Weekly Garden Tip

January 8, 2006

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

Growing vegetables is something that many people are starting to do more frequently. Not only is the cost of vegetables sometimes a little bit too high for some people when they visit their supermarkets, but it’s a lot of pleasure to grow your own and have it there to be used anytime that you want it.

Some types of vegetables aren’t very commonly carried in the supermarkets so you can only buy them frozen or processed, but if you have a home garden you can grow a wide variety of types of vegetables and also include herbs if you have sufficient space.

Vegetables are available in the form of seeds or young baby plants at your local retail garden center or nursery so all you really have to do is make a list of what you want, go to your favorite garden center and purchase them. Once back home plant these outside in a well lighted area that gets at least a half a day of full sun and also a well drained location that’s not susceptible to periodic flooding if we get unseasonable heavy rains.

A more safe way for many people to grow vegetables is to grow them as container plants and then these are portable so you can move them to more protected locations if we have heavy rains or the threat of frost or freeze.

Vegetables need regular watering and fertilizing, but this is not a major problem even for a novice grower. Insects and diseases may occasionally attack your vegetables, but many of these can be gotten rid of without using harmful pesticides. Insecticidal soap products or picking off problems by hand works fine for many people.

If you already have a vegetable garden and have a lot of produce, if some of it is larger than a normal representative of that type you may want to consider entering it in the upcoming South Florida Fair Largest Vegetable Contest.
The contest is the opening day of the Fair, Friday, January 13, and all you have to do to enter your vegetable is pick it and bring it to agricultural building #5 between 10 a.m. and 12 noon and have it weighed to see if it qualifies for some of the prizes. Top prize money is $200 for first place and winning vegetables will be on display during the fair so don’t think that you can’t get some money for that hard work you put into your vegetable garden.

There’s also a division for children 8 years and older so if children have vegetables they want to enter encourage them to do so as well.

Information on the Largest Vegetable Contest can be gotten from the Palm Beach County Extension Service at 233-1750 in the north and central county area or 276-1260 in the south county area. You can also call the South Florida Fairgrounds at 793-0333 for contest details.