Gardening in Fla is different. Everyone knows that because of the milder winters. But it means much more than different varieties and a longer growing season. Living out in the woods is different than being in the burbs due to the encroachment of nature on your gardening space, so my particular experience is a bit different than typical Florida gardening, weather notwithstanding. So I’m going to explain some of the more significant differences to my gardening readership.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that our banana tree had fruit and we wondered how long it would take to ripen. I believe it was in June that we first noticed the micro bananas. It’s now mid August and the fruit is still deep green with no signs of ripening. The large purple flower pod at the end of the stalks that was quite visible and distinctive has long since died away but the fruit on the stalk looks about the same. I’ll let you know as that changes since the plan is for a giant banana split party when ripe.

I learned today that we now have guava trees growing in several locations. Our neighbor has a few so I’m guessing that birds seeded some starts in our yard. I had seen these bushes growing and liked the foliage so only cut them back in places where they were intrusive. I noticed today that one of the bushes is loaded with fruit, from bright red to tiny green pods. I think the red ones are ripe but need to verify that with the neighbor. Since I have been seeing this variety of what I thought was wild, natural foliage all over, I decided to take inventory. Fact is that if Mrs Smuckers decides to offer Guava jelly, she need look no farther than rancho carbono to get the inventory.

And it seems like everything grows. If you see a plant you like in your neighbor’s yard, you simply cut off a branch, stick it in the ground and oila, in a month or so it’s sprouting. I’ve started azaleas, hibiscus, and gardenias plus numerous plants you’d never recognize. My latest stick in the ground is ginger. I recently put a broom in the ground but no broomlets have appeared. More patience and fertilizer maybe.

Vege gardening is out. At least for me. We have voracious vege eating insects including a type of grasshopper that is bright yellow with red wings and grows to 6”, not counting legs or antennae. We have great butterflies that come from huge, huge snakelike caterpillars; the type that can eat a zuccinni overnight. I thought about insecticides but am concerned that I could produce some resistant mutant that would eat people. Luckily there’s fresh produce markets on the roadsides, all over, 12 months a year. If you count mushrooms, I do have some vege’s growing. Although they look like portabello’s on steroids, I’m leaving them alone since none of the critters seem to eat them.

But the real difference is the speed with which everything grows. I can nearly denude an area of wild grape vines only to come back next month and find it stronger and longer than ever. When I mean long, these are grape vines 20+ feet long where none existed a few weeks earlier. These vines can overwhelm anything in their parth in short order and develop vines that go from pencil thick to wrist thick in a season if left unchecked. But they are nothing compared to a vine we locally call potato vine, some variety of briar for sure. Aside from the fact that these literally will grow hundreds of feet long and develop 6” diameter trunks, the speed of growth is amazing. Not only the speed but what’s most interesting is that they pop out of the ground and grow vertically with no support for 10’s of feet before they finally latch onto a tree or something. The vines start about the diameter of a thin pencil but can grow absolutely straight vertically – it’s mind boggling that so thin and limber a vine can support itself. It reminds you of the old Jack and the Beanstalk story. By the way, they’re called potato vines because the root is a large, potato looking tuber and unless you remove that, it will never go away. At this point after a few years of vine work, I am nearly able to keep up with new growth myself. When we started the vines were classified as one, two, or three man vines – determined by how many of us it took to pull down a grape or potato vine. We had several that stretched our manpower limit totally and those were cut off with a chain saw and left to die.

