Pastures, Gardens and House Lawn
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A Year of Progress
A couple of photos of my mom shows how happy she is with everything we’ve improved within the span of ten months, and her new dress catching the sunset compliments the exotic flowers and fruit everywhere. The new sunroom porch beautifully completes the oasis view of the back of the house, and the final four new greenhouses (Tents 9-12) are nearly complete on the near-west pasture. Just have to hang doors, move the rows of cacti inside and run electricity to them before real cold gets here. Florida roselle, a Hibiscus that yields flower calyxes that taste like cranberry, gave a mega-yield of pink flowers and food this year. The…
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Color and Form; Edible and Not
Cactus Island finally has the famous “life saver” plant everyone is talking about in the world of succulents. It was an extra gift with Ma’s purchase of an outdoor rocker on Marketplace a few weeks back. Huernia zebrina is a Stapeliad succulent from South Africa – not a cactus. Similar to our starfish Stapelia, the flower is comparatively tiny at one inch and truly does look like a wet lifesaver hard candy. It also smells like carrion and is poisonous if ingested. I’d hate to have small children around these things as the temptation would be too great, and I can still remember the horror at age four of burning…
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Sand Pear Harvest and Canning
The lion’s share ripened on two sand pear trees so overladen that the branches wept like an ornamental cherry, so I put aside cactus this week for the kitchen. With over 500 pear to peel and core staring up at me from the bushel basket, I started several very long multiple shifts along with my mom, who water bath canned at the stove. These Asian hybrid “sand pears” are ideal for North Florida and the few chill hours it provides in Winter, but they are tricky in that they’re tart and tasty when still rock hard yet beginning to fall off the tree at the end of July. When they…
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Taste of July
This has been the summer of cucurbits, especially Seminole pumpkin and watermelon which have taken over the organic beds for the season. We are not disappointed, and neither are our birds or the way-too-tame deer that abuses Cactus Island as its personal salad bar. Despite the relentless young buck that thinks I’m playing tag with it when I try to chase it off the property at dusk, Mom is still filling the cornucopia and freezer with an excess of its favorite beans for our enjoyment. She has put in several long shifts baking, freezing or canning our harvest while I tend cactus, but I’ll be helping when the lion’s share…
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A Sweet Week
Ma’s new chicken shoes arrived, and the birds each had to strut over to inspect. Style, comfort and cleanliness make tending the coop more enjoyable for everyone. I added to the fun by feeding them a couple of “treat sticks” that had trespassed on our plants. Across the yard at the banana bed, just below the mulch line and attached to sprawling vines was a jumbo yield of sweet potatoes we weren’t expecting the first year. These grow better in enriched sandy soil but put all their growth into leaves and vines, not tubers, when growing in recently built-up composting mulch. Such had been the case twice in Estero, but…
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Fall Harvest, Wild and Cultivated
October brought a quick turn of edible color at Cactus Island. It’s not just what we planted that has reached harvest, but also the wild goods growing in the vast natural areas we’ve maintained. There is a healthy population of American persimmon (fruit and spring bloom in photos) and sandhill pawpaw (if the wildlife would ever leave us one) on the land, plus the winged sumac that grows all over the place as an understory shrub makes a great lemony-flavored seasoning for chicken as well as a light citric tea. Ancient Romans used their variety of sumac for seasoning so we gave it a try; excellent and worth the effort.…
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A Gold Tortoise Shell Beetle and What it Likes to Visit
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Two Projects Completed Late Last Year
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What it Took to Get Our “Food Engine” Organic Beds Going
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A Bountiful Mother’s Day from the Gardens
