What to Plant in September in Florida - Vegetable Garden Guide.

Today I want to talk to you about the vegetable seeds you should be adding to your garden, the vegetables that you should be buying or taking and putting in the ground, and the care and maintenance tips to have the garden of your dreams right here in the Sunshine State. So whether you live in North Florida, Central Florida, or South Florida, this is going to be the video for you. And let's start first with seed starting. Now when it comes to seed starting, if you live in North and Central Florida, you can do cool weather crops. And if you're not familiar with cool weather crops, that's going to be all of your brassicas, so cauliflower, broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, and cabbages. If you live in Central and South Florida, you can still be seed starting all your warm weather crops. And that's going to of course be tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, squashes, and beans. Now I know that someone's going to have the question, I want to get going on my cool weather crops, but I live in South Florida or I live in North Florida and I still want to do some of my warm weather crops. Can I do it? And the answer is yes, you can. We're at that time of year where we're kind of on the cusp for everybody, so going a little bit early or starting a little bit late are totally things you can do. The reason I tend not to tell you to do certain things is just really because we're looking at timing and then risk. So when it comes to North Florida, when we look at our warm weather crops like a tomato, it can take up to 120 days for it to go from a tiny little seed to having a harvest. And when we think about at this time of year, if we're like say at the end of September, you really then only have October, November, uh oh, December, January. And therefore the risk is, is that come December and definitely January, we're going to have cold snaps, especially in North Florida that could either damage your plant, set it back, or kill it altogether. So can you do it? Absolutely. You can do it. The seeds will come up, you'll be able to transplant it, but the risk is at the back end with the harvest. Now you can get around that by doing smaller fruits like everglaze tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, pear tomatoes, all of those types, all of those types of tomatoes produce a lot faster and more often. And so you're more likely to get a harvest before you risk having a cold snap. Now the thing is, is every year is different. Sometimes we're warmer, sometimes we're cooler, sometimes we're drier, sometimes we're wetter. So I would say is that you can take the risk. Just know that you do have some risk. And on the flip side with myself, Floridians, if you want to get going earlier on your cool weather crops, you absolutely can. The risk of course is going to be just that pests are going to get to them. They might get really stressed out and die as seedlings, but go ahead. It's a little bit easier actually than the North Floridians because you're just starting early. If the seedlings have problems, as soon as they come up, just restart. So those are your options, but let's talk a little bit about what varieties you could consider. But we're also going to work on getting some seeds started too because I need to keep going with all my seeds starting. So when it comes to North Florida and all of our Brassicas and my Central Floridians, I want you to think about getting those cauliflower started. This was a recommendation from someone who's in my membership, Wendy, who's amazing. She grows completely in containers and grow bags. So she has limited space to test stuff out, but she's the one who said, Hey, get this Rover cauliflower. It works so well. And it did. It worked so well for me. And for those of you who are looking to get cauliflower, a hundred percent agree with Wendy. This was a great variety. When it comes to our broccolis, go ahead and grab things like the Chico or Waltham 29. You can get those varieties from multiple different seed companies. They work really well. I've also had success with transplants from the store from Lieutenant Variety. So I would consider getting your broccoli going. This is a great time of year for it. I also love getting things like kale, like dino kale, lancet kale. And for those of you who love doing Brussels sprouts, we're not a big Brussels sprout family. Let us know what varieties work best for you. Then when it comes to our leafy greens, I'm holding off this month. I'm not starting them quite yet. I'm going to wait till a little bit later in the month. And that's the thing when it comes to seed starting, you don't have to start everything at once. Sometimes it makes sense to start a few, then do another few. So I got my corn going right away. Then I got my tomatoes going, but I'm holding off for a little bit. Then doing some things like peppers, and then we're going to do things like our cauliflowers. The other thing that you should be seed starting, but not necessarily in trays, but out in the garden are things like your carrots. I love getting short and sweet variety. I know also the Nantes, N-A-N-T-E-S variety, rainbow carrots. Those can work