Carrie Sends in Pictures of Her Florida Garden

A big THANK YOU to everyone who has sent in their photographs and stories. I hope by sharing other peoples pictures and stories here on One Hundred Dollars a Month we can all have a rock star garden this summer. Keep them coming!

Hi Mavis,

I love reading your blog. My husband, children, and I garden, keep chickens, and attempt homestead projects on our property in Central Florida (Zone 9). Our climate would best be described as tropical and hot. In fact, It never snows here. Most of the activity in our garden happens in our gardening season which is during the winter months starting in September. In past years when we gardened in the summer months, we found that the temperatures were too hot to achieve pollination/fruit set. So, by experimentation, we recently found that when we moved our garden beds from a very hot and sunny spot to a more shaded area of the property we were able to garden more successfully during the hottest months. Right now our beds are located under two large Florida pine trees. Normally these trees drop a ton of pine needles both in the garden and also in our house’s gutters. This does cause some headaches. In fact, we were spending quite a lot of time fishing the needles out of the garden beds. Now we just leave them there to help mulch. Despite this, we do still have more pine needles arriving faster than we can take care of them and so I asked my husband who happens to be a woodworker to build me a stylish and fully functional compost bin. I love the end result. It has two doors in the front that can be opened so I can successfully turn the compost with my pitchfork. It also lacks a top so the rain can get in and keep the bin’s contents moist and composting. My husband is a YouTube creator whose channel name is Stan Sullivan and among other outdoor projects, he created a complete video tutorial on how to construct the bin. If you’d actually like to see this very item being built, click HERE and HERE

We have four garden beds in total. We are growing Solar Fire and Early Girl tomatoes and have had success with these varieties in our hot climate. Right now we also have basil growing alongside watermelon, radishes, eggplant, okra, and wildflowers. We planted the wildflowers interspersed between our other plants in order to encourage pollination. Unfortunately, we have had diminished pollinator activity lately. So, we have discussed plans to build a honeybee hive and install it somewhere on the property. Hopefully that project will be done soon and also featured on the channel.

Adjacent to the gardening area is a spot where our two citrus trees grow. One is a lemon which has grown to huge heights and has enormous thorns. The other tree is a grapefruit. I happened to try my hand at making grapefruit marmalade back in December and it turned out wonderful, although a little bit runny. I seem to have a tendency toward making runny jams, jellies, and marmalades. It is so rewarding to turn the fruit of your own backyard into something wonderful that the family can eat. In addition to these fruits growing on our property, we also have had success growing blueberries and raspberries here in Florida. Even Stevia thrives wonderfully here whether planted in a bed or in a pot. I pick the stevia leaves and dry them in my dehydrator.

Our children participate in the local county 4H program. They are members of the poultry club and enjoy learning about and raising chickens. At any given time our chicken population fluctuates but currently we have 7 chickens here in their coop near the garden beds. We can not let the chickens free range due to the fact that they have scratched up our garden beds in the past. Among the variety of breeds that we keep are White Leghorn, Black Australorp, Buff Orpington, Delawares, and Rhode Island Reds The children are currently raising Buff Orpingtons for their 4H market poultry project. Our chicken’s home consists of the coop, nest boxes, and run. We do have problems with aerial predators and keep bird netting over the top of the run. My husband built this coop originally as a portable coop and he also featured the coop build HERE on Youtube. At the time we built our coop, we had a needed for a portable coop as we were moving to a new home. Now, we use the coop as a more permanent structure and have plans to expand on it in the future.

I have also loved using my garden box planter to grow items like carrots. My husband made this planter out of cedar and it has held up very well. Here is a photo of my recent carrot harvest from that planter box. If you are interested in building your own, you can find the video HERE.

I also want to share a photo of our rain barrel system. We couldn’t make our gardens work without them! During the rainy season here in Florida, they stay filled easily. We had to put them up on mini platforms made of wood to be able to use gravity to get the water out of the faucets that are installed at the bottom of the barrels. One challenge that we had to overcome was keeping the platforms in place. With our sandy soil, the platforms would sink down.

You can follow our homestead adventures on our website SimplyEasyDIY or if you are into woodworking you can tune in the YouTube Channel.

Happy Frugaling!

Carrie from Florida

If you would like to have your garden, chicken coop or something you’ve made featured on One Hundred Dollars a Month, here’s what I’m looking for:

• Your Garden Pictures and Tips – I’d especially like to see your garden set ups, growing areas, and know if you are starting seeds indoors this year. If so,  show me some picture of how you are going about it.
• Your Chicken and Chicken Related Stories – Coops, Chicks, Hen’s, Roosters, Eggs, you name it. If it clucks, send us some pictures to share with the world.
• Cool Arts & Crafts – Made from your very own hands with detailed {and well photographed} pictures and instructions.
• Your pictures and stories about your pets. The more pictures and details the better.
• Garage Sale, Thrift Store and Dumpster Diving pictures and the stories behind the treasures you found including how much you paid for them.

If I feature your pictures and the stories behind them on One Hundred Dollars a Month, I will send you a $20.00 gift card to the greatest store in the world: Amazon.com.

Go  HERE for the official rules.