Open Greenhouse & Plant Swap, Saturday, April 5, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., 602 Ronele Drive, Brandon, FL 33511
IMPORTANT: We changed the time back to 9 to 1 since we apparently went from winter to summer with no spring in between.
If you’ve never been to Open Greenhouse, it’s a great way to see what’s happening in my Florida-friendly yarden and meet other gardeners. The plant swaps are great fun – you never know who is going to bring what. (They’re not a tit-for-tat swap so you don’t need to bring anything if you don’t have plants you can share.)
This is the time of year when some of our favorite fruit is ready to eat. The loquats along the sidewalk are attracting visitors from miles around — luckily the tree bears enough fruit to share. And for gardeners, it’s one of the easiest fruit trees you can grow. Unlike most of the plants in our yarden, it’s cold hardy to 20 degrees — or 12 if it’s a mature plant. The fruit wraps around a large seed that germinates quickly and easily.
The literature says they produce one crop a year after six years. We disagree. This tree came from a seedling that popped up in the backyard under another tree, and it set some fruit in three years. It also sets fruit at least two and sometimes three times a year. We get way more fruit now that it’s about eight years old, and the heaviest crop is in the spring, but it was pretty prolific all along.
We’ll also have mulberries from our ever-bearing trees to share, along with cuttings that you can root and expect to have fruit on next year. And we’ll also have some carambola — star fruit — that grows from seeds but it’s a lot more challenging that the loquat.
We have a small forest of elderberry to share too. You don’t want to eat it raw, but I’m told it’s easy to make gummies, jelly or wine instead of buying them.
And if flowers are your thing, this is a good time of year for them too. As we cruise into what’s starting out to be a hot, dry summer, we’ll feature crinium lilies again. Oddly enough, they’re native to wetlands but they’re planted in parking lots across the state, which has to be one of the worst possible places to grow anything. They’re not blooming yet, but they’ll be spectacular later this summer.
We have lots of the white flowers and some of the red. Both are attractive to hummingbirds, bees and butterflies.
Even with the heat, it’s still spring to plants so it’s the best time of the year for cuttings. Nearly everything we grow originally came from cuttings, and we’re delighted to be able to share them with our neighbors.
We’ll be selling some of the large well-rooted plants of Tough Boy tomatoes, said to be the tasty tomato around. (I like them all, so I can’t answer that question!) I’ll let the mama plants get a little out of bounds so you can get free cuttings. We’ll also have free cuttings on the Everglade tomatoes – we didn’t get enough volunteers to offer you-digs because it’s been so dry but tomatoes are easy to root in water.
Some of the plants you can help us trim back:
Brazilian red cloak blooms all winter long in full sun or deep shade. It’s also an awesome cut flower if you don’t mind stealing food from the hummingbirds.
Dombeya (aka Florida hydrangea) is a totally amazing plant that was gifted to us two years ago. It’s now eight feet tall and six feet wide and was covered in blooms all winter long.
Pink and red powderpuff plants need a good trimming too.
Firespike, in either purple or red, is another plant that blooms in either sun or shade and attracts butterflies and hummingbirds.
We have some you-dig firebush that birds planted in spots that aren’t going to work. It’s, without doubt, the best bee/butterfly/hummingbird attractor in the yarden and it’s super easy to grow.