Central Florida Vegetable Garden | September & October 2020

[@WildFloridian]

I feel ya on August crops not doing well! Thanks for sharing your garden 😄

[@leilani-rose]

I grow ghost peppers and other super hots in 5 gallon buckets from Home Depot and Lowe’s. There are a bunch of videos on KZbin showing how to do make them. My husband drilled a few holes into the buckets, about 2 inches up from the bottom to retain water. I filled the bottom of the buckets with mulch then filled the rest of the bucket with a mixture of 1/3 peat, 1/3 cow manure, and 1/3 perlite. They’ve been in the same buckets for 5 years and produce abundantly. I do add more soil mix to the top and amend with worm castings, Epsom salts plus use an organic fertilizer. I tried using mulch on top of my raised beds and had the same issue you’re having with the plants turning yellow and dying. I’ve read that mulch may cause a nitrogen deficiency which shows up as a general yellowing so I no longer mulch on top of my garden beds but use the mulch on the bottom of the beds, buckets or pots and have not had any issue since. I do mulch my fruit trees on top and they love it!

[@bnach2843]

Thank you very much for sharing this info. I'm new to Central Florida gardening and I'm struggling with the same problem as this young man regarding plants turning yellow and soil being too dense and moist; I think because of that I'm getting these tiny bugs that are kind of like fruit flies but not really; I don't know exactly what kind of bug it is but there's a lot of it; all my seedlings germinated well but as soon as I transplanted it and did the same thing as this young man, I got an infestation; had to start all over again!! I noticed when I left the soil outside in the hot sun, the next day the bugs all disappeared. I will try your suggestion and see what happens. I have to admit I'm doubtful about putting mulch in the bottom of my containers instead of the top but if this works, I'll be over the moon and dancing till the cows come home!!

[@4zooflorida]

I know what you mean, something got in and ate most of my beets. I will be replanting. We are about an hour north of Tampa. Your rosellas look great! We just got ours in.

[@jarrol03]

My beets and swiss chard are stunted. My bush beans were doing fine with flowers and then just dried up and died. I used perilite to aereate the soil but it still compacts in my raised beds terribly. My gardening seems to be an exercise in futility but I keep trying.

[@jeremyshaw5632]

Looks like white flies..?

[@jeremyshaw5632]

Keep up with the need. I had an incredibly terrible white fly infestation.

[@coolhandrobyn]

​@@jeremyshaw5632 Same here. Awful white fly infestation in my sweet potato patch. Still had a decent harvest with minimal effort, but now the white flies are on the peas. Sprayed them with Castile soap and essential oil mix. We'll see how that goes.