Speed is also important in another aspect of Florida gardening. When approaching an overgrown area you have to watch and carefully observe for at least a day before reaching for the cutters. Assuming you see no obvious problems, hornets and yellowjackets mostly, you swoop in, make a few cuts, and quickly back out. You check your arms, neck, and legs to be sure that no critters have attacked. It they have, you retreat to the shed for the chemical warfare gear and launch an offensive on the brush protectors first. If you came out of the first swoop with no bites, you continue in deeper with the same cut and swoop technique. Eventually you’ve cleaned out the overgrown area and ready to move on to the next. The cycle from cleaned out to totally overgrown again is maybe 6 months max. So one of the critical skills to gardening in Florida, way different than gardening in Texas or Utah, is the need for quick hand eye coodination, sharp reflexes, and good pull out leg muscles. You sure as hell don’t ever want to get trapped by a ground nest of yellow jackets or an oversized mound of fire ants – not so named because of their firey color. And while mentioning ants, you all are aware of the menous called fire ants. You know from hearing about them rather than first hand experience. They are ultra tiny and not huge as you might have guessed. But what’s really unique about them is that they have developed a communication strategy to repel attackers, like me. They are so tiny you don’t feel them at all until they bite. You would think one would crawl on you and take a bite. Not so. They crawl on you and then wait until the commander or senior biter gives the signal – at which point they all bite simultaneously and you look down to see you are covered and on fire. Hence the name fire ant. They too are very fast for having such little legs and can nail you within a few seconds. Each bite yields a welt about 100 times bigger than the ant itself.

So to summarize, whereas my previous gardening experience required a tender, thoughtful approach, Florida gardening requires a vigorous, aggressive, fearless attack mode. You gain a definite understanding that you are only borrowing the land and if you ever, ever quit working it, the flora and fauna and insecta will quickly take it back.

I know most of the avid readers of my blog don’t watch GMA so I had to share this story since it touched my heart so. As you know, one of the things in life I hate most is the feared and dreaded “Home Owners Association”. So it was of great interest to me to watch someone take revenge on a group in Dunwoody Ga. This guy owns a home on about 1.5 acres in a development of mostly 1/4 to 1/2 acre lots and homes. For whatever reason, missed the why, he wanted to build another house on his land – maybe for a relative, maybe for income, who knows. The HMA disallowed it saying the property was zoned agricultural and therefore only one home was permitted on a lot – regardless of the fact that all other homes in the development were on substantially smaller properties. This ruling pissed him off so he decided to take the agricultural designation to heart and brought in pigs, goats, chickens and other farm animals. Being an avid Gator fan, he painted his house bright orange with blue trim and hung a big flag saying Dunwoody Swamp. I liked that part. He has a chicken named Spurrier. I really liked that. The neighbors are now complaining of the smells but he says he’s glad it all happened since now he can appreciate the joys of being a farmer. He plans to start a corn field to grow his own feed corn and maybe add a few more pigs and goats.

Did I nail the shuttle situation in my July 13 Blog. It’s going exactly as I predicted down to the outside repair. Whatever the outcome now, I think the shuttle program is nominally dead. There is way too much public spotlight on fairly normal engineering/R&D problems and decisions. It has and will continue to generate lots of “scientific” criticism on any decision made so that no matter the outcome, there will be “I told you so’s” galore. This will come from the press, from pseudo engineers, and probably a Congressman or two calling for redirecting all the NASA spending to programs to aid the poor in Africa. The situation is that there is some filler material protruding between tiles. They have noted this upon return of other flights so it’s not unusual. But now, they know it before it lands which calls for a decision to either go with it or try to fix it. I would probably have a tendency to go with it rather than risk screwing something up worse. That decison based on every small plumbing job I’ve ever undertaken that ends up in a disaster of ever increasing dimension until I finally pay $500 to a plumber to fix something I just should have left alone to start with. But that decision really isn’t available- they would be cremated if there was a problem on landing. So they try a fix. Whichever approach they choose will be considered the wrong choice by somebody and that somebody will appear on all the talk shows and evening news broadcasts. If it lands safely that guy is forgotten but if there’s a problem, he’s the new star. My contention is this: they now have too much in-flight information that is public information and anything short of 100% perfection will bring too much pressure on the top, political appointees. And since it’s too much to expect such a complex undertaking ever to be risk free, the safest path is to leave the shuttle on the ground; Start development of a whole new spacecraft which will take 7-10 years, create plenty of jobs, spend lots of money and have zero risk – until they have to fly it. By then the key decision makers are retired and won’t have to face the music. So my prediction is that this problem is not all that bad, they’ll “fix” something to make the press happy and hopefully land successfully. Beyond that, don’t expect more launches any time soon. I trace this all back to seat belts and bike helmets but I know you all think that is way over the top!!!!!!!!