Fall festival time

In South Florida we know is fall festival time when our summer 90’s temperatures turn into lovely 80’s fall weather.  Today I attended one of my favorite festivals, the Edible Garden Festival at Fairchild Tropical Garden.   This festival is a combination of a Halloween celebration and preparation for the upcoming vegetable gardening season.

Lecture on how to grow vegetable during our winter. 

 

The scarecrow contest is fun for kids and adults.  All materials must be recyclable items.  These were my favorite entries.

   

The vegetable season is here

Today I started preparing the vegetable beds by adding more soil.

 

 The seeds I planted last week are germinating.  I have tomatoes, broccoli and cucumbers

What’s blooming in the garden this week  

Milkweed 

 

 Thryallis

 

Miniture Ixora

 

 My Cassia tree is blooming

 

 Purple Allamanda

No plants were wasted

Last week I pulled 10 yellow crotons (don’t know the common name) from my daughter’s front garden, and brought them to my place.  I don’t like to throw away perfectly good plants, even if they are not to my favorite, so I planted four around the back garden and the other six I put them in containers to give away.

 

I must admit the yellow crotons in the middle of all the green gives the garden a nice look, especially in the early morning when the sun is coming up. 

This week I received my order of vegetable seeds from Annie’s Heirloom Seeds, they were recommended by a friend.  This year I’m trying something a little different, I will try to grow must of my vegetables from seeds. 

 

In this part of the country we don’t have green houses to germinate our seeds, so the best place is a shady area to keep them away from the hot midday sun. I’m trying to grow tomatoes, broccoli and cucumbers, the rest I will plant later direct into the vegetable garden. 

 

Other pictures from the garden this morning 

Gardening at my daughter's - Part 2

Today I helped my daughter finish her tiny garden.  This time I was there as a helper and adviser, she wanted to do her small garden in the front of her townhouse.  The home had Yellow Croton in the front of the house that she hated.

 

Part 1 was my gift to her while she went on her honeymoon.

 We took out all the Crotons and replaced them with purple hearts, Mexican petunias and some grasses.

 

She purchased a big container and I planted bromeliads from my garden     

 

Regular Fall Maintenance

This weekend I concentrated on my back garden, the summer rains created a jungle, and some of the plants were out of control specially the Rangoon Creeper.  The weekend was not ideal for gardening, we had torrential rains both days but I was able to finish.

Before

After – All it takes to make it look like new is some mulch, a few annuals (Asters and Pentas) and it’ll be good for a couple of months.

 

Bromeliads in bloom

This has been a good summer for my bromeliads and their blooms.  Since I been collecting bromeliads, I find that blooms are not always guarantee, some years I barely had any.  We had an unusually rainy summer and I think this made all the difference.

I harvested my first Papaya fruit; I have four plants full of flowers in the back garden and two in containers ready to go on the ground.   Papaya trees cross pollinate and many turn out to be male, so the more you have, the better chances for fruits.

Back in the Garden

Back to the garden after a break of a few weeks, today I put in a few hours in the morning.  The garden came through fine during my absent, all I needed to do was some clean up and weeding (not done yet)

This this in my favorite corner of the garden.  All the flowers that you see in the picture are self seeding, except for the Mexican Heather.

 
Getting the vegetable beds ready for the season. At this point I'm not to sure what I will be planting in the fall, but I need to make some changes, last year I had some success and many failures.  The tomatoes were a total failure and this year I have to re-think how to grow them, maybe in containers.

 

I found this bromeliad in the back of the garden and now is on display in my patio in a new container (that's the flexibility of Broms). 

Peace Field

Yesterday my wife and I returned from a weekend trip to Boston.  We had tickets for the University of Miami-Boston College football game on Saturday.  This was my second visit to Boston; the first time I visited was forty years ago when I was a senior in high school and my parents took me to visit a couple of colleges.

After this visit Boston has become one of my favorite cities, and you can be sure I will be coming back.  I am not a big fan of metropolitan areas, but this city is full of youth. It has so much energy, and if you are an American history buff like me, there is no better city.

We visited several historical sites including Peace Field, the home of two presidents, John and Abigail Adams’s and his son John Quincy Adams.  John Adams has always been my favorite founding father.  Without him we all might be singing “God save the Queen” at the start of football games (my personal opinion).

Peace Field is the name John Adams gave his farm after he went back home at the end of his presidential term.  The house was donated to the people of the United States by descendants of  the Adams family in 1946 and today is run by the National Park Service.  The most amazing thing about this house is the contents inside: original furniture, paintings, China, and rugs all owned by John Adams or his son John Quincy Adams.  No pictures were allowed inside the house. 

 

The English garden was originally a vegetable garden and later converted to a flower garden by Charles Frances Adams, son of John Quincy Adams.

The stone library holds all of John Quincy Adams’s books.  A scene from the movie Amistad was filmed here.  John Quincy Adams defended the slaves onboard the ship “Amistad” before the US Supreme Court (He was played by Anthony Hopkins) .

 

These roses were brought by Abigail Adams from York England in 1788.

This is the original home where John Adams was born and where he lived when he married Abigail.  This house and the one next door, where John Quincy Adams was born, are located in another area in the town Quincy.