Getting Ready to Plant the Vegetable Garden

If you love cool weather crops like lettuce, broccoli, green beans, spinach & potatoes than get ready for the best season of the year to plant them. Autumn gardens are often the most productive here in Florida as we often retain warm days up through the holidays and many vegetables can tolerate even a light frost at night.

The earliest recommended planting time for seeds here is July 15th and successive plantings every two weeks can be done for quite some time. The most important step is to first prepare your beds, containers or pots that you intend on planting which shouldn't be done the same day as planting if possible. It's better to have them ready a week before and let them settle. For those with limited space, large pots with one or two tomato plants may be all you can handle. If you have more space available, you may want to try raised beds which yields more per square foot.


Square Foot Gardening Beds
There's an abundance of information on the internet about how to easily build raised beds. Here's some excellent planning advice we found for you:
http://www.wikihow.com/Construct-a-Raised-Planting-Bed

How to Build and Install Raised Garden Beds
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/gardening/4308264.html

and more from the Square Foot Gardener here:
http://www.squarefootgardening.com/index.php/The-Project/how-to-square-foot-garden.html


Earth Boxes with Tomatoes with Hog Wire
If you are considering container gardening, you should consider purchasing one of our EarthBoxes TM that comes with a free bag of organic soil. My father has planted the same crops in them for several years as well as right next to them in the ground and swears the amount of tomatoes he gets from the Earth Box is double. He also wraps his in hog wire to keep the deer from eating his plants.



GREEN LIGHT SPECIAL!
20% OFF ALL Crepe Myrtles this week!


EXTRA EXTRA!!!
Some Tips we've gathered that you will want to know:

Visualize Plan It, Build It, Put It To Use!
In general, a north–south orientation takes full advantage of available light. Video

Building a raised bed with two people is much easier and faster than with one.

Deck screws work best to fasten the boards together.

Treated lumber no longer contains arsenic. It may however contain chemicals unsuitable for gardening

If there is no turf between your beds, put down some landscape fabric and cover it with pavers or a layer of gravel to improve drainage—after running out in the rain for a fresh bell pepper, you’ll appreciate the mud-free shoes.

SOIL
Where ever you decide to plant, we have Black Kow composted manure, Mushroom compost, Espoma's Organic fertilizers and organic sprays to help you be successful in growing your own food this year.

Beginner’s Guide to Fertile Soil and Raised Garden Beds

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/2007-05-01/Beginners-Guide-to-Fertile-Soil-and-Raised-Garden-Beds.aspx

Do you have caterpillars in your garden? Then you won't want to miss next week's E-News.

Growing Together,
The Palmers Team

Under Ground NOTES

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What's that Caterpillar?

Eastern Black Swallowtail larva & chrysalis
Butterflies and caterpillars are in full bloom this month at Palmer's garden. We found this caterpillar munching away on our dill plant and at first glance, it appeared to be a Monarch. The chrysalis above it gave it away though. This was an Eastern Black Swallowtail. Don't be confused when you see the youngest of them though as the smaller larvae found on the same plant that's black with red spikes and white saddles is also the Eastern Black Swallowtail. They shed that skin when they are about 20% grown.


Baby "White Saddle"- Eastern Black Swallowtail

Below is what they look like during the different stages of their larva life.

Four Eastern Black Swallowtails
The baby is second from the left sandwiched between what we some times call a junior and a senior. The largest and curled one on the right is beginning to assume the position to shed its skin and turn into a chrysalis.


Monarch and Eastern Black Swallowtail
In contrast, Monarchs have white, yellow and black stripes instead of green and they have black antenna on both ends so they can confuse their predators.


Milk Weed, the host plant for Monarchs
If you look very closely [or click on the photo above to enlarge] on the curled leaves in the center, you can see the yellow spheres that are the eggs of the Monarch.


Eastern Black Swallowtail chrysalis

Once the caterpillars have eaten enough and grown to full size. They will then shed their skin and attach themselves to a nearby branch or underside of leaf that is out of the rain. We have raised these swallowtails in a large critter cage purchased at pet store and they almost always attach themselves to the roof. In the photo above, you can see two completed chrysalis and the center larva in the final stage of shedding its skin.


