The Flora and The Weather

Since the weather is so different here in Coastal Florida than it was in PA, I'm still using the trial and error method to find out what will grow in my yard, both in vegetables and in landscaping flowers and shrubs. I'll talk more about gardening in my upcoming blogs because it's an ongoing learning experience for me. I've started using Earthboxes and made one myself, as well. More about that later, also.

As I understand it, there are 2 growing seasons here: Fall/Winter and Spring. They are both longer seasons compared to those up north. I learned the hard way not to try to grow anything in the Summer months June through August. The rainy season starts then, as well as the oppressive heat and humidity. It thunderstorms every day. When the sun does come out, it fries your garden plants. Nothing I planted produced anything. The only thing that grew during this time was weeds, and boy do they! The jasmine bush grows beautifully (it was here long before I moved in), and so do the hibiscus shrubs. You really have to keep them under control by pruning often. I planted a honeysuckle which seems to thrive here. One of my favorite plants in the yard is called Crown of Thorns. It has blooms on it 365 days a year, and is filled with thorns up and down the stems. Dangerous but beautiful.

Some other plants that thrive down here are Plumbago, Mandevilla, Bougainvillea, Lantana, Croton and Euonymus. A lot of the homes around me have these plants in their landscaping. As I drive past homes, I always check out their landscaping to give me ideas about what will survive here. I went to my favorite store, Home Depot, to get a plant I saw at McDonald's drive-thru. It's a Mexican Petunia and is growing very well in my yard now.

I had a definite idea that if I was going to move to Florida, I had to have a palm tree in my yard. Well, I have one, but little did I know that you have to pay to have it trimmed twice a year! An extra expense that I hadn't known about. The tree produces large seed pods that look like huge orange grapes that need to be removed. The leaves also turn brown and sag down low because they're dead. Those need to be cut off also. The local tree trimming companies charge $15 to $20 to trim your tree and haul away the debris.