Welcome to my blog and thank you for taking the time to read it. This is my first blog post. In the coming days and months, I will write about my personal vegetable gardening activities and experiences, and share with you what I have learned about vegetable gardening in north Florida.  My goal is to inspire my north Florida neighbors to grow what they eat and help them to be successful along the way.

Currently, I have lettuce, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, snap beans and garlic growing in my front-yard garden in Niceville.  Our landscape also includes apple, orange, tangerine, lemon, persimmon and fig trees, as well as pomegranates, blueberries and strawberry guavas.

Out in the vegetable garden I have been harvesting lettuce for a few weeks now and I picked two pounds of green beans a few days ago – the first of my fall bean harvest.  I have two rows of beans maturing now and five more that will be ready for harvest in early November.  The broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower are seedlings that I planted last week.

I intended to harvest more beans today but I did not get to it before the rain began here in Niceville. Unfortunately, my day job comes first. I am growing Flavor Sweet bush beans, a real favorite of mine. I will talk more about them in my next post.

In north Florida, we usually plant broccoli during the months of August – February; Brussels sprouts from September – November; cauliflower from August – October and January - February; cabbage from September – February; and lettuce from September – October and February – March.

You can find seedlings in 9-packs now for around $3 at Kmart in Niceville, Lowes and Home Depot.  Why not plant some this weekend?  (Remember to save the plastic trays – you can use them in the future to grow your own seedlings from seed).