JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. – Many of you have been following the progress of our vegetable garden during the last 8 weeks, as we have brought you stories teaching you how to grow your own food at home, and now we’re ready to harvest it.
We are growing broccoli, carrots and lettuce in the box we started at BEAM, Beaches Emergency Assistance Ministry in Jacksonville Beach.
BEAM’s garden manager, Mary Ellen Waugh, who is also my mother, has shown us how to build your own vegetable box, the fertilizer to use, how much to water, how to keep insects away from your vegetables, and more.
Now, we are ready to harvest our broccoli and our lettuce. In less than 2 months, our broccoli and lettuce have flourished. We harvested the vegetables and added them to the food offered by BEAM’s food pantry.
BEAM provides emergency food and financial services to people who live or work in the Beaches' communities.
Carrots take longer to grow and will be ready to harvest in the next few weeks. Here is a list of vegetables that flourish during our cold Florida temperatures:
- Carrots
- Collard Greens
- Lettuce
- Broccoli
- Cauliflower
- Spinach
- Radish
- Turnip
We also wanted to show you something we added to our soil last month and can be added anytime during your vegetables' growth cycle: worms.
BEAM’s garden manager said worms are an important addition to any vegetable garden.
“They are nature’s plow. They bury in, they aerate the soil, they bring in oxygen and water and they reproduce,” explained Mary Ellen Waugh, who said the waste worms produce also act as a fertilizer in the soil.
Waugh orders worms from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm. They are mailed to you and can be kept in a refrigerator until they’re ready to plant.
We are also happy to report that the broccoli growing in the garden at Mayport Coastal Sciences Academy in Mayport was also harvested last week so it could be provided to clients at BEAM’s food pantry in Mayport.
Mayport is considered a food desert. The middle school hopes its garden will be able to provide 1,500 pounds of food each year to families in the Mayport area who do not have easy access to healthy food.
If you would like to learn more about how to grow your own vegetables, you can find all of our Home Grown stories here.