Vegetables that WORK!!! TOP PICKS for Florida Vegetable Garden - Dining and Cooking (2024)

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00:00 Florida Vegetable Gardening
00:15 Florida Tomato Varieties
10:12 Florida Lettuce Varieties
12:19 Florida Broccoli Varieties
13:50 Florida Kale Varieties
15:17 Florida Carrot Varieties
16:45 Florida Beet Varieties
18:12 Florida Pepper Varieties
20:59 Florida Onion Varieties

howy neighbor how is your garden growing today in my garden what we’re going to be talking about is Florida vegetables and what works so join me today if you’re looking for some inspiration on which varieties you might want to consider adding to your Florida vegetable garden so let’s do tomatoes and what worked really really well for me this season and it has to be Fourth of July hybrid tomatoes from Burpee now I know not all of us are big fans of picking up seeds from the Home Depot the Lowe’s the Walmarts the target K and Brands like Burpee and fairy Morris in general don’t do great in our Gardens but that doesn’t mean there aren’t gems hidden amongst all those sea packets and one of the ones that did amazing this past year was Fourth of July hybrid I have been growing Fourth of July hybrid tomatoes for years and every year no matter how good or bad of a gardener I’ve been I have gotten something out of these Vines and this year went absolutely insane I planted these seeds on time but then I really challenged my Stars by being super super super super late and putting in the ground like they got down to tiny little sticks they looked pathetic and I actually when I shoved them in the ground really late I believe it was in like late November I was pretty much like they’re dead I’m going to get back from Thanksgiving and I have a trip in early December and I’ll just you know I’ll reset seeds at that time but shockingly my negligence didn’t kill them and then I thought well okay well they’re doing good but I’ll start some other seeds cuz clearly these plants have had a bad start and in spite of how badly I in spite of how badly I dealt with those starts these things produced when it comes to just this variety on my trellis this produced probably the majority of the tomatoes I got this year I got a lot of different varieties but this one when it just came to quantity size and just like pumping out Tomatoes it was amazing now this tomato is an indeterminate Vine so it will get about 8T tall maybe it got up to 9 in spots but it really sat mostly in the 7 to 8T range it puts out tomatoes that are about what’s this size like 4 to 6 o so whether you grow them as a fall crop or you do them as tomatoes for the spring crops like they just like produce and produce and produce they didn’t have any issues with pest pressure mold issues I don’t know what all the other issues are because I generally don’t get tons of issues with tomatoes really the sun intensity combined with just the massive drought we’re having right now because my area is about a foot behind on rain from the previous year that’s kind of what just kind of like uh they were done in my area overall this one has been really successful so much so that like when I saw these packets I think at Target in the spring I was just like I’m going to grab some more so if you’re considering looking for an easy tomato that produces nice bunches I’ve used them in tomato sauces I made Salsas with them I made capres with them I made brusketa with them I made I don’t remember all the things I made with them we made I I don’t remember all the things but we made a lot of things with these Tomatoes we froze them and used them in Canning we we just we’ve done all the things with them and honestly I would highly highly recommend that if you want to get started with tomatoes this is a great one that’s going to produce quite a bit so my next pick you might have heard me talk about early treat Tomatoes back in my fall planning video and they did honestly pretty solid they weren’t as productive as the Fourth of July Tomatoes they also went through a very hard time with me like not doing so great with the seedlings at one point but they were pretty solid now these ones produced a tomato that was a little bit bigger than the 4th of July which might have been why it didn’t put out as many tomatoes so if you’re looking for something that has a little bit more oomph to it a little bit more medor versus like the 4 to 6 oz this one’s kind of got more that 6 7 o they were a little bit on the bigger side they still made bunches and they were really good but I found that these starts as much as I abuse them were less resilient to my massive amounts of abuse these ones were also more notorious for making like weird shapes hi butterfly these ones were more notorious from having like little like funky Tails or beaks on the tomatoes I’m not really sure what’s causing that but it was a thing that I noticed over and over again but it still made really good tomatoes they didn’t have any issues overall so if you’re looking for another one that you can just snag from a target a Home Depot in one of the big box stores go ahead and grab early treat now ones that I didn’t start from seed or and directly started from seed of course everglazed Tomatoes I’ve had everglazed tomatoes for years now and if you have struggled with tomatoes and you want to grow tomatoes then I highly highly recommend get some everglazed Tomatoes you can get seeds online there’s lots of locations and I have a video where I just like answer all the questions about everglaze tomatoes all the questions give lots of tips and advice on it other people gave lots of tips and advice it’s a really good video to go check out but this one’s one of those like you don’t have to be really good they take a little bit longer to start but honestly once you have them you have them and for me this one I I’m going to do less of it I can tell for fall because we just had so much um the birds definitely were allowed to get a solid belly every day from them because I just could not keep up with the amount and I put eight in and that was like too much I think next year next year in the