by barb howe
Hi everyone, welcome to the new blog of the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice! I thought it was time for me to introduce myself since I'm one of the contributors to this here blog. My name's barb howe and I've been involved with the Coalition for probably around ten years more or less? Not that I've been the most active member during that time but I think I've probably met a good many of you at one time or another. I was a studying at UF but now I've graduated and am living out here on The Teaching Farm, doing a sort of informal work exchange: I'm
putting in this year's gardens since the Hooley's have left for the
summer. It's a lot of work; I'm exhausted but the good news is
there's A LOT going on out here!
First, the vegetable garden. It's organic, of course. Bob plowed the garden with the tractor (see right; click photo to enlarge) and then we brought in a truckload of composted horse manure and worked it into the soil. We were lucky to have an irrigation system already set up thanks to Chris and also an inner fence to keep the deer out (we'll still have to put a perimeter fence up around the whole garden eventually).
Unfortunately, one of the things we discovered is that since we're an organization and one never knows who's going to be working the garden from one year to the next, it would be useful to have a garden plan so that we don't accidentally dig things up. We didn't know there was asparagus planted that hadn't come up yet and so some of it got damaged when we plowed. We decided that from now on perennials like that should go inside the inner (permanent) fence of the garden which doesn't get plowed. Inside the trailer/office you can find a layout map of what's planted where in the garden (which is also useful for certain crops that should not be planted where other crops have grown).
Also I'm sorry to report that our first tomato plants got fusarium wilt and so had to be removed. Fusarium wilt is apparently pretty common in Florida and there's not much an organic farmer can do about it to get rid of it. It's a fungus that lives in the soil and it affects tomatoes, peppers, cantaloupe and some other things. It'll kill or severely damage affected plants. Most recommendations are to plant disease resistant varieties and try to live with it or grow your tomatoes in disease free soil in containers. We're probably going to go the former route since it'd be difficult to keep the containers from drying out and overheating in the hot summer sun.
Besides tomatoes and peppers (which so far don't seem to have fusarium wilt), we have planted a nice patch of strawberry plants in the perennial garden inside the inner fence, some Kentucky Wonder pole beans along the sides, and some sunflowers and zinnia to in the center. I've also incorporated butterfly attracting plants in this area (milkweed and butterfly weed) although I still plan on doing a separate butterfly/herb meditation garden in the usual spot near the Cracker house as well. That garden so far has rosemary, sage, coreopsis (a.k.a tickseed, our state wildflower) and salvia.
Finally, I have many seeds starting in trays around the potting shed: marigolds, more tomatoes, crookneck squash, zucchini, more sunflowers, watermelon and pumpkin. (We're going to have separate areas for watermelon this year AND a small pumpkin patch near the garden but not in it). We have lots and lots of sunflowers because my hope is to plant them along the pathways of the grass labyrinth we have etched into the front meadow (if you haven't seen this you really should! It's beautiful!)
It's going to be an exciting growing season out here on the farm. If you haven't been by, please come pay us a visit. You might go home with a bagful of fresh organic veggies, some sunflowers or some amazing photos of wildflowers. We guarantee a relaxing peace-filled experience!
The best days are when Al Geiger and June come out to visit. Al's always fixing something (well, something's always broke!) and June works in the gardens. I showed June everything that had happened since the last time they were here (the gopher tortoise burrow, the vegetable garden, the butterfly/herb garden etc.) Bob showed Al the plans for the cabins we've been working on. Then June and I pulled some weeds while Bob and Al worked on fixing the saw. We had some great conversations about Florida ecosystems and xeroscaping over lunch at the picnic table under the cedar trees. 
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