Peace Church Garden

 We've been here for almost a month and I haven't done much gardening. We brough blackberry cuttings from Indiana, I stuck them in the ground and have been watering them daily. The branches remain green, but there are no young leaves or buds. My neighbor Paulette said that planting a top of pineapple in the ground will start a pineapple plant, I have 2 pineapple tops in the sandy soil for weeks, so far no new growth. Today Tracy built 4 large frames for garden beds. We layered them with cardboard and on Wednesday garden soil is scheduled to be delivered. I probably have over 40 vegetable seed packets, can't wait to get some seeds in the ground.

We've been in Florida for 2 years, many changes happened in this time. My gardening has had some ups and a lot of downs. My dream of growing most of our food hasn't materialized yet. I'm not giving up completely but I have to accept the reality that gardening takes a lot of energy and I'm not getting any younger. We are still engaged in some minor remodeling and construction and this hasn't left much time for gardening. Three varieties of edible plants have flourished on our property: spineless opuntia cactus (Nopal), pigeon peas and Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus),  Italian basil. We also had episodic but excellent harvest of buttercrunch lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, butternut squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, green onions, parsley, radish tatsoi cabbage.  The problem is that my gardening successes have been erratic, I haven't been able to get consistent production of anything except for Nopal and pigeon peas.

 We bought a place in Florida,  It's has an old frame house and another old cement block structure that can work as storage or a workshop and almost an acre of land. After we bought it we found out that the building used to be a church, called Peace Church.  I've always dreamed of having a garden where I can grow fruits and vegetables. I will try to make this dream a reality. Right now the garden is in the planning stages. I would like to try to grow most of the fruits an vegetables we eat, I know this will not be easy. My previous gardening experiences weren't always successful. At times we would get a bumper crop of one vegetable or fruit and almost nothing of others. My previous gardens were much smaller and my time was more limited. I hope that now my garden will be more successful because I will have more time, more space and endless gardening season. Endless because our growing zone is 9B and I expect that I can garden year round. I am trying to decide which plants ...