Ghosts of potagers past: Florida
A kitchen garden with a river view.
A decade after I said goodbye to my California kitchen garden (along with the rest of it) — a decade spent putting my creative energy into other ventures — I found myself with a plot of land to garden again, and time to grow vegetables. I was, however, in Florida. On a river bank, no less. And that’s a whole different ballgame!
I don’t know if I initially thought to include vegetables in the arrangement when I first started laying plans for this mostly neglected lot, but I pretty quickly struck on the idea of creating a “secret garden” in a square of space that had three walls — the house, a pool enclosure and a hedge — and needed something for a fourth wall to provide some separation from the river. When a beautiful old laurel oak tree had to be taken down (Reader, I cried) it left us with no shade where it had once been abundant, and I decided that given the slope of the bank and the slant of the sun, a vegetable bed would make a great sort of half-wall, secluding this garden room and the pool from neighbors across the way and kayakers streaming past. And don’t worry, we still had ample river views. This gave us the perfect mix.
After the oak tree came down, mapping out the plan with string for the path and cardboard for the scale of the bed. Unlike California, this time we got some help with the bed and the gravel. A mix of large plants extended the hedge wall on that side.
What I knew from my California potager was that I didn’t need nearly as much planting space as I’d had before (~100 sq ft). I had learned that vegetables could be planted much more tightly than I’d initially done in those CA beds, and also to limit my planting to what we could actually use. Or, at least, aim to do that. So I plotted out one large raised bed, 4' x 14'. And in this 56 sq ft, I still grew more food than we could use and was constantly giving things away. Which is part of the joy of vegetable gardening — but only up to a point!
I packed so much food into this bed.
I also made this bed taller than my California raised beds for a few different reasons:
• I knew enough to not want the vegetables growing down into the dirt here — the previous owner had used a lawn maintenance company (which we inherited) that I felt sure had used pesticides, for one thing. I wanted to be able to plant in good organic soil, and abide by organic practices, even though that new soil becomes the expensive part of the startup costs. (I know more now about other things to use in the bottoms of raised beds so it’s not all expensive soil.)
• Ease of working on it, aka less stooping. I designed it to be bench height (18") with a cap all the way around it that I could sit on as I worked, if needed.
• This also meant it functioned as extra seating if and when we had people over, which only happened a couple of times in the two years we wound up being there, but it worked just like I intended it!
• And while it was accommodating to humans, it put the vegetables out of reach of the copious bunnies and other critters in the neighborhood. I wasn’t sure if that would be tall enough to do the trick, but I crossed my fingers and thankfully it was.
I noted in talking about the CA potager that my favorite thing about gardening in it was the winter crops. In Florida, the main winter crop is tomatoes! It’s too hot for them in the summer. (The problem being that if it doesn’t get cool enough at night — which it doesn’t where we were — the fruit can’t set.) That took some getting used to, and I wound up experimenting with varieties that could take the summer heat as well, but wow did I grow amazing tomatoes there. My beloved gardening mentor, Jo, was famous for saying flatly in her heavy Southern accent, “I don’t want a winter tomato.” And neither do I. Unless it’s homegrown in Florida winter.
That time I let the carrots get too big.
In this bed, I could grow 3-4 tomato plants in a season (generally 3 full-size and one Sungold) and have more than enough, while also having a steady supply of various greens and herbs; some cut flowers in all seasons; carrots (my fave) over the winter; and so on. I had a Sungold plant one year that kicked out at least two pints a day, which I would leave on people’s steps. And at one point I had so many more full-size tomatoes than we could eat that I put them on platters and literally went door to door asking if anyone wanted some. That’s one way to meet your neighbors!
If I ever somehow make raised beds here in our little New York garden, the Florida garden taught me that ~50 sq ft is plenty.
