Can Florida Join the Urban Garden Trend?
Tampa Bay Online reports today that city officials are looking at ways to “reconnect with the natural world” with the help of urban gardening. With so many other cities across the U.S. already rife with public vegetable gardens, there’s no reason Tampa shouldn’t be able to join the club.
Yes, gardening in hot, steamy Florida is — to be charitable — a challenge. My own summertime gardening efforts (I live in northwest Florida) yielded a pretty sad harvest: four or five beans, a dozen tiny strawberries that the snails usually got to first and a reliable supply of chives from a flowerpot. July and August are simply too brutal around here.
On the plus side, the remaining months are mild enough to make serious garden production a reality (I’ve started planting again for the fall, and the results are already looking better: no heat-shriveled squash leaves, signs of emerging cucumbers and watermelon and maybe, just maybe, a nascent tomato or two).
Past Floridians have proven it can be done. In fact, in places like Punta Gorda in the 1930s, almost every home had a vegetable garden in the backyard. While the “modern” lifestyle took over for many, replacing gardens with grass, some holdouts kept growing their own food … and a new generation of would-be gardeners is now turning to them for much-needed advice.
Urban farming veterans like John and Natividad Burns are happy to help. Their two-lot garden in South Sarasota is lush with avocado trees, banana plants, even rice, coffee and tilapia (the couple dug their own fish pond) … and they regularly give visitors tips and tours.
One word of advice from John Burns rings particularly true to me: “Gardening in Florida is not a science. It’s a romance.” (It’s certainly one that can break your heart if you don’t do it right.)
P.S. If urban gardening appeals to you and you live in the Tampa area (and you read this in time), you just might want to attend the city’s workshop: it’s at 2 p.m. at city hall, located at 315 E. Kennedy Blvd.
Wow! This is very appealing to me. I am currently trying hydroponic gardening and I have had luck with beans and ocra and perhaps Eggplant. I reserve my judgement on the eggplant. Basil is fab and I am sprouting Endive as well in my containers.
My next feat is a topsoil bag garden. But growing coffe beans? Banana trees? Rice. how great is that? I have to check this out.