Buy a Useful Plant
Herbs, Vegetables, Fruit
Gladden a Neighbor’s Table This Thanksgiving

An astonishing variety of edible plants may be grown in our area. Please drop by and learn how almost any space may be used to grow something healthy and delicious. EVERY CENT from the sale goes to the food pantry’s Thanksgiving ministry.

Where? Fall Festival
Grace United Methodist Church

When? Saturday, October 15
From 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
65 Needle Boulevard Merritt Island

Also At The Fall Festival – Pumpkin Patch – Food Booths – Cake Walk – Trash to Treasure Sale – Crafts – Silent Auction – Children’s Games – Bounce House – Blessing Of The Pets – Entertainment

Grace United Methodist Church – 65 Needle Boulevard – Merritt Island

About the plants

Fruit
The reason I thought to do this in the first place was that I have some really nice large Feijoa/pineapple guava and grumichama cherry plants. These plants are very ornamental and well worth adding to the landscape in our area.

I also have some of the more common Surinam cherry, which we always called Florida cherry. They are often used as hedges and while the fruit is nothing to rave about, they are edible.

Will also have some yellow guava, strawberry guava, natal plum and pineapple slips. I may take a couple of very small Barbados cherry plants. The Barbados cherry is rapidly becoming a favorite with me. The plants are lovely when in bloom with masses of pink flowers. I really like the fruit, which in addition to a tart flavor like sour candy, is extremely high in vitamin C.

Herbs
I will have bay laurel, lemon grass, basils and spearmint. I have potted up some turmeric, but since they start to go dormant this time a year, will make the decision next week whether or not they look “sellable”. Also have some vanilla orchids that are partially rooted. But it you want it, this will be a great opportunity to get one cheap.

Will have some of the perennial African blue basil, which when kept in a container makes a great pollinator plant to keep near whatever fruit is in flower.

I have some very small lemon eucalyptus, which, while small right now, will grow rapidly once they get going. This is absolutely the best mosquito repellent you can grow in our area. I also have one large plant for sale. Because these grow so fast, and if left unchecked would soon become trees, I strongly recommend growing them in containers. Container grown, they make a great addition to any area of the landscape where you are likely to spend time outdoors. I have been known to break off young stems and toss into the path of my lawn mower. This really does drive the mosquitoes away. Because they grow fast, you will want to trim often, but never throw out those trimmings! Add them to the mulch around your landscape. In addition to driving away mosquitoes I have read that they deter other pests like ticks and fleas. Lemon eucalyptus is cold sensitive (which is why you do not want to grow as trees) but if kept in a container, can be covered and protected if we have a hard freeze. Grown in a container, which I cannot suggest strongly enough, you will have a moveable mosquito repellent to place where most needed while enjoying the outdoors. My sister was getting mosquitoes on her screened porch, so I gave her one last spring. I notice her porch-grows plant grows slower, but it does grow quite well all the same.

Vegetables
My goal with vegetables was to offer some that people could have and use by Thanksgiving. Container grown, vegetables can be added to a patio, balcony, or other areas where space is limited.

So what will I bring?

Little baskets combining garlic chives, red lettuce and mini snow peas.

Mustard, spinach, onion, some small tomato plants planted with basil, corn planted with beans, zucchini, sweet potatoes.

And more: This is by no means a complete list of what I will offer. I am probably forgetting a few things, and will likely make last minute decisions about others. In addition to the edibles, I will bring a few ornamentals.

Prices
While the money from the sale goes to a great cause – our food pantry’s Thanksgiving meals – the price for plants will be kept as low as possible. For example, plants in 4-inch pots, such as the little lemon eucalyptus, will be .50 cents or three per $1. Most of the larger items will range from $3.50 to $7.59, with the largest plants only $10. And the more you buy, the more I will be willing to discount.

First twenty customers that spend $10 or more will receive a free Garden-Florida magnet.

Come early for best selection.

Happy to answer your questions about edible landscaping!

The system that came through this past weekend did a pretty good imitation of a minimal tropical storm. Winds rose. Pressure dropped. Something like ten inches of rain in my yard. The experts will tell you all the reasons why it did not qualify to be a named storm. Maybe so, but the real world results were about the same as if it were.

This was not what I wanted on the weekend before my plant sale, but considering everything, most of the plants came through just fine.

And this Saturday looks just about perfect!

Again, so sorry for not updating in so long.

