Ever since struggling with our deficient soils this past winter, I’ve been on a mission to grow our #compost piles as quickly as possible with free materials. Starbucks will give you used coffee grounds if you ask and I also made friends with a woodworker who only uses untreated wood and gives me bags of sawdust. So there’s your nitrogen and your carbon. We also add kitchen scraps and Mexican sunflower aka “green manure”, a beautiful fast-growing plant rich in nitrogen & potassium. #gardening

An atala butterfly visiting our native coffee bush. The seeds do not contain caffeine, unlike its cousin coffee arabica. Birds & insects love it and it puts out decorative red berries after it flowers. #Florida #NativePlants #pollinators #zone10 #gardening

The irony is that our garden struggled through the winter and spring, a popular growing time in #Florida, because we had soil issues. Now that our soil is richer, our garden is thriving at a time when most give up planting until the fall. During our hot, muggy summers conventional veggies become pest ridden and so the “trick” is to plant vegetables suited to our zone. Here we have yard long beans and Seminole pumpkin. I learned a lot of this from https://theurbanharvest.com/collections/seeds. #gardening #zone10