Brrr! January was a cold and frosty month here in Central Florida. The wide swing of temperatures from mid-eighty degrees to low thirties, no doubt, confused some of my garden residents. The winter crops of onions, cabbage, and greens grew strong and healthy, while the remaining heat-lovers including the Seminole pumpkin and tomatoes didn’t fare as well once the frost came.
“Hi there, and welcome to my monthly series about how I grow a year-round garden in a sub-tropical climate. Each month I’ll share with you my observations and notes from my garden journal. I’ll also include gardening tips, monthly harvests, and my favorite resources related to the season.”
Alisa
Here is a Summary of what happened in January:
Journal Entries
Week 1
The year started off with a beautiful sunny day in the mid-eighties. I harvested the last of the roselle calyxes that I had left drying on the branches to save for seed.
I also cut some of the numerous passionfruit blossoms to dry for tea, and enough cranberry hibiscus leaves to fill two trays in my food dryer.
There were several plants blossoming at this time including: pigeon peas, passionfruit, rosemary, Seminole pumpkin, tomato, lima bean, and several basils.
Week 2
Our neighbors trimmed their crepe myrtle tree and let us take the branches to use for composting. We used our wood chipper to fill three small trailers full of chips. I saved some aside for mulching around trees, but most of it was stirred into the compost pile. I trimmed back a bunch of passionfruit vines to add a good amount of green to all the brown we had added with those wood chips.
If you’d like to learn more about composting browns and greens, composting basics, and how we compost, you can read my post: Composting 101.
Now that the roselle seeds had been harvested, I decided to take the plants out of their 5-gallon pots and plant them in the garden. Really, they should have been composted, but I wanted to experiment to see if they’d grow the rest of the winter. I needed the pots to pot up some of my papaya trees which were getting pot-bound.
The soil mixture I made for the papayas was just a blend of the leftover soil in the pots mixed with native soil from my garden. I first put a 3-inch layer of compost in the bottom, then the soil blend, and planted the tree. I used some of the chipped crepe myrtle as a mulch.
Growing trees in pots is only temporary, as we continue to prepare to move to a new homestead. I am getting excited to finally get all of the trees in the ground and create our food forest. Each month brings us closer to our goals we set back in 2019.
This week I also harvested the last of the Egyptian spinach seeds. I started preparing them for sale at my Etsy Shop: HomesteadByDesign. The seeds should be up for sale by the middle of February.
Our weather continued to be nice with most days warm in the seventies, and cooler temperatures at night into the fifties.
Week 3
It really started cooling off this week! January 16th, we got a huge rain storm followed by a cold front. There was plent of fresh rainwater to fill all of our storage containers.
It became cold enough that I had to bring my orchids into the house. I repotted one large clump into four pots. Another orchid was already blossoming. They were quite cozy resting in our bathrooms for a couple of weeks.
Believe it or not – I picked a green pepper this week! My heat-loving peppers continued to blossom and produce fruit in the cold of winter.
This week I also saw a carpenter bee, honey bees on the lemon tree blossoms and other blossoms, a few wasps, and a Black Racer snake. I like seeing the black snakes because they eat mice, voles, and other rodents. They are non-venomous and non-aggressive unless cornered or provoked.
It continued to get colder as the week went on. By the 24th, daytime high temps were in the low forities to high thirties.
Week 4
Saturday, the 29th we pulled out the blankets – frost was predicted for overnight. I wrapped up the dragon fruit, covered the spinaches, the one Seminole pumpkin on the vine, most of the passionfruit vines, and put a crate with a towel overtop over the small mango tree that had grown up from seed.
I took into the garage, the lemon tree that was blossoming, all of the tomatoes and peppers, and the potted papayas.
As a precaution, I took cuttings of the Okinawa spinach, longevity spinach, and cherry tomatoes, just in case it got colder than expected.
Sunday morning, I woke up to 31°F temperature and a light frost on the garden. By mid-morning it had warmed up enough to remove the blankets and put back outside the plants that were in the garage. Some pumpkin vines, passionfruit vines, and some of the spinaches that didn’t get covered were frosted, but we had avoided any major damage.
Even though we didn’t have a frost warning the next night, we did get another light frost. The plants held up well and we didn’t loose a single plant over the 48-hour period.
Harvest Summary
Food:
- Passionfruit blossoms and leaves for making tea
- Cherry tomatoes
- 1 Green Bell pepper
- Okinawa spinach
- Longevity spinach
- Arugula
Seeds:
- Roselle
- Cranberry Hibiscus
- Egyptian spinach
- Cherry tomato
Gardening Resources
- Crepe Myrtle Pruning
- Black Racer Snakes
- Florida FB Groups (no links, just type these titles into the FB Groups Searchbar)
- Central Florida Gardening
- Florida Food Forest
- Central Florida Staple Food Gardening
- Zone 9 Vegetable Gardening
- Florida Tropical Fruit Growers
Final Thoughts
The past several years were very warm winters. This year has been a more “normal” type of winter for Central Florida with colder temperatures and frost warnings. Many of the long-time locals and Florida natives in my social media groups have shared stories of even colder winters and snow flurries in the past.
I enjoy the change of seasons. It’s one of the many reasons I love living and gardening here. Our sub-tropical climate is “kinda” temperate and “kinda” tropical. It’s like having the best of both!
Looking to February, it’s promising more cold weather before we get back (too quickly!) into the hot, steamy 90’s again. Hopefully, my cabbages will be ready to harvest soon so I can make some more fresh sauerkraut. I have a fun post about making it: How to Ferment Sauerkraut. There’s even a video at the end!
Until next month, happy gardening!
Alisa
P.S. Don’t forget:
Follow me on Instagram @ourfrugalflhomestead to see my most recent gardening adventures!
Visit my Etsy Shop: HomesteadByDesign for my newest designs to help you garden and homestead!
[…] homesteading in the suburbs of Orlando Florida, to a rural homestead an hour from the city, you can read my post from my Garden Journal January of 2022 and see how far we’ve […]