I get questions about the sweet potatoes, and I must say, the longer I grow them, the more I am impressed. I let them spread out and act as a summer ground cover, which really helps with weeding. I don’t care to weed around the pineapples, so let the sweet potatoes fill the space.

Found this site about sweet potatoes and nutrition interesting because they talk about the benefits of steaming sweet potatoes. This is the way I prefer because steamed are so much easier to peel.

Now this past summer I learned that sweet potato leaves are edible. The new leaves and young shoots, for sure. I have researched what I can and found the leaves are eaten in many parts of the world, but info is not exactly extensive. Therefore, I have been experimenting a bit. Here are some helpful links. Nutritional Value of sweet potato leaves Raw – Cooked

In Florida we grow greens during fall and winter, so in summer we are short on fresh greens. The discovery that young sweet potato leaves could be eaten was great to know. In summer I never have a shortage of healthy young sweet potato leaves as they do grow rapidly.

Steaming the young leaves gave me something much like spinach.

Stir frying worked well. I stir-fried some fresh eggplant from the garden with some hot peppers, garlic and fresh young sweet potato leaves. To this I added a soy sauce mixture. I’ll try to put together a recipe later because it really came out well.

I think they would also work well in soup.

My mother grew up in Alabama during the Great Depression. They grew sweet potatoes, and she was more surprised than anyone when I told her the leaves were edible.

A caution: Ornamental sweet potatoes are becoming a popular, easy to grow ground cover in our area. I do not know much about them, but as far as I know their leaves are not edible. At least I did not think they would be tasty. The roots are supposed to be edible, but not very desirable. I admit, I have not tried one yet.

The simple reason, I have so much to add to this site that it was always easiest to push it aside until I could give it my full attention. I think it would take a full week to update. But now with the plant sale coming up on Oct 15, I will add what I can to help people find more information about the plants I sell. I will treat it as I do weeding the garden and try to get a little done each day.

When we moved to this house back in 1998 there was a mostly-dead maple near the front of our yard. My neighbor had a similarly-placed maple in the same sad condition. A few years later we removed both trees. She had hers cut to the ground and the roots ground up. Mine was cut to about a two-foot stump.

My skeptical neighbor asked if I planned to leave it like that. I explained that I would find a small bougainvillea to plant next to the stump. In no time the stump would be covered over.

Being an avid gardener like myself she vanished into the back and quickly returned with a clay pot containing a small bougainvillea. She didn’t have the space and was happy to be rid of it.

I planted the little thing close to the stump and pruned back the stems to encourage thicker growth. That was about the extent of my effort.

Within a couple of years the bougainvillea had grown into a large specimen, visible from about a block away. I pruned often to encourage new growth and the plant thrived.

Then in September 2004 the relentless winds of Hurricane Frances left the bougainvillea completely defoliated and pushed over on its side. I could not think of a good way to force the thorny monster upright, and so pruned back severely and filled in around the roots with a wheelbarrow full of dirt.

About the time new growth covered the thorns, Hurricane Jeanne arrived to smack it around some more. I know that bougainvilleas are tough plants but this seemed a bit much. Not to worry. By spring the plant was thriving, bigger and bolder than ever.

Then a couple of years ago the balsam pear vine arrived. My cousin calls it stink vine. Call it whatever you like, this plant is even more relentless than the bougainvillea. By this time the bougainvillea was so dense that it was impossible to root out the unwanted vine.

I pruned and trimmed but this only seemed to energize both bougainvillea and stink vine. And by this time I was working to replace the ornamentals in my landscape with edibles. Time for the bougainvillea to go.

The only reason I could think to keep it was that the thorny monster had become a favorite nesting place for the mockingbirds. But even if the birds refuse to serenade me this spring I could not justify the amount of time it now takes to prone the mess. I can’t tell you how often I found an hour or two to work in my yard, only to eat up the time yanking out stink weed and pruning thorny branches. I understand why the mockers love the plant for nesting. There’s no way a cat could negotiate the thorns. I don’t really understand how the birds manage it. With good views of the whole neighborhood, it did make for an ideal mocker fortress.

Well, I finally oiled up the chain saw, put on some heavy-duty gloves and set to work cutting the whole thing down. Even with the gloves my arms look like I just lost a fight with my cats. But it is done. The whole mess is cut back to a thick tangled stump of bougainvillea. And by the way, absolutely no sign remains of that old maple stump. Guess it all became bougainvillea food.

Anyway, I am still not sure if I will completely remove the bougainvillea or try to force it into a more manageable shape. For now I will watch and see how the stump recovers.