really well. But you're not going to start those in trays. You're going to go put them directly in the ground. And we actually might do some of that today. We also can do things like our beets. I'm just like a classic Detroit red beet girl. Beets work really well for me, and they work year after year. Again, don't start them in trays. Put them out directly into the garden. I think the areas that we're going to do today, it's carrots only. The beets go in the front bed, and I haven't put the soil there yet. Also we can start getting going our onions. Remember, whatever variety of onions, whether you're going to go with red onions, white onions, or yellow onions, you want to get short day varieties. And there are so many great options. I like the ones that tend to have the name Texas in them, or that are a grano, grano, G-R-A-N-O type, grano type, because they tend to work really well here in Florida. I need a lot of onions. I've already seed started some in trays, which you can do. But I also like to direct sow them into the garden. I won't be doing any today. I'm going to wait a little bit later into September, because we've got some big rainstorms on the horizon. And that's one of my tips from me to you, me to you, is that September is a really rough month for seedlings because this is the month where one, we'll go weeks without rain. And then you get like five inches, six inches, eight inches, nine inches. This is the time of year that starts to happen. It's also the time of year we're most likely to get a tropical storm and most likely to get a hurricane. And so the odds that you are going to get distracted or have too much rain or have too high of winds and your seedlings having a problem, yeah, this is a problem. So watch out for that. Now when it comes to warm weather crops, I would be thinking about those bigger tomatoes like Cherokee purples, anything with like eight ounces or more. This is a great time of year. But if you're short on time, but you still want to get something going, any of the small varieties, the things like grape tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, pear tomatoes, Everglades tomatoes, you can still get going at this time of year and still get a pretty good harvest. Right now I'm getting some of my cauliflower started because I am going to be upping the amount of cauliflower I do this year. Now when it comes to seed starting, one of my tips from me to you is to use seed starting mix. I know, shocker. Seed starting mix is designed for your little tiny seedlings. And when it comes to dealing with my cauliflower, I do have little tiny seedlings. You can get, there are a lot of right brands to get. This is the brand that I use, which you can pick up at Home Depot or Lowe's. The big thing is, is we don't want to use potting mix because the pieces inside of a potting mix can block our little tiny seedlings from coming up. Now a tip from me to you is you want to get your seed starting mix to the consistency of what I would call a brownie mix. It's what's going to help your seedlings come up really quickly. And I'm just getting a couple trays started because I need about 12 cauliflower plants. Just like that, we have our trays filled. And one of the things you want to look for as a friendly reminder from me to you is whatever trays you use, you do want them to have some way for the water to drain out the bottom. So you can use these trays that you can pre-buy. You can use things like Solo cups. All of those are good choices. And one of the ways that you can save money is actually by filling this section up with potting mix and only filling this top section with seed starting mix. That's a good way to get your seedlings, your seed mix to stretch because it tends to be a little bit more expensive than your potting mix. Now we want to look on here and find out how deep to put these. It says a half, quarter inch to a half inch. No matter the type of seed you're going to do, you want to look at that. And if you need a friendly reminder, an inch is this, a half inch is this. It's about your thumbnail length. And so we're going to make some holes, one, two. I like to make them all at once because I forget where I put things. So I like to put all my holes and then put my seeds in all at once. So I don't forget which ones that I have filled. I like to overseed a little bit just because I have learned and I've accepted that I'm going to have to thin out some of these seeds, which means just removing them. So my tip from me to you is overseed. So put two to three to four seeds into each cell just so that you can confirm that you got your seeds coming up and it's easier to thin later, which we can do later this month. Boom. And now we've got our cauliflower seeds all ready to go. So let's go ahead and put my cauliflowers out here with my other seedlings. And we'll get these trays out of the way right now because we're going to go ahead and seed our carrots. Now when it comes to seeding right out into the area, you're going to want to have prepped your area first, get some nice good soil in. We're also going to want to amend it. Let me go grab that. I like at the beginning of the season to put fresh compost or fresh or to put fresh garden soil on top and