Richard Lyons’ Nursery cannot emphasize enough how fortunate we in southern Florida are to be able to grow a wide variety of tropical vegetables and fruits. One of the more versatile food crops is calabaza, whose season is just starting. For ideas on using calabaza throughout the fall and winter, take a look at this…
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Here we are in the last days of September and the weather has already started to change. The change here in South Florida is noticeable only if you pay close attention. The daytime temperature is starting to come down ever so slightly. If you haven’t applied fertilizer since last June, now is the time to…
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Seminole Pumpkin (Cucurbita moshata) is called the wild squash of the Everglades. This is a native Florida pumpkin which the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes cultivated before the Spaniards arrived in the 1500’s. They would plant the seeds at the base of dead trees and allow the vine to grow upward with the fruit hanging down…
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The rainy season in southern Florida is the time of year when precipitation comes not from cold fronts passing through the area, but from the combination of heat and moist air. It is generally considered to span the period between May 20 and mid-October, a time when dew points are consistently above 70°, an indicator…
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On January 16 of this year we published the State of Florida’s updated, discouraging outlook for citrus production. Unfortunately, that pessimism has only deepened since then. State agriculture commissioner Adam Putnam, in a message distributed this week and reprinted below, reports that Florida’s orange harvest will be its lowest in 50 years. The cause is citrus greening, a disease for which…
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