By Master Gardener Volunteer Lesley Arrandale
mail@floridanewsline.com

The gardening calendar (https://tinyurl.com/muu6h6me) is a good guide to what we can do in our yards, but the weather is often a better guide in determining what we need to do; however, it is useful to know our average last frost date. When I found this website, https://tinyurl.com/2p8tv52h,  I was surprised to find that in my area, fairly close to the river, it falls between March 1 and March 10. In past years I’ve always believed it was around March 16 – 19, which is quite a change.

Starting seeds indoors is a useful and economical way to get a head start on the spring vegetable garden and summer annuals. If the cost of grow lights is too high, perhaps this DIY set up constructed with PVC pipe might suit your budget: https://tinyurl.com/mpkzmx6x. I use a similar frame, slotting the pieces together without adhesive to make it easy to take down and store. Even a full spectrum led bulb in a simple directional desk lamp can give a houseplant or a few small seedlings a boost without the expense of a fancy system.

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If you have a compost heap that’s been sitting for a while, now is a good time to check its progress. I generally throw on compostables and hope for the best, but I do aim for a mix of brown and green material and wet it down if dry. After a year or so, I use a large sieve to separate out the crumbly finished material. The sieve is a DIY item, fashioned from a square wooden frame to which is stapled with some wire mesh. It fits over my cart to catch the finished compost. The mesh is small enough to remove most material that hasn’t fully decomposed, and this can either be added back to the heap or spread very lightly under mulch. For more efficient composting methods, check out https://tinyurl.com/8d22d83k. In Florida’s heat, an efficiently managed heap can become finished compost in just a few months. Black gold!

Both saving seed and checking for plant volunteers save money. In spring it’s easy to spot volunteer seedlings of perennials and annuals if you know what to look for. Last year I planted some wildflowers, so I’ll pull weeds rather than hoe them down, and work around small seedlings until they are large enough to identify. (I think we’re all probably familiar with the weeds lurking in our yards!) When I find wildflower seedlings I’ll either leave them alone, if they’re conveniently placed, or move them carefully into small pots. Once they’re a good size they can go back into a new garden bed, which will mean free flowers for me and sustenance for pollinators.

Some of my newer plants have been such a treat. I have some large-flowered rosemary, or scrub mint, Conradina grandiflora, a native which resembles a spreading, fine-leaved culinary rosemary. The plants were good specimens to begin with, and they haven’t skipped a beat. One or two began flowering in early autumn and the others followed in profusion. The pale pink flowers are similar to rosemary, but larger. There are still a few flowers in early February. They don’t need supplementary watering and flourish in sandy, well-drained sites. Pollinators love them. (Conradina grandiflora is endemic to Florida and endangered; it should only be purchased from a reputable nursery.)

Myrcianthes fragrans, Simpson’s stopper, is a lovely evergreen shrub or small tree, graced with fragrant flowers and red fruits. Mine are supposed to be dwarf, but methods used in the horticultural trade to produce so-called dwarf plants aren’t always permanent. Recently, with the unseasonably warm weather, they put on some beautiful red-tinged new growth. The last cold snap caused some minor damage, but I’ll wait until after our last frost date before deciding if they need a little pruning: a useful guide.

A postscript: For information on the importance of helping our insects, see https://tinyurl.com/262cws38. While we may not be able individually to have much impact on global climate, we can try to protect the insects that pollinate our flowers and produce, starting in our own yards. 

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