fall I’m going to only probably do four plants because it just was too much now this one was really great to use in things like corn salsa I think I used a little bit in some of my canning recipes for brusketta of course we ate lots of these fresh we put them with other recipes that use other things from our garden they’re really great like just a pop of flavor of course eating them fresh it’s just one of the best ways to eat them so this one you a lot goes no other way way a little goes a long way so I didn’t start everything by C this year because I kind of struggled with uh getting plants in the ground on time cuz you know who doesn’t have that happen I did pick up starts from a local nursery and there were three different varieties I tried and all three I was a fan and those were purple Cherokee chocolate Cherokee and black cherry all of these I liked for different reasons well I would say the chocolate Cherokee and the purple Cherokee I I think I like them equally they put out bigger Tomatoes than my early treats and my fourth of July these ones were more towards the 8 O range during their prime time of season I got more purple Cherokees than I did chocolate Cherokees that may also been because I had more purple Cherokee plants so I can’t really 100% say the chocolate Cherokee plant at times looks stressed out but it’s honestly of the larger variety of tomatoes up front is the one that seems to be going the longest so I would say the purple Cherokees were just a little bit prettier my mom was definitely weirded out by chocolate Cherokees cuz she kept thinking they weren’t fully ripe because they do have a more Brown look to them and if you’re going to be doing things where you’re canning and stuff like that and you don’t want a ton of these causing it to change the color I can understand why maybe like less attractive but both of these were pretty meaty type Tomatoes when you have a lot of fresh tomatoes you should be doing like lots of capre oh and fresh Greek salads I mean like you want to be using Tomatoes as fresh as possible and those were just hands down in general like those were the ones now black cherries they weren’t a huge producer again they were put in this bed with this trellis which this soil is not as mature and therefore it just stuffed all the tomatoes in that one just kind of were a little bit slower I had a really good compare and contrast of Fourth of July because I planted the 4th of July here and in front at the same time and they were both abused equally and these ones have taken a lot longer to recover than those ones so we just know that the soil is just not quite as mature in this area now the black cherries in this area produced some of my favorite tasting these ones are about the size of a grape tomato and if you really like sweet and tart like they’re kind of similar in flavor I would say to everglazed tomatoes but the tartness is a little bit higher they’re really pretty they’re purple so if you like a tomato that is on the sweet side and it’s a little bit Tarter I would say than like something like an Everglades tomato this one’s great it’s definitely one that I enjoyed eating more fresh and not really with anything or in anything also this one I would consider if like you’re doing something that’s going to become like a sweet dish like if you do like those tomato pies or tomato jams like I would feel like this one this with the everglazed tomatoes kind of put you right in that area of like they’re sweet they’re tart really almost like when they’re fully fully ripe almost like ooh is this a fruit is this a vegetable or veget veget fruit or tomatoes fruits now you may wondering why why are we talking about this now isn’t this early to be talking about what we should be considering for fall since it’s June and honestly I think this is one of the perfect times to talk about it whether you live in zone 8 zone 9 Zone 10 Zone 11 because we’re really at the tail end of our classic vegetable season so it’s really important for us to capture what went well what didn’t go well what do we want to do differently so that as we head into fall we have a better plan we have improved year over-year or vegetable season over vegetable season since our midpoints kind of in the middle of the year but you get what I’m saying so documenting what you like didn’t like what you want to change as you’re still close to the season and not burnt out from the high heat humidity and Sun of Florida is a really important thing and that’s why I wanted to do this with you guys and also which brings me to what went well for you what things did you feel like went really well what didn’t what would you do differently what would you recommend to those who are starting for the first time go ahead and let us know in the comments you guys are always amazing at sharing tips vegetable varieties giving encouragement to each other and that’s what makes us so great and it’s going to make us stronger and better year-over-year in growing food down here in the Sunshine State so let’s talk lettuce this year I grew four different varieties of lettuce I did a buttercrunch a Roma Parish just kind of like or do I do Cosmo oh I don’t know let me check my planner this is why it’s really important to have planners cuz I forget everything now that I got my 2023 planner over open I have my notes so I grew four types of lettuce Cosmo Roma sweet Valentine Roma out reges Roma and butter crunch Roma all these were from the company Southern Exposure this is not a lettuce packet I know hold on I’ll be back so between the four types I found that Cosmo produced the least of the four lettuce that I used this last year I felt like it was the tail of two green lettuce my butter crunch lettuce produce the absolute most which isn’t a bad thing cuz I love buttercrunch the most out of all the lettuce and I would say Cosmo which was a romaine lettuce It produced the least now when it came to my two red lettuces the sweet Valentine and the O regist I feel like they were pretty comfortable but I feel like sweet Valentine had a slight slight leaning of a win so of the four of them I probably what would