Sunday, October 18, 2009

By Cynthia Edwards Key West Garden Club

Autumn is when people in the Keys start thinking about those sweet little cherry tomatoes, green beans, peppers and other fresh goodies from winter vegetable gardens.

But many residents may be trying their hand at homegrown vegetables for the first time because of the rising cost of grocery store produce.

There's a lot to learn, and Andres Mejides of Elfin Acres Organic Farm in Homestead recently shared his expertise at a Key West Garden Club workshop.

Mejides came to South Florida in 1955 and planted his first organic garden the next year. He has taught organic gardening for 25 years at Miami-Dade College, where he's still teaching four courses a year.

In 1993, right after Hurricane Andrew, he and his wife, Cindy, bought the 5-acre Homestead farm and are now growing more than 100 different crops year-round. Except for fruit trees, bushes and micro greens in shade houses, all are grown in raised beds ranging from 10 square feet to 1,500 square feet.

Why raised beds? Nematodes, also known as roundworms, parasitize plant roots and spread disease, he said. They thrive in the soil where there is hot, humid, moist weather -- like right here in the Keys.

A raised planting bed makes it easier to treat the soil for these potentially devastating pests. Mejides emphasized that compost, the preferred growing medium, incorporates prolific microbial life, some of which feeds on nematodes.

The first consideration is the location of the bed, which should be 4 feet by 25 feet, so one may reach across it without having to step inside. He recommended a well-drained site with at least six hours of direct sunlight in the winter, and ideally, with a shade tree on the north side of the plot.

The tree shades it in the glaring, hot summer and allows sunlight in the winter, thus extending the growing season. He said he can grow cherry tomatoes all year long if they're shaded part of the day.

Don't bother to pull up grass or weeds on the site. Simply spread plain newspaper (no glossy colored ads) in several layers overlapping to cover the site. On top of that, untreated wood or recycled plastic "boards" 1 foot wide and 1 inch thick constitute the frame for the bed. That way, when you make the frame, the beds are 1 foot high and will hold 1 foot of soil for root crops.

Brace the upright boards along the outside edge with cinder blocks, holes up, for planting herbs around the border. Use more sand in that soil as herbs like good drainage.

Mejides said the strong odors of herbs naturally repel pests and impart more flavor to the organic produce growing within. Also, leaning over the aromatic herbs while working in the garden is delightful.

Fill the bed with organically certified soil with a 60-to-40 percent ratio of sand to soil for vegetables or 70-to-30 percent ratio of sand to soil for herbs, enriched with compost. Wet the soil, cover the bed with clear plastic and let it bake in the sun for about two months to sterilize it. A labor-intensive alternative is to microwave the soil before loading it into the bed. This soil baking process, called "solarization," is why Mejides suggests building the raised bed in June or July, for the highest, hottest sun. Then it will be ready for fall planting.

He said established plants should not need watering more than twice a week, early in the morning. Late afternoon or evening watering leaves water standing on the plants overnight, engendering fungal growth.

His mantra is "Compost compost compost!" Compost is not only a nutritious, natural fertilizer for the organic garden, but also kills nematodes.

For the small home garden that the typical Keys yard size often dictates, a composter for kitchen scraps that turns with a crank handle does the trick. One may order aged manure, or add bone meal, fish emulsion or a number of natural fertilizers and soil enhancers. Mulch the bed with hay or straw, which will break down, adding more nutrients and lightening the texture of the soil.

Come mid-winter, you'll be grazing on your own organic, homegrown sweet cherry tomatoes.

Be a Garden Club volunteer and come pull weeds or play in the potting soil from 9 a.m. to noon Mondays.

Cynthia Edwards is a Key West Garden Club guest columnist. She is a former newspaper reporter and retired Key West Police Department public information officer who is now very active in the Garden Club. This column is part of a series developed by the club. Visit http://www.keywestgardenclub.com.