Translucent shedded chrysalis & a new Monarch
In the photo above, you can see the chrysalis that this butterfly just pulled itself out of moments before this photo was taken. The first few minutes, they like to have a branch to clasp while fluttering and drying their wings. If you put your finger under their feet, they will often do this on your hand and some times even fly back to you a few times when they are first flying around your yard.

Monarchs usually emerge from the chrysalis within a week or two with warmer temperatures speeding up the process. Be warned though, Eastern Black Swallowtails are erratic on the timing and have even been known to winter over and come out months later with 14 months being the known record. When they do, make sure that you release them within 24 hours and preferably near some nectar plants so they can get their first drink as soon as possible.


This new Monarch was placed on a pot of nectar plants which included pintas, zinnias, periwinkles and pink gaura, aka whirling butterfly bush.


Brand new Eastern Black Swallowtail
Here's one that just eclosed and is ready to start it's new life. For more information about Butterflies and help identifying the ones you see in your garden, check out:
http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species?l=1356

10 Million New Gardeners

Community gardens have surged across the country with the demand for vegetable seeds skyrocketing [up 35 to 75 percent over last year] especially of staples like beans, potatoes and lettuces. They are expecting over ten million new gardeners this year and "Industry observers attribute the boost in sales to a concern for food safety following outbreaks of E. coli and salmonella poisonings and a desire by consumers to be a part of the local food movement."

Other experts speculate the primary reasons are "the recession, income loss and the need for people to lower their grocery bills by growing their own." but Michelle Obama's new vegetable garden at the White House may also be inspiring people. Their first harvest was 73 lbs of lettuce, 12 lbs of snap peas and one cucumber. Obama and the children then trooped into the White House kitchen to wash lettuce and shell and cook the peas for lunch, which they ate outside on red and white checked tablecloths." 1


http://www.echotech.org

Urban and roof top gardens are popping up in cities across America and as one pioneer in Wisconsin put it; “We need 50 million more people growing food,” Allen told them, “on porches, in pots, in side yards.” The reasons are simple: as oil prices rise, cities expand and housing developments replace farmland, the ability to grow more food in less space becomes ever more important. "2

This motivates me even more to get my garden beds ready for July seed planting. We really enjoyed picking our own organic salads this past spring, all grown in containers. But autumn gardens are always the best here in Florida, especially the lettuces so we are building larger raised beds this summer so we can grow even more of our own this fall.

Over the next few weeks, this newsletter will be focusing on Planning your space, How-to-build raised beds and square foot gardening. Since the first seeds can be planted either in the ground or in 4" containers beginning July 15, it's time to start planning and thinking about what you want to eat this fall. Good crops to consider are seed potatoes, winter squash, peas, spinach, beets, pole beans, onions, lettuces, herbs and carrots.


GREEN LIGHT SPECIAL!
Buy 1 Rose [AS IS ] and get the second Rose bush at 50% OFF this week.

It feels like the Dog Days of Summer are here. Did you know that Palmers Maintenance has a service for LAWN AND SHRUB MAINTENANCE? Call us for a free estimate on taking care of your yard for you.


Butterfly Food
Right now the gardens here are full of butterflies, searching for nectar as well as a place to lay their eggs. Parsley is a great host larva plant for the Eastern Black Swallowtail and some beautiful parsley plants just arrived. We also have Milkweed in orange and in solid yellow for the Monarchs, Dutchman's pipe for the Pipevine Swallowtail and numerous colors of passion flower vine for the orange Gulf Fritillary to lay their eggs on. If you like to watch all the stages of the butterly, stop by and pick up what you need to feed them. Next week: Looking for Butterfly Larva on your plants

Growing Together,
The Palmers Team

Under Ground NOTES

Do you have a question you'd like answered? Let us know and we may include it in a future newsletter!

Have you just started receiving our newsletters? Recent articles can be found online here: http://palmersgarden.blogspot.com

If at any time, you wish to STOP receiving this newsletter, simply reply REMOVE in the subject line and we'll take care of it for you, no problem.

(1) Demand for Vegetable Seeds Is Rooted in Recession
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061402741.html

(2) Street Farmer
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/magazine/05allen-t.html