11/30 Update

Howdy! The end of the fall semester seems to be hurdling toward us doesn't it? The start of winter break means the end of our Gator Grove incubator farm for us. That will be a sad moment for us but we are no there yet so let us not dwell. Here at Gator Grove, we have been experiencing some changes this week!

 The biggest thing to affect our farm this week was the cold weather. There were several nights earlier this week that were at or below freezing (32 degrees Fahrenheit). We managed to cover the plot but only for one of the two nights that were freezing. A large white sheet of fabric was used to cover the plot and was held down with cement blocks. This worked quite well to protect our crops from the cold. Unfortunately, we forgot to put the sheet back on after uncovering the crops for daytime sunlight and some of our uncovered crops sustained damage.

 

The Dragon Tongue beans in our plot (top most photo) and the basil in our raised bed (second photo from top) were the two crops that showed damage from the freeze. The rest of our crops have proven themselves to be more resilient to the cold.

While most of our crops are not ready to be harvested, our Dragon Tongue bean plants (shown above) and our Bush bean plants have already produced harvest-able beans!

 Our sunflowers have reached a few feet in height and have started making seeds. These Florida native flowers have grown quickly and beautifully. Not only are they great to harvest for cut flowers, they have been very helpful in acting as trap crops and in attracting beneficial predators and pollinators. In the photo below, you can see the holes in the sunflower leaves from where the pests were attracted away from our cash crops by our trap crop.

We also had a guest in our farm this week! Captured kneeling in the picture above, inspecting our lettuce plants, is my friend Mary. Mary is a UF graduate student studying phosphorous in tomato plants. Tomatoes were not among the crops that we chose to grow but Mary was still able to point out some things. 

We had seen spots on a few of our beets before Mary's visit but she was able to tell us that these spots were damage caused by an insect pest with piercing-sucking mouth parts.

In the photo above, Mary is pointing at a flower that bloomed on one of our strawberry plants. We found it interesting that there were flowers only on the strawberry plants that were intercropped with carrot plants.

Hope you kept warm this week and continue to stay healthy and happy! Until next time!