Each year about this time I am moved to write about one of the marvels of the East Orlando experience: the unique conflux of weather, soil, humidity and biological time clocks that is the Florida winter vegetable garden.
East Orlando is particularly blessed. The Orange County Landfill, located at the end of Young Pine Road, offers backyard gardeners as much rich, organic compost as they can shovel — and it’s free.
That compost will grow collard greens with leaves big enough to wear for clothing, and tomatoes that will all but fly off the vine into your salad bowl.
Backyard gardens are particularly valuable experiments if you have children. The experience of watching vegetables grow, flower and fruit — I’m thinking tomatoes here, of course — is as memorable as it is delicious.
Given the free compost, a little help from the weatherman and the widespread availability of seeds hybridized for our particular climate, the winter season in Florida can be a bounteous one for next to no cost — unless you count the labor, and that’s where kids are particularly helpful.
There’s the soil preparation, clearing a garden plot of grass and weeds and mixing all that compost into the ground. An extra shovel (and a 9-year-old or two) is a blessing.
Then there’s the anticipation. It takes tomatoes about six weeks to flower. Plant them now and you can have vine-ripe, made-in-America salad toppers in by Christmas. You can also have onions, peppers, the aforementioned collards, cabbages, broccoli, carrots, eggplant and just about anything else you can think of. Corn, alas, takes a little longer (and a lot more space).
This is the time of the year when about two-thirds of all the tomatoes sold in grocery stores in the U.S. are grown right here in Florida.
There’s a reason for that, and taking advantage of our mild winter weather — most especially with your kids — is a geographic plus your relatives in Ohio, Michigan and Iowa can only dream about.