Many of you have heard of me and may know me as the Booster guy here at Top Tropicals. If you have read any of my blogs in the newsletter, you may know that I enjoy growing tropical fruit trees. Well, I actually enjoy growing a lot of things. I have had gardens in my life for as long as I can remember. My mom’s parents were apple farmers in Michigan and in addition to growing their fruit trees, I remember grandma always having a nice garden. When I got a little older, I helped my mom with the gardening at our house. My dad was always an avid gardener as well. It is just in my blood and my wife loves all things plants. When we lived in Indiana, we had a nice little garden in front of our house and we also had about a half acre planted with tomatoes, potatoes, squashes of all kinds, corn, popcorn, pumpkins, and many other veggies.
Since my wife and I moved to Florida in 2019, we have continued growing our own vegetable garden. Now, I must say that it has been quite the experience trying to learn when to plant things here in south central Florida. It seems that the summer sun can be so hot that even plants like tomatoes, that love the heat, can’t survive. We have struggled with not only the seasons, but also the soil. Turns out this part of the state sits on a sand ridge (Lake Wales Ridge) and is home to many plants and animals that cannot be found anywhere else. Honestly, I don’t know how anything grows here, but it does.
The first year, we amended our soil with some composted cow manure and planted our garden. Everything came up and looked wonderful. Right up until April. Then it got hot and with the sun directly overhead, things began to suffer. On top of that, we found out that this area has a real problem with nematodes. They love to feed on the roots of many garden plants and can destroy them before you even know they have done their damage.
There are several methods of dealing with these nematodes, but none of them work long term. It seems the only answer is to do raised beds. Even so, you will need to put down a barrier under your soil to keep them from getting in. We decided to try our hand at growing in grow bags this year. Our seeds were sown in a seed tray in December and moved to small pots as soon as they had their first real leaves. You can see our simple set up below. The "fence" is to keep out the curious cats.
In early February, we transplanted the larger tomatoes into 10 gallon grow bags and the peppers went into 3 and 4 gallon pots. You can find the bags online.
For soil, we are using Sunshine Abundance. 
We did use a layer of mulch to help hold in moisture. Below are the peppers. We have both Jalapeno and banana peppers here.
Sunshine Abundance is a perfect soilless mix. It drains well so the plants won’t get too wet and rot. One thing about the grow bags is that they do drain very well compared to plastic pots. You need to check soil moisture daily.
We also planted potatoes in 7 gallon tall grow bags. To do this, we put down a small layer of Sunshine Abundance and then put in our potato pieces with the eyes. We put 2 in most bags and the extra one made 3 in the last bag. We just covered the potatoes with our soil mix, watered and set them out. We did not fill the bags, but are adding more Abundance as the potatoes start to sprout. After just two weeks in the bags, you can see in the following picture that they are doing well. We are adding about an inch per day right now just to keep the sprouts covered.
In another week or so, the bags should be full and the potatoes will be well on their way to producing a great crop for us.
Now, you may have noticed that I mentioned that Sunshine Abundance is a soilless mix. This means that it contains no nutrients for the plants. Nutrients must be added for the seedlings to grow into healthy plants that will produce produce. Sorry about that, I couldn’t help myself. I use Sunshine Robusta at a reduced rate for my seedlings; about half of what the label calls for. Once the seedlings are established, I go to the full rate that is prescribed on the label. After just a short time, I have switched to Sunshine C-Cibus as it helps with both root development and also with flowering and fruiting.
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Here are a couple more pictures of our plants that were taken just 2 weeks after being transplanted into their current containers. The first one is a banana pepper plant. Notice that it is already producing flowers and secondary branches. 
Here is an updated photo from just 2 weeks later.
Here is a photo of a couple of the jalapeno plants. They are doing fantastic and are beginning to set peppers.
Here is one of the tomato plants.
They are all doing very well at this point. Here is an updated photo of the same tomatoes just two weeks later.
Did you notice that the tomato has a nice thick stem? In the past, my tomatoes have grown rather spindly. This year I sprayed the seedlings with Sunshine Epi when they were still quite small. I treated them again a couple of weeks later. I continue to give them a good spray of Sunshine Epi every 3 weeks or so.
Sunshine Epi is a brassinosteroid that seems to be a real workhorse when it comes to keeping plants healthy. It is a plant hormone made from extracted flower pollen. It helps plants to overcome stress and also speeds up metabolism in plants if applied a day before nutrients are applied. It seems to really help my tomatoes to beef up like this and have a strong stem.
I also apply a micro-nutrient to my plants on a monthly basis. Remember I said that Sunshine Abundance is a soilless mixture and does not contain nutrients like soil does. I use Sunshine Superfood on all of my plants including trees and shrubs.
It contains all the micronutrients plants need and those nutrients are chelated with amino acid rather than EDTA. This ensures that the plant has easier access to those needed micro-nutrients and that they won’t get bound up in the soil.
You remember that the other issue we had was the intense sun here in central Florida. Well, tomorrow, we are putting up a shade cloth that will protect our tomatoes and peppers from that harsh sun. We should have another one ready to go soon for our potatoes and also the carrots that we planted in large pots. The Sunshine Abundance should be a great medium for growing carrots. It is light and should allow the carrots to grow nice and deep without any trouble. 
We are very excited about the garden season this year and feel like we have the best chance yet of producing some nice veggies since we have been here. I sure hope so as there is nothing better than fresh food from your own garden. If you are not growing your own fruits and vegetables, I would recommend that you give it a try. Top Tropicals has all you need to grow a beautiful basket of food. Check out the Boosters and Supplies page to see everything you need to grow your own food.
Happy Gardening!
