Plant Growth Environment

Another week has passed, and my garden is clinging to life. My vegetables aren't looking particularly strong at the moment, but I'll get back to that in a moment. First, an update on what we discussed in lecture this week.

In class, we primarily focused on climate factors that affect crop growth. These factors include temperature, precipitation, humidity, light, and wind. Here in Florida, the extreme conditions impact the types of plants we can grow and how we grow them. North Florida is part of climate zone's 8 and 9, which designates that the average annual minimum temperature is between 10 and 30 degrees F. Gainesville in particular has a frost free period of 221 days. These facts all point to the fact that Florida is hot. Really hot. Really, uncomfortably, unbearably hot (not to mention, humid). These conditions dictate when our planting season occurs in Florida, which is quite different from much of the country. To protect crops from the heat, we avoid growing in the hot season and use other techniques such as shade cloths to control the temperature around them.

So this week in the garden, we started as we always do: weeding. As always, this is an incredibly enjoyable weekly experience. Hunched over and crouched in the dirt, tearing out invasive plant species in the stunningly beautiful Florida sunshine (those of you failing to detect my facetious tone, see the underlined text above).

After weeding, I reseeded one of my zucchini plants that failed to sprout. It is still to hot to plant some of our vegetables such as the lettuce, so most of the remaining time was spent fertilizing my existing plants and treating them with pesticides. To fertilize, I dug out a shallow channel surrounding each plant and sprinkled in some fertilizer. The image below shows one of my tomato plants getting the treatment.

Tomato plant being fertilized

As you can see from my next picture, my young tomato plants are in need of some nutrients. They aren't looking great right now, but I'm hoping I'll be able to help them make a comeback.

Wilting tomato plants

As I mentioned, I've been treating my plants with pesticides to combat the various insects attempting to destroy my garden. Among the culprits are caterpillars and whiteflies, the latter of which seem to be swarming around all of my plants. The images below show some evidence of of these pests on my plants, and what I'm using to keep them away.

Bean leaf showing insect damage

Thuricide, to combat caterpillars