then go ahead and add a general purpose amendment. This is the one that I use, but there are a ton of right brands. I like to call this one shake and bake because you just shake it and it goes along. So checking my spacings, usually what I do is I like to do three rows in this depth of bed. So I'm going to do one, two, three. When it comes to carrots, I like to do what's called like the trench method. So unlike other plants that are going to get a lot bigger where you kind of want to make sure they go in a single spot and you dig a hole, put one in, dig a hole with carrots. I like to just come along, go trench, trench, trench, trench, trench, trench, trench, trench, trench, like this. Fill my carrots into the trench and then just sprinkle them into the trench. Let me show you a little closer. Or I do the same method with beets and radishes. We're just going to come in here and make our three trenches. I'm going to leave a little bit of space from my corn because these corn are going to get big. The carrots are going to get big. Everyone's going to get big. So we've got a trench. We don't want to go too deep because these seeds only need to go a half inch deep at most. And I like to do this when I know there's going to be a lot of moisture coming in the coming week, which there will be. We've got a lot coming this coming week. So this will be a good time to make sure that these guys get lots of moisture to get started. Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle. Some of them are going to end up a little bit deeper. Some of them are going to end up a little bit shallower. And you can see as I trenched, the amendment is already getting mixed in. Now the good thing about carrot seed packets is they tend to have a lot of carrot seeds in the packet. So don't be precious with adding lots of seeds into your trenches. And then to cover it up, we're just going to take our hand and just gently kind of come back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth to smooth it out. And just like that, we've got a whole bed of carrots planted. Ponytail time. It's that time of year. And so the question might be, how did you know to focus on that and not the other things? And that's really because I built a plan. And that's one of my tips from me to you is building out your plan helps you know where you're going through the season, because there's a lot of work that we can do, but it can become overwhelming and confusing. And with all the other stuff that's happening at this time of year, you may lose track of what you need. So having a plan is one of the best ways. And that is why I created the Wild Floridian Garden Planner. And I'm happy to say that next year's planner is now on pre-sale. So if you want to go ahead and pre-order your planner, which I'll be shipping out next month, you can go to www.wildfloridian.net to pre-order your 2027 Wild Floridian Planner, whether you get it physical or a digital copy. It's still going to have all the spaces to be able to track your results and harvest and make notes, but the 2027 planner I've gone through and I've added even more tips to every month. I've updated and improved each of the seasonal sections and all the tips there. I think you're going to end up with like twice the amount of tips each season. Plus you're still going to have your planting guides for vegetables and flowers. But now they're going to be easier to tell when to seed start and transplant, whether you're in North Florida, Central Florida, or South Florida. Plus I'm adding the new section for flower planting guides, one for North Florida, Central Florida and South Florida to keep you on track with what to plant and when to plant it. So if you want to grab that, go ahead and get it from the link below, or you can click it at the end. Let's talk about vegetable transplants for the month of September. Now for those not familiar with transplants, transplants are either the plants that you started by seed and now we need to either put in bigger pots or go put out into the garden or they're the plants that you buy. So today what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you to the store so I can show you some ideas of plants to pick, but also things to look for to make sure that if you are going to buy it, that your money is well spent. Today I brought you to the store so I can show you some of the plants that if you didn't start them by seed, you could pick them up yourself. Plus I'm going to give you some tips on some things to look for if you're going to spend the money on a plant here so that your money is well spent and you don't end up with a plant that's going to be a dud. So first up, if you live in North Florida, you can be picking up cool weather crops. So that's going to be those brassicas like cauliflower, broccoli, cabbages. You'll also look at things like lettuces and potentially spinaches. When it comes to all your root crops like beets and carrots, you're not going to find those at the store. You have to start those by seed. But one of the ones that you can pick up is going to be onion starts. For North Florida and Central Florida, you can also be picking up your warm weather crops. That's going to of course be your tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squashes, beans, and so on. And then South Florida, you might be able to do warm weather crops, but you're still a little bit on the early side. But if you see something that looks really good, feel free to grab it. Okay, so let me show you some of the varieties that you should be considering when you're here at the store. Plus how to make a good purchase versus stuff to skip. I'm going to start you first with tomato plants. And tomato plants at this time of year, any of the small and larger style tomatoes in general will be good choices. In order to be able to figure out what size tomato you're looking at, you're going to look right here on these little tags where it says seven ounces or this one for the husky cherry reds, one inch. But most of the time, if they're not a tiny tomato, they'll actually have the ounce size. So you can see here, 10 to 12 ounces, 10 to 12 ounces. Now some of these varieties have worked well for people in general. I have found that the Cherokees work well. And any of the small size, so grape tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, pear tomatoes, those are tend to be good purchases. So some ideas of things that you could grab here are things like your green bell peppers. You can still grab some of your hot peppers like habaneros, though they won't be quite as happy as we head into the cooler seasons. But that's okay, you still have time to get them really well established. Of course, one of my favorite picks for you guys is the sweet banana pepper. For this one, I have grown it multiple years in my garden, and it will live over a year in your garden, especially in Central and South Florida. And if you keep it warm through the winter in North Florida, and they produce a lot, and it can be used pretty much any way that you're using a bell pepper, except if you want to stuff them, then they're not as good for that. Now if you don't want to be sweet banana peppers, you can always get your hot banana peppers. Other good picks are going to be things like your jalapeno peppers, Thai hot peppers. I know people have had a great success with the mountain of jalapenos. Actually a lot of the peppers when it comes to the Home Depots and Lowe's, they tend to be pretty good picks. More of what I see causes issues is going to be placement, how wet you keep them, and how healthy this plant is when you grab it, which we'll get to those in a second. Next up, did so well in my garden, you guys recommended it, you said it was a good buy, and it was, and that's going to be your Black Beauty eggplants. This is going to be a really good purchase and a great time of year to add it to your garden. Some other ones that you can pick up here is cucumbers. I've actually grown these before. These are a good choice if you can get them when they're healthy, but you will need to watch out to protect them from pests because all of the ones, these plants like cucumbers and some of these squashes are going to be attacked by different types of bugs that will really go after them at the low end root level. They like to snip them at this time of year. We also have some squashes. I haven't particularly grown any of these squashes, but they are worth getting a try. We do have like a zucchini Black Beauty that might be worth a try. So if you're willing to experiment, this would be the time to try. Oh, I haven't seen this before. They have watermelons. Another thing that would be great to add at this time of year, if you are interested, I'm not big into them, but herbs. Things like sweet basil, sages, and chives are all great choices to add to your garden. I've been keeping an eye out for it, but it looks like our supply is limited right now at this store. And I'm also keeping an eye out for strawberries. Strawberries are, it is time to start considering adding them to your garden, especially in North Florida and Central Florida, South Florida, you probably want to wait until next month, but keep your eye out for them. And if you do get them a little bit of the early side, just go ahead and put them with a little bit more sun protection because it's hot. Let me show you some tips though, about picking out some of these plants. One of the first things that I look at when I'm thinking about picking a plant is the color of the leaves. This is a really good indicator. You can see they are dark green and these would indicate that we have a very healthy plant. I'm going to give you this in contrast to plants like this. You can see these are a much brighter green. We can also see like on these pepper plants. Let me show you a healthy pepper plant. Their leaves are going to be a lot bigger here by comparison. You can see they should be a lot bigger in general, unless you're getting something like these little miniature Thai plants, then overall the plant is smaller and the leaves are smaller. Your pepper plants should have larger leaves. And so that's the second thing I'm looking at is the size of the leaf. But one of the best indicators of you're going to probably have a problem is that these plants are too big for the container below. These plants put out pretty decent sized root systems. We're looking at 12 inches deep and for a plant that's this tall, the roots