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Old September 21, 2017   #3003
MarlynnMarcks
Tomatovillian™
 
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Port St Lucie, Florida
Posts: 180
Default Thank so much

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zone9b View Post
I’m going out on a limb here and say the Florida is only second to California if fresh vegetable production. Examples include 2015 tomato production with Florida No. 1 at 9,499 hundredweight , California 2nd with 9,424 hundredweight and Tennessee 3rd with 1,033 hundredweight. The top producing US states for Snap Beans are said to be Wisconsin, Florida and New York. One can also find that Florida is a major producer of many other vegetables including lettuce, cucumbers, bell peppers and the list goes on.
Can you grow in Florida Dirt? It would appear the answer is obviously yes.
But, should a Gardener in Florida choose to grow in the dirt rather than raised beds or containers? The answer to that is a bit more complex. 1st of all, it depends on the crop. I have grown in the dirt in South Miami Dade County and here in Orange County Florida, The soil here in Orlando doesn’t compare in quality to the soil in South Miami Dade County. But still I find some crops that do grow well in the soil in my Orlando garden. These include Cow Peas, Brussel Sprouts, Rattlesnake Pole Beans, Sweet Potatoes, various Herbs and Kale. Other crops that I found that do well enough in the dirt are Turnips, Mustard Greens, Collard Greens, Cayenne Peppers and Chinese Cabbage. I have tried to grow Winter Squash in raised beds (RB) without much success, however, I did grow Hubbard in the dirt one season with good success.
My success with growing tomatoes and egg plant in the dirt is much more limited. I find I can do much better growing these crops and quite a few others in RBs or containers. I should point out that my RBs are not lined on the bottom, therefore, are complete with nematodes much as the native soil is. Also, some of the RBs are fairly shallow and as a result roots often extend down into the native soil. Both the RBs and my 10 gallon containers are filled with compost. The containers are kept high enough off the soil so nematodes don’t invade them.
I have grown quite a few varieties of tomatoes in both RBs and 10 gallon plastic pots (containers). I have found that if I have a good productive tomato variety which is nematode resistant it will almost always grow bigger and produce more tomatoes in a RB than in a Container and this includes the shallow RBs as well as the ones where I have used 2x12s. This applies to not only F1 nematode resistant varieties but also OPs such as Brandywine Cherry Dark which appears to have some tolerance to nematodes.
I like to grow nematode resistant tall indeterminate varieties in RBs. Shorter varieties, indeterminate or determinate, nematodes resistant or not are left to go into the containers, most of which are 10 gallons, although I do have a few 6 gallon and 7 gallon containers as well.

Hope this helps in some way.
Larry
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