates into our objective: continuing to build soil fertility, load by load.
This has been a quick update. In future blogs and other writings, I will include more detail about our projects and the development of our business, Florida Forest Gardens, LLC.
This is the time of year when loquat trees in Florida are blossoming and bearing their luscious yellow fruit. My first experience with growing loquats was in 1979 when my young husband and I and our young children lived in a house that my parents had bought but had not yet moved into, and they wanted us to take care of it for them in the interim. There were two loquat trees on that small subdivision lot, and both bore a lot of fruit. What to do with it? I loved apple butter, so I thought it made sense to make loquat butter. I did so, and in the words of my snowbird grandmother, my snowbird grandfather loved it so much that “he almost swallowed his tongue” eating it. Continue reading “Serendipitous Sea of Loquat Seedlings”
With forest gardening, I love the balance between the planned and the unplanned.
As for unplanned, I think of the first time that I ever even knew about hog plums was when a bush spontaneously grew up close to the driveway and every time I passed it, I was captivated by the wonderful aroma of its blossoms. I never planted that bush there. It took some investigating to even figure out what it was. Now, I have several hog plum bushes, each of which grew up spontaneously, probably from seed spread by the gopher tortoises which love my property.
Florida State Parks — Photograph of Gopher Tortoise eating green vegetation-by Dr. Pamela Jones-Morton
Forest gardening is about creating hospitable environments for all kinds of living things, preferably native species. Here in Florida, that includes the green anole, which over the past few decades has been getting squeezed out by the highly invasive and aggressive brown anole. Here on Rose Hill, we see far more brown anoles than the native green anoles. Continue reading “Green Anoles”
Yesterday, Christmas Day, I planted a papaya circle. This is a type of pit gardening, where you dig a circle approximately a yard deep and a yard in diameter, and you mound the soil up around the edges.
The pit is for collecting items for composting and for collecting water.
I had a papaya that was overripe and was starting to go bad, so I opened it up, splitting it lengthwise with a knife, and then scooped out the seeds from inside and spread them near the top of the mounded soil around the circle and then covered them lightly with soil. Then I watered the pit and watered the mound well.
It is an odd time of the year to be planting papaya seeds. If we get a frost, they may die, but I am always experimenting and pushing the envelope. This time, it is not entirely a shot in the dark. From past experience, I know that papaya seeds planted this way germinate very readily, nearly 100 percent, and are easy to grow and are resilient.
Below are some of my bigger ones that I grew from seed and that now have fruit on them: one behind the white bucket, and the other two in front of the white fence:
These papayas were so resilient. They were growing out of a holes of a pot where I had reused the soil that I had planted them in, and they hung on through the winter last year. By the time spring came, I figured that if they were that determined to grow, I would just put them in the ground. I did so, and they kept on growing.
The pit method I am using now is based on a combination of: 1) my past experience in growing papayas from seed; 2) some videos I have watched recently about planting a papaya circle, including from one of my favorite natural farmers, John Kaisner; 3) another video I watched recently about another favorite, David Goodman (David the Good) showing how to plant papaya seeds (which I already knew) and in another video about planting jackfruit, emphasizing that starting fruit tree seeds in the ground is the best method. So, rather than plant the seeds somewhere expecting to transplant them, I just planted them where I expect they will stay.
The papaya trunk size is large and sturdy. These papayas weathered Hurricane Irma in September.
Some people cut the trunk completely off about five feet from the ground to force the papaya to stay short, to make it more sturdy and less likely to topple over, as well as to make the fruit easier to reach, but I have not tried that yet.
Botanically, the papaya plant is identified as Carica Papaya. Papaya plants can be male, female, or hermaphrodite. Once the seeds sprout, I will thin them out, probably to about six nice specimens, among which there are bound to be both a mixture of genders. Papaya leaves are edible, so even if a plant bears no fruit, it has usefulness in an edible food forest.
Antlions
As it is, my papaya circle looks kind of like an antlion’s trap. Antlions are so plentiful here, probably because ants are plentiful here.
In building and tending my forest garden, I try to make beneficial insects at home so they can do what they do naturally and take care of the not-so-beneficial insects.
[May 24, 2020: That papaya circle experiment was a failure. In forest gardening, you have to not be afraid of failures because you will likely have many, especially in the beginning. Now, I have another overripe papaya, and I am getting ready to try out another papaya planting experiment. This time of year is far more opportune for planting papaya seeds. I will let you know how it goes!]
Crinum lilies are perennial, long-living perennials. They are a wonderful part of a forest garden.
Today, while I was working in my forest garden, I noticed something that I have never seen before. My Crinum lilies are preparing to flower, in November!
My family and I moved into our home in December 1985. The Crinum lilies were already here; I am not sure for how long. In the spring of 1986, we saw them bloom for the first time. Every year since then, these lilies could be counted on to bloom reliably around the first week of June. They would bloom just once, and then they were done until the next spring.
Last November I moved these lilies from the backyard. It took a bobcat tractor to dig them out, the bulbs were so big. The backyard is north facing to the front yard, which faces south, so the Crinums are getting more sun now. Still, I have never seen them bloom at this time of year before. Continue reading “In Season, or Out of Season?”
Forest gardening is the most ancient form of land use, dating back to Creation. We were created to dress and to keep a garden named Eden. The name Eden means “delight” or “pleasing” so we were created to cultivate that which is delightful and pleasing to our Creator, to ourselves, and to others through us.
Through this web site, I hope to stir up the capacity for that which is already within you through sharing my own unfolding story as I forest garden my family’s properties. What I include herein is based on my experience in central Florida but has wider relevance for others who also wish to forest garden for practical and spiritual benefits now and for posterity.
My garden gate of this web site is standing open for you. Stay as long as you like. Come back as often as you wish. Bring your friends and family. There is room for all to visit here, to learn, and to share.
My family and I moved into our home in December 1985. The Crinum lilies were already here; I am not sure for how long. In the spring of 1986, we saw them bloom for the first time. Every year since then, these lilies could be counted on to bloom reliably around the first week of June. They would bloom just once, and then they were done until the next spring.