Planting Day Video! Wait, What? Oh and A Hoophouse Too!

    Florida gardening is strange to those not living here. The timing seems all wrong. To me though, having known nothing else it just seems like the normal cycle of things. I say this because today on January 4th I planted my peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, gooseberries, and various herbs that I will be growing this spring. To anyone north of Gainesville this will likely seem absurd but consider that 8 weeks from now is March 1st and our last frost date is about the 10th or so of March depending on the source you consult. 

    My lovely wife was along to film the whole affair and she put together this little video to show my setup for the process including the newly fabricated hoophouse (hoophut?) and there is also a good view of the current winter garden. I guess the only thing that could be improved in this multimedia experience is the looks of the gardener, but hey, I was born that way. Below the video I included an explanation on my planting early for anyone who cares to know more. 

    So I am looking at having 8-9 week old transplants to put out after the last frost. This really isn't such a big deal for the peppers or eggplant. Honestly our season is so long I could wait until April 1st to plant seed and still rest assured that I will get a crop from all but the latest varieties. No joke, as of today I was still harvesting peppers off of unprotected plants (a handful of habaneros and limon peppers in case you are curious). But for the tomatoes this is crucial. You see tomatoes really struggle with the summers here. After the chance of frost has passed there is a very small window of relatively mild weather before the thermostat gets cranked up and the humidity blasts. Tomatoes can take some heat, but not the melt your face off combo of heat and humidity. They start to get all kinds of stress problems including fungal attacks. For this reason you really need to have big, strong, healthy transplants ready to go so that they can shoot up and produce as much as possible in that mild weather window. 

     It's funny, while the tomato is THE definitive home gardener crop in most of the country, I really have come to believe it is more trouble than it's worth here. That being said I still find I am a sucker for trying. Last year I did a good job of getting my plants out early but I still had the other issue here: pests. It never gets terribly cold here so pests are always active and the hot and humid late spring/early summer is like jet fuel for their proliferation. I have been very fortunate to have relatively few pest issues here, likely due to my haphazard mishmash planting of a large variety of plants. The major exception is tomatoes. I lost about 50% of my crop last year. Feel not bad for me though, we still ended up with more tomatoes than we could eat, and I hope to continue that trend as I am armed and ready to persevere and preserve this year!. As long as some make it to the table I don't mind a few losses.