I'm so tired this will only be a short post. Bob and I planted a row of blueberry bushes out here today! Yes, it's true! I don't know how the Farm came to be this far along without someone thinking to plant blueberries! We got the plants from Fred at Santa Fe Blueberries, just around the corner. He gave us lots of good advice about how to grow them, including the fact that they should be grown entirely in pine bark mulch. So early this morning we got in the truck and got a load of pine bark mulch from Elixson Wood Products in Starke. 3 cubic yards fills a truck and it cost $27. Then after doing some other errands and getting supplies for other projects you'll no doubt hear about on this blog, we came home and had lunch. In the afternoon I started digging the holes in the site we had selected (for the best sun and soil drainage and access to irrigation). It's right behind the wild plum thicket near the vegetable garden. Digging eight 2 foot deep holes in hard compacted sandy soil wore. me. out. We finished planting the last plant just as dark fell. There's a row of 8 plants there now. Well mulched and well planted. We really babied them. We won't have a crop this year because we'll be focusing on establishing a good root system but next year! Man-o-man I can already taste 'em! There is room, by the way, for this little blueberry patch to be expanded in the future but please. Someone else dig the holes?
Other garden news: zucchini, crookneck squash and eggplants have all sprouted and are thriving. They are ready to be transplanted into the garden any day now. I planted zinnia seeds in the vegetable garden today. Zinnias are heat-tolerant and produce beautiful blooms all summer long that make excellent cut flowers. You can't have enough zinnias in my book, especially to place in little bouquets on picnic tables during Peace Camp.
Labyrinth News: My original idea to improve upon the labyrinth this year by planting it full of sunflowers has been modified somewhat by the lack of water in the area and the desire to reduce our watering needs here on the land. There still will be SOME sunflowers but the labyrinth this year will be seeded mostly with native Florida wildflowers that like dry sandy soil and will re-seed themselves year after year: black eyed Susans, galliardia (blanketflower), beach sunflower and coreopsis (tickseed). These will bloom all summer long and while it's not the same as walking through a wall of sunflowers it'll still be beautiful and much more eco-friendly. Sunflower labyrinths are for Kansas; coreopsis labyrinths are for Florida (by the way respectively those are the state wildflower for each state). By the way I think the labyrinth gopher tortoise will appreciate the wildflower plan over the sunflower plan; they also like dry sandy conditions.
The Florida Native Plant sale is this weekend. I plan on going and getting some native landscaping plants for around the PEC (Peace Education Center). It'll be beautiful. The Teaching Farm this year'll knock yer socks off!
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