Juniper Lunde

Thank you both!! I'm glad to hear there are so many plants that'll grow down here, this is super helpful. Yesterday, I started building some hugelkultures; now it's time to start researching and acquiring these plants!

Thanks again!

Hola y'all!

I've been trying to establish a kitchen garden here in south Florida for the last couple years, and I've been struggling. I have learned some lessons - like ignoring any advice that says to plant in full sun - but it's been quite difficult since I've been away at college. The majority of the time I have to work in the garden unfortunately coincides with the hottest part of the year, when all the guides to growing conventional vegetables say you should have already harvested your crop by April-ish, and should avoid planting anything new until September. The plant guides I see also tend to stop at Zone 9, with no advice at all for Zone 10 gardeners.

I'm looking for more sub/tropical plant suggestions, for any edible plants (fruit, vegetable, herb, whatever) that can be planted in late spring or summer in Florida. Ideally, I'd like to establish something that might require a lot of initial work, but little maintenance, so it'll be easy for my mom to care for the garden when I'm away.

So far, the only plants I've been able to successfully harvest have been pineapples. I'm thinking of trying my luck with muscadine grape and American elderberry (both grow wild nearby) and maybe trying some of the early spring plants in a very shady spot with lots of water and mulch, and perhaps some Cuban foods like malanga if I can figure out how to get them to slip...

What's worked for y'all? Any advice at all on subtropical gardening is very much appreciated!

Alright I got about a month’s use out of my skirt before COVID-19 shut down the gardens, and I'm quite pleased with my new work garment! Like people  discussed earlier in the thread, I went for a flat front panel, while in the back I made a pleated design inspired by kilts, walking skirts, and limited yardage. It’s definitely a lot more comfortable to walk and climb around in, and it accommodates my adding and subtracting of layers. It does drag at my legs a little on very windy days, but nothing too bad, and it doesn’t get too windy often where I am anyways. It took me about a week to stitch, sewing running back stitches by hand in my free time. One night some other students were watching Avatar in the common room while I sewed, and I liked the design of the Fire Sages robes, so I made the front panel end in a triangular point instead of a flat edge flush with the pant hems. I think that helps a little with mobility/not stepping on my skirt.

I made a couple of mistakes I still need to fix. I think I should raise the hem so that the skirt is slightly shorter then my pants were, so that it doesn’t drag on the ground so often. I also made a super beginner mistake by folding the raw edges so that they were out of sight, but still very much exposed and raw on the inside. Experiences sewers will predict what happened to those edges after a couple washes and month of hard use: the edges started to unravel and I found my feet getting tangled in threads. Whoops.

I’ve worn it both around the gardens and around campus and, unexpectedly, I’ve gotten a ton of compliments, both by people who wanted to know if I’d made it and by people who seemed to have no clue. One volunteer at the garden even told me that turning pants into skirts had been trendy when she was in high school. Who knew?

(I've tried to attach some pictures. Hopefully they show up.)

I’m so glad this thread exists, as this is just the sort of help I need right now!

I’m a student gardener and for the last 3 and a half years my cargo pants have served me well. They’re made out of a thick sturdy denim, they have lots of big pockets, and they’re camo which camouflages the mud stains a bit. BUT I’ve had to mend the crotch at least three times and I’m tired of having to mend and re-mend that when I have other things that need mending. Also, they make it difficult to take the stairs two at a time, because they’re guy pants and they never quite fit properly.

I’m solving both issues by converting my pants into a skirt obviously. I got some green denim scrap cloth I’m going to sew to the pant legs.



As you can see (assuming I've attached this image right...) I’ve already cut open the inseam, so now I’m committed! The faster I sew, the less likely I am to permanently stain my other cargos lol

Thank you to everyone who’s contributed to this thread! Walking skirt and utility kilt were very helpful suggestions for looking up inspiration, and the flat front panel advice was brilliant, that never occurred to me at all.