Cabbage and sunflowers

My son and I were just in the garden and we saw two yellow Sulphur butterflies and a white/light brown one. It was beautiful, and I wish I could have taken a better picture. I took one but it was from far away.

We are going to cut the cabbage later in the afternoon. I don't want the bugs to eat it. I had planted two and one was damaged by some bugs so I had to pull it out. This one is still growing but I don't want to take chances.

The sunflowers are growing a lot. They are taller than my son.

South Florida

Somebody asked me if I lived in a warm climate and yes!!! I am in South Florida. That is the reason why I have tomatoes now. Our vegetable growing season is during the winter/early spring. This is my first year of growing vegetables and I have learned a lot. This year I grew everything in containers. I need to start planning my garden for next year. I like the potager look so I am hoping to make a garden with edibles and flowers.

Tomatoes!!!

We got a lot of cherry tomatoes today. It looks like they are all ripening at once. It has been very hot lately so I guess this is the end of the season. The plants still have more tomatoes and even some flowers but they seem to be growing faster now.

This is going to be my dinner tonight :-)

Vegetable garden

The potted tomato plants are still giving us tomatoes every day. The plants are not looking great because it is getting hot outside but it keeps flowering and producing fruit.

I just cut the Swiss chard. I was waiting for it to get larger but it looks like something is eating the larger leaves so I decided to cut all the baby leaves before they get them too. I am going to cook it like spinach and see if I like them.

We still have sweet peas in the trellis. The plant is not looking good but it has good sized pea pods.

The fig cutting are getting bigger. One has 2 figs but they have not grown at all, the plant is getting larger and it has more leaves but the figs are the same.

Ginger and miniature roses

I just noticed that the gingers are coming out! I can't wait to see them. I planted pinecone ginger in other parts of the garden because I wanted to have lots of cut flowers in the summer. I loved having them last year. I love the way they smell. I put some in my sister's garden as well. I also saw buds in the walking Iris and the Amaryllis! My miniature roses are blooming now. I love that pink color.

Butterflies

These are pictures of some of the butterflies that have visited our garden during the past year.

Hail damage

Last weekend there was some kind of storm and we had some hail. I had never seen hail in Florida. It was not much so I didn't think it was going to damage the plants but it did. Some of the plants with big leaves have holes and broken leaves. It also has been very windy for the last 4 days and it is affecting some of the plants.
Some sunflowers were cut in half. I guess they are too tall and are not supported. The garden looks sad :(

Back garden

I finally started mulching the garden bed in the back. I am not finished because I ran out of mulch and newspaper but I am glad I was able to do most of it.

Spring

Spring is here! It is amazing how the plants know it and they are growing so fast. It also means that the weather is going to get hot and I won't be able to play in the garden much. The bugs are back too. I have seen more wasps looking for eggs and caterpillars and fire ants have started to make mounds. Somebody told me to put sugar in the mounds to make the fire ants leave and it seems to be working. It doesn't kill them but it makes them leave.

Amaryllis

I got some Amaryllis! Cindee sent me a seedling, a couple of bulbettes, some african iris seeds and a rooted brug cutting!! She is so generous!!! I planted the Amaryllis in the back and put the brug cutting in a pot until I make a bed for it. Thank you Cindee.

What's blooming in my garden?

I haven't had time to take pictures but I want to write about the plants that are blooming right now. My ground orchid (Phaius tankervillaea "Nun's orchid") has flowers. They are very pretty. The kings mantle is doing great, it has lots of blooms. It is in the north side of the house so for months it has been in full shade. The bulbine I got on Ebay is blooming too. I love the pink begonia, very easy to propagate, the small white flowers are bacopa. They have been blooming for months. I also like the daisies I got. The lavender is still blooming and the potterweed is starting to bloom more. I am also excited because for the first time my bouganvilleas are blooming. Not a lot, but they have blooms. I have had them for a couple of years and once they lost the blooms they had when I bought them, they had not bloomed at all.