really should be 6, 9, 12 inches and this pot doesn't have room for it. Which means we're going to have, whoa, well, yeah, you don't want to see that either. That means this plant is very, very root bound and it is already massively stressed out. And that's why you can see yellow leaves. We can see different pest issues and disease is starting to take hold. And that's because we have an overly stressed out plant because it's in too tiny of a container. It probably isn't getting enough water or that's a different way to say this. It can't hold water properly because there's not enough soil around it. Plus it doesn't have the right levels of nutrition because it's trying to rely on too tiny of a space and the roots are now filling up that space more and more. So it is more susceptible to just everything. The other thing we want to tend to avoid is plants that have, I know it feels like it's good because it's like, oh wow, I already have peppers. I love it too. But I'm telling you, this plant is going to have a much harder time getting set up properly, especially because it's in a small container. Now, I am not telling you to avoid small containers. I love a small container because big containers usually cost more. We would actually prefer small containers. I just don't want you to get an oversized plant that's already massively stressed out. But if I have my pick of plants, I tend to want to go for these $5 to $6 plants. They tend to be in this size. So one of the things I'm going to do is look at the bottom and see if I can see any roots. Now I can see one root, one root. That's fine. What I don't want to see, let me see if I can find a good example. This guy's tall. I don't want to see a whole bunch of roots coming out the bottom. It's probably less obvious with these pepper plants. But if you see tons and tons of roots coming out of the bottom, let's avoid it because that plant is already really struggling. The other thing is, is like plants like these squash plants, I know they look really good. And unless they're really tiny, like these cucumber plants here, they probably started two, three weeks ago. They're going to really get rapidly too, um, too much. Too much is going to be happening. So if I have a choice between, see these watermelons here, we already got vine. I can see, well, actually you can't see the roots coming out of the bottom, but because they keep lifting them, you can actually see that they came out of the tray, got ripped. So this plant you can see is already going to have stress. But if I see something like this little sprouty sprouts, which look how tiny these same watermelons are and boom, you already have roots. So I'm picking smaller, smaller plants, smaller pots for less money. And I want the plant to be on the smaller side, dark leaves, no roots hanging out the bottom. I don't want it to have peppers on it or eggplants. If they have like tiny ones, that's fine. But if they're spending all this time growing all this, this is, I'm avoiding it. But this is still a good buy. It's in a bigger pot. And while $10 is a bit pricey for a transplant, because you're going to get way more than $10 worth of food. If you're not ready to learn how to seed start or your seeds had problems, I'm going to go for this. Now, I did mention dark green leaves is a preferable thing, but not all plants have the same color, dark green leaves. So our eggplant leaf you can see is a different color than our pepper leaf. So I just want them to generally be darker. I don't want to see a lot of yellow bright tones because that tends to mean the plant is stressed either from water, nutrition, or too much sun. So those are just a few of the tips I have to help you make better purchases if you're going to be buying transplants, whether it's going to be from a Lowe's, a Home Depot's, or your local nursery. But actually I need to grab a couple of plants before we head back. One other tip I want you to not forget though, even though these plants can be healthy and look great, you are still going to need to do some things when we get them home and that's thinning them. If you look inside here, all these plants actually have more than one plant. And if you're not familiar with seed starting, you might not recognize that. So in this cucumber plant, we can actually see we have one, two, three, four. If we leave this all here, our cucumber plant's not going to do as well. So we're going to have to make some choices down the road, which I'll show you when we get back. So if you're not as used to removing plants, you may want to look for ones that look really nice and healthy, but have less plants in it. So here's one of the plants I'm picking out. I'm picking out a nice sweet banana pepper. It's got two plants in it, but I'm ready to divide it or thin it out, which just means remove one of them. No roots hanging out the bottom. Good size, five bucks. I'll take it. You know what? I might try one of these Verpolis cucumbers again. I haven't tried these for a few years. I might throw it in on my tomato trellis just for funsies. You know what? Just for fun, I might try one of these watermelons just to test it out. But if I'm going to pick between the two of them, this icebox is eight to 10 pounds. I'm