Growing vegetables in a rainy desert

Flower & Garden Magazine, Feb-March, 1995 by Monica Brandies

Barney Yelton Lives Near Tampa, Florida, where vegetables are difficult to grow and home gardens as we know them are almost non-existent.

No wonder his garden stops traffic. If the rest of us could grow such abundance, a garden one-fifth the size of his would feed an average-size family.

Yelton's plot, measuring 50 feet by 50 feet, could easily supply a market stand. Instead it feeds neighbors, church friends, lodge brothers, passers-by and total strangers.

As a young boy, Yelton's first gardening tool was a flashlight. His father had two jobs and arrived at home after the sun was down.

"I'd hold the flashlight for him while he'd go out and turn the soil and plant the seeds," Yelton recalls. "Of course, that was up in Kentucky. The ground is so much better and so different up there that if you stand still, you take root and start growing."

This area, near the Gulf Coast of west central Florida, is as dry and sandy as a desert for nine months of the year; then, during the three summer months, rain falls almost daily. Yelton had to adapt his gardening methods to the climate when he came to Florida in 1951. His success is more than sufficient to give hope to other transplanted gardeners.

Fall gardens can start in August or September most years. Yelton plants only cold-hardy vegetables in fall: cole crops, greens, onions and peas. Everything else can go in by early spring - February for Yelton, though killing frosts have been known to strike in that month.

Actually, there is no noticeable pause in the Yelton garden. As each row matures, Yelton replaces it with corn, beans and squash. But since his spring crops are different from his fall crops, crop rotation is automatic.

By mid-June only okra, eggplant, certain pumpkins and squash, perhaps a salad tomato or `Roma' tomato, 'Zipper Cream' peas and tropical vegetables will grow in the increasing heat. Yelton used to leave the garden empty during July and August when temperatures pass 90 degrees every day, drop only to the 70s at night and rains fall almost every afternoon. But when he learned the 'Zipper Cream' peas would put nitrogen back in the soil, he planted his whole garden with them for a cover crop that gave a harvest, too.

Many of the varieties common to Northern gardens will not adjust to the Florida climate. It is safer to buy seed of varieties that are known to do well from the local bulk seed dealers that cater to truck farmers.

Yelton favors seeds over seedling plants, both for the economy and to assure they are planted in the proper phase of the moon. He starts seeds right in the garden, watering the ground well before he plants. He sows no deeper than the length of the seed - shallower than is often recommended. Sometimes the seeds are washed away and Yelton has to plant again, but usually the sun and moisture combine to give him quick and excellent germination.

Seed treatment with fungicide is a good idea in Florida, where the humidity is high and the summer rains can be torrential. Damping off is a problem in hot, rainy weather. Nematodes and hungry rabbits can also take a ton.

"I always plant three seeds: one for me, one for the Lord, and one for the crows or the insects," Yelton says. "Except potatoes, I plant them singly with the eye looking up to the Lord.

"Thinning was one of the hardest lessons I ever learned because I thought I was wasting plants," he continues. "But if you don't thin and give them room to expand in the ground, you get small stuff."

The uncertainty of the weather is a constant problem. Occasional frosts and extreme heat can squeeze the seasons short without warning. The Christmas freeze of 1989, for example, brought temperatures below freezing four nights in a row - as low as 19 degrees. Even cold-hardy kale, cabbage, onions and peas were badly damaged. Spinach, which survives Northern winters well, was scorched from the suddenness of the temperature changes. Yelton, like other Florida growers, did his mourning while he cleaned up and started again.

Florida soils come in three kinds: muck, marl and sand. Yelton's is sand. He has added so many leaves and grass clippings to his soil "it would pile up to the sky; but that all keeps getting used up, so I put on more."

All that organic material increases the efficiency of both plant food and water and makes the well-tilled soil easy to work. Yelton spreads a 4-6-6 fertilizer including trace elements when he plants. He top-dresses when the seedlings are about 2 inches tall and again when they bloom, spreading about 5 pounds of 6-6-6 fertilizer to a 50-foot row.

It may seem strange that few things will grow without irrigation in a place that gets over 50 inches of rain a year. But most of that moisture comes in the summer, when the fewest vegetables are in the garden. Even most commercial fields are planted to cover crops then.

The rest of the year overhead sprinklers water the garden every three or four days as needed. Yelton checks for moisture by digging a few inches into the soil with his finger.