Firsts of The Season - A September Preview

My Florida Gardening Season is now underway and I wanted to highlight some of my ‘firsts’ of the season.

Left: Seedlings of Lemon Boy tomato (seed planted 8-20), and Ichiban Eggplant (seed planted 8-3). Both from seeds I harvested myself.

Left - Sweet 'n' Neat tomato that I bought a month ago as a transplant now has some little buds on it. It's a Determinate variety and will grow in a 10" pot, so ideal for a patio veggie garden. 

The Early Girl is flowering (right). This tomato is really thriving at almost 14” taller than when I bought the transplant. Early Girl is an Indeterminate variety and we should have some yummy tomatoes before Thanksgiving.

The Ichiban eggplant has one pretty, little flower.

The Sweet Bell Pepper below is showing signs of vigorous growth. I can almost taste that salsa I'll be making soon.

Now the temperatures are around 75F at night, I have also planted seeds of broccoli (Packman), and also some Oak Leaf lettuce - both from self harvested seeds.
In addition I have Cherokee, Brandywine and Heatwave II tomato seeds waiting to germinate. I bought the Heatwave II from Reimers.
View my previous blog for seed sources - link below.

Ready, Pot, Grow......

But my piece de resistance is the abundance of little Calabaza squashes (below) that are draped all over the bottlebrush. They are about 5” long.

This very hot pepper plant (read scorching hot) has revived itself. The label at Home Depot reads Jalapeno, but I don’t think so. I believe they are Tabasco. We can’t eat them anyway, but a certain type of bird visiting in the summer (now since migrated) just couldn’t get enough of them. I really don’t know what to do with them, but they remind me of little Christmas lights on the tree for some reason.




Have you started your Florida Vegetable Garden yet?  What "firsts" do you have  going growing on in your garden?