not going to pick this because this is already overgrown. Hi, wasp. That wasp is cleaning up. Lots of pest issues that are already there. But they do have some other icebox ones down here, but it is 25 to 40 pounds. The odds that pests are going to get to this before I'm ready to harvest are very high. So I'm going to stick with something smaller. Oh, and iceboxes in that sugar baby family. That's a good idea. So let's try this one out just for fun. Wow, I got one, two, three, four, five plants. I might divide that. But when it comes to transplants, it's not just about buying plants. It's also about the plants we started by seed and that we need to go get in the ground or Now when we're not talking about transplants at the store, we're talking about the seedlings that you went and started. These are tomatoes that I started last month and I just recently moved them into larger pots. But one of the things I'm looking for when deciding whether they need to go to a bigger pot or they need to go out there into the garden like these corn is whether we're starting to see roots at the bottom. As soon as you start seeing roots at the bottom, your clock is ticking that it's time to get going. But let me give you some general guidelines to help keep you on track and so that you can plan your days. So when it comes to seed starting, especially your warm weather crops, they're coming up within a week. Usually within two to three weeks with things like tomatoes and peppers, they do need to be moved up a month max. When it comes to your beans, your squashes, your corn, you've got basically about a week, two weeks, and you either need to put them in something bigger or they need to go out into the garden. My personal recommendation is get them out into the garden. A lot of those can be direct sowed, right? Just like our carrots, we can just put the seeds in the garden. But sometimes to have a little bit more control or to navigate rough weather and all the bugs that want to eat everything, including me, man, the mosquitoes these days, starting them in trays can be really helpful. But you just need to be prepared that the week after or about two weeks after you seed start, you need to be ready to put them out in the garden, which means you need to do all your other steps to prep the area in the meantime. Now when it comes to up-potting or transplanting by up-potting, basically moving them to a smaller container to a bigger container, you have a lot of options. You can do things like just having bigger and deeper trays like these ones here, or you can have things like these solo cups. Well, these ones came from plants that I bought a while ago, but really what we're trying to do is create more depth and width for the roots to keep growing and growing so that they can be really nice, healthy plants. Just remember if you are going to make your own, something like a solo cup, do put holes in the bottom. You can use just like a drill and go ahead and just put the hole so that they have some good drainage, which they'll need at this time of year. Because remember, we might have a day with nine inches of rain. It's happened. Now I know I've had questions before from my members about whether you need to keep up-potting plants until you're in things like one-gallon pots like these ones right here. And I totally understand this question because when you go to places like Home Depot, Lowe's, Target, and Walmart, you oftentimes will see tomato plants, pepper plants in these huge pots. And when it comes to your own garden, you do not need to keep putting them in bigger and bigger pots. The reason they're doing that is one, so that they can buy themselves time because a lot of these plants, once they're ready to grow, they start growing really fast and so do the roots. The other reason is because when they sell you a plant this big, they can charge you like 20 bucks and they make a lot more money off of it versus that one singular plant in a cup this size, which they usually sell for about five bucks. So the short answer is no, you don't need to do this, which is going to get someone asking, why did you do it? These are all plants that I was done using and they're coming out of my beds and they're actually going to the children's garden that I volunteer at. So this is not a thing you need to do. And honestly, digging a hole for a one-gallon plant takes a lot more effort than a solo cup size. I prefer, when it comes to transplanting, going no bigger than that solo cup size just because it just takes so much more time and effort. And it's hot out right now, guys. I'm sweating. Are you sweating? I'm sweating. And honestly, once the plants are having roots starting to come out of a container this size, they are ready to move out into the garden. Typically, if the plant's six inches tall, it's got about six inches of roots down below and it's time. Just get them out there. You can oftentimes transplant them earlier depending on what it is. When it comes to going up from this size, I don't like to go much bigger than this because I've got a lot of holes to dig. And if I gotta dig a lot of big holes, it takes a lot of time. Now, when it comes to should you go move something out when they're this size, my preference is no. Can you get away with it? Yes, you can, but the risks are much higher that something's gonna happen to these baby seedlings once you put it out in the garden. Plants like tomatoes and peppers and eggplants and cauliflower and broccoli do take more time to get set up. And one bug takes away six weeks of work. One little nosy possum, which I have them, an armadillo going searching for bugs, and this plant's gone. It's actually a really common tip from me to you is that once you dig a hole, if you have wildlife in your area, they get really curious. Well, you dig the hole, the bugs get moving, they get curious, and they start digging. And then all of a sudden, your teeny tiny seedling, we got problems, and now it's dead because they just stepped on it. So I like to get my plants a little bit bigger before I get them out there because I do have a lot of wildlife. And me, I love my wildlife. I just don't want them squishing my plants. We're now gonna do one of the hardest things that there is to do as a vegetable plant grower, and that is we're gonna send some plants out. You know, when it comes to seed starting as a vegetable grower, we are so proud when we get these little babies popping up. But the reality is is if we leave all of this in one pot, we are gonna have a lot of problems. So we need to make some choices of whether we want to try to remove some plants and move them into other pots, or we need to thin. So let's start off with thinning. I am a big fan of the micro pruners because you can get them in here nice and tight. And all you're gonna do is you're gonna come in and you're gonna pick what is your happiest, healthiest looking plant, and then you are going to remove the others just like that. I know, I know, I know. I can feel it. I feel it, guys. It's okay. I promise you, they'll be better in the long run. But if you have some more experience or you're willing to take the risk, you can go ahead and transplant this out. But no worries for me here because I do have some experience. I am gonna plan on taking out one of these plants, specifically this pepper plant, because you know what? I have that children's garden and I always need a lot of plants for there. And so I want to try to get as much as possible for them. And that's always an idea is if there's a senior garden or a garden you can volunteer at, is it's a great way to give your extra plants to them. One plant. I got this plant. And now we're gonna get it in one of these extra cups that I've kept. Now, when it comes to transplanting and up-potting, you don't need to use seed starting mix. You can just use regular garden soil. You'll want to, of course, get it as moist because the roots need it. So we're just gonna push this down and then I'm just gonna make a nice size hole and drop this little guy in. Now I have an extra plant for the children's garden. All right, let's talk care and maintenance tips. When it comes to this month, you might be all ready to go or you might have a lot of work to do. It really depends where you're at in your process. So let's talk about some of the things you should be thinking about. Step one, we need to clear out the beds. You need to get the weeds out. Oh my gosh, this one has so many weeds in it, but you know, get the weeds out. If there's a plant you want, get it out. If it just needs to be removed, get it out. Everything needs to start coming out at this time of year, except a friendly reminder from me to you, if you have hot weather crops, then we need to start harvesting if they're ready to go or we need to make some tough choices about whether it's time for them to go. Now this spot for me is dedicated to sweet potatoes, so I do not have a timeline against it, but you may be wanting to flip an area from your sweet potato. So the question is, is how long ago did you plant them? Four to six months. If it's things like rosellas, usually it's not unusual for it to take till October for you to get to your final calyxes. So the question is, is what is going in behind? This is why I recommend typically pairing your hot weather crop spaces with your cool weather crop, because the timing tends to kind of fall together of when one's coming out, the other one's about ready to go in and then vice versa. So as you guys are planning your spaces now at the beginning of the season, consider what spaces you want to use for cool weather crops and hot weather crops, because they do tend to pair pretty well together. And a friendly reminder from me to you, if you're wondering about your sweet potatoes, is that you just need to get down here and start looking. You gotta start looking. And because unlike northerners, our leaves are not gonna die at this time of year. Actually, they're looking really good. They're bouncing back. They're running all over the place. So we need to start looking and we will start to see, hey, that's a sweet potato. Hey, that's a sweet potato. And so now it's time to start pulling them if it's been four to six months and you start to see non-green sweet potatoes poking up. My next tip to you is you need to make sure you have enough soil or compost or bulk soil to fill these up. So you can do some calculations on how much soil you need or you can just start buying bags and then just fill until you typically are about an inch below the top. You don't want to be to the very edge because once we start getting dumping rain, it's gonna fall over the side and give lots of spaces for weeds to grow. That's why I usually get weeds right near here. So try to stay about an inch below at minimum. If you're a couple inches below, that's fine. There's no problem with having more of a dip, but just over time, you are gonna wanna re-top these off. Also, just like we did with our seedlings, we're gonna wanna start amending the soil. I would recommend don't do that until about when you're ready to plant. At most a week ahead of time, just because we don't wanna create a lot of really nice spaces for weeds to take seed. So tip from me to you. So this next tip, it's the best time, but it's also the worst time to do this. If you don't have a setup of beds or containers, it is time to do that project because this is the beginning of the whole season. We basically go from the end of July all the way till basically mid-June. This is the classic vegetable garden season. So if you're wanting to do classic vegetable crops, you need to have whatever setup you're gonna do, whether it's gonna be in ground, in containers or in giant raised garden beds like these. If you wanna grab beds like these, you can go ahead and do so at the link below or in the description, which brings me to my next tip. It's hot out. The sun's intense. You're gonna sweat a lot. You need to stay safe. At the end of the day, while vegetable gardening is for your happiness, your joy and your health, you will not be happy or healthy if you are fainting or having a sunstroke. So make sure you get your sunscreen on or have some sort of UV protection. Make sure you put some bug spray on. And definitely this is a time of year that do the electrolyte drinks. You need to be refreshing. Remember, electrolytes like Gatorade were developed for Florida, for people who are out in this kind of weather for hours and hours. And if you are gonna do a project, make sure that you replace your electrolytes and stay safe. Another tip from me to you because we've been talking about warm weather crops is a friendly reminder. Warm weather crops are all the crops that need pollinators. So you need to get your pollinator plants in. So consider checking out my videos on flowers. I'm oftentimes, I'm all the time calling out plants that the bees, the butterflies would like, but you especially need plants that bees like. Like all of these. And all of these. And honestly, if you're not a big plant, flower plant person, and you just wanna get one plant to help you with pollinators, I would recommend this one right here. Native to Florida and blooms almost all year round in Central and South Florida. This one is firebush. You will not find it at Home Depot or Lowe's. You will need to go to a native nursery, but this one is covered with pollinators all year round. And you can see that's why I put it right here, right near my vegetable garden because this provides food for my bees all year round. So even when my tomatoes don't have flowers or peppers, this plant is providing them food too. Do pollinator bee plants that are Florida friendly. You can do ones that are native. I will tell you hands down, the ones that are native bring in the most. And plants like firebush or our native tea bush, the amount of bees on that singular plant versus these Florida friendly flowers is it's night and day difference. Night and day difference. So if you could only do one plant, I would say get one of those and you're going to have some really good harvest. And my last tip, because we are still in a season where there are so many bugs, but I want to do a friendly reminder from me to you is that you may be creating some of your own problems out here in the garden because a lot of the pests, especially when we get to our warm weather crops that are going to eat your baby plants and your new transplants of tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are actually moths. And moths like lights. So whether you've put some Edison lights out there or you have lanai lights or perimeter lights or security lights or just the curtains are open and sending light out into your vegetable garden. Once we hit nighttime, that light is going to bring those moths in. So friendly reminder from me to you. Once it becomes dark outside, lights off guys. Not only will this benefit your vegetable garden, but it benefits all the wildlife in the area, including the birds who will help clear out some of the pests that you don't like. But that is a lot of information and you might be starting to feel overwhelmed. Don't worry. So was I. And that's why I made this video right here about the things you need to do now. What can wait? If you need help with your seed starting with warm weather crops, go ahead and check out this video right here. If you need cool weather crop help, this video right here. And of course, if you want to grab the planner that helps you know what to plant and when to plant it, go ahead and grab it right here. This link will also take you to the pre-order so that you can get your 2027 Wild Floridian Garden Planner. Okay, I'll see you soon. Bye.