I would do this coming year is I would probably just do more butter crunch instead of doing a green Roma I I’m definitely going to do those two red romains again I really like them they were really yummy and it was really nice having all four going at once because we had really colorful salads all throughout like winter and into spring when the plants finally bolted and we’re you know right here they were just done for let me be clear I started seeds and Trays on time but I did not start seeds and beds on time because we were really late finishing these beds so the lettuce definitely going to started later than I should have had it so it was a Shor season but also let’s be clear 100 lb Tomatoes 10 lb of lettuce but we still saved a lot of money with lettuce we had so much lettuce that and tomatoes we gave away stuff cuz I was just like I can’t keep up with all of it all right so that was the so that’s my lettuce recommendations let’s move into so let’s move into broccoli so broccoli this year we did two types walam 27 and is that the number walam 27 and Deo both C packet from Southern exchange pretty much everything we got was Southern exchange not Waltham 27 walam 29 I it was 20 something Waltham 29 of the two walam 29 in general came up better than D Chico diico took a while longer and when it came to the broccoli heads walam produced more than did Chico so again I started late I abused myself ceilings so it could so what I’m thinking is this coming year I’m going to probably give them a good try again I did like actually one of the things I liked with both of these is that I overseed it and I started using the broccoli greens as a spinach substitute for my morning smoothie and especially when they were young greens great loved them not when they got kind of like big and beefy and that not as fun to use them for smoothies but when they were little oh yeah which might have made it a little bit harder for them to produce flowers for broccoli heads and you know what for us it’s more valuable to have spinach substitutes than it is to have broccoli heads just based on quantity of what we eat but if you were going to choose between these two SE packets to try for yourself I would definitely lean towards those walam 29s before I would try the dios just to ensure you have a better chance of getting a harvest now when it comes to brasas one of my other ones that I did this year was kale and I of course did Dino kale lanc lancado kale it’s still going it’s June they’re still going and I’m in 10B so that’s pretty impressive so overall I would say definitely do lado kale Dino kale what what overall it was easy to start I again abused all the all the starts when I put them in the ground didn’t look good fun fact learned that they will reroot on their stems they’re pretty young which is interesting we got tons of kale out of these feds and and it’s really good for us because this helps reduce how much money we have to spend on our morning smoothie which is something we drink every single day so kale overall big winner if you’re looking for a spinach substitute especially if you use it for something like smoothies then I would do like a lancado kale so you can get your vitamin case because because in general what I have found is that spinach there is such a small window to grow it you have to kind of hit all your marks right for it to kind of do anything and it’s just it’s not as efficient of a plan for growing so if you want kind of more soft greens just grow broccoli and grow it more in abundance so you can just Harvest it as greens um potentially similar with kale and then of course the bigger kale leaves can be used in things like stir fries and stews and soups in place of you know a traditional spinach uh let’s talk carrots carrots carrots carrots so the two that I have done in my garden is we continue to do the rainbow mix because my little children they enjoy rainbow carrot they don’t enjoy eating it they just enjoy the idea of planting it the one that actually produces really well for my garden and I’ve actually this is an old sea packet and I just keep receding it from flowers is short and sweep it’s a burpee packet I know you can’t see it cuz it’s torn open but it is a burpee packet you can pick these up at the Home Depot the Lowe’s and this one has been really solid I tend to leave them in way longer I know they say 68 days to harvest but I find the carrots are a little too short and I T to leave them in a little bit longer I do a direct seeding and these produce some decent size carrots that we enjoy we use our carrots in just eating them as snacks and they are very tasty carrots they’re sweet I was okay let me let me be clear about these short and sweets because my Ben would probably say this is probably the biggest selling point I don’t like carrots but I like these carrots I will eat these carrots fresh other carrots I don’t know how many times my mom tried to get me to eat baby carrots or whatever carrots from the store no no not a fan but these carrots I like these carrots so if you’re not a big carrot person you know you might enjoy these ones another fun one that I did is of course beets we like beets because it’s a dual purpose plant for us we use both the greens and we use the the little what do you want to call it the root and we use just the Detroit Red um we have used the ones that come in like from uh the Burpee brand and fairy Morris brand before I don’t remember which we probably done both over the years but we of course now use Southern Exposure why you might be wondering why do I tend to lean towards them they have really high germination rates and that’s kind of what they even claim they’re usually in the 90 percentile for all their seeds and that’s what I found and honestly some of you might be out there thinking you’re bad gardeners because you do the seeds and they don’t pop up but you might just have like not as great seed different companies how they manage their inventory will change how many of the plants will pop up and with 90% that means you put in 10 seeds and you’ll get nine plants to pop up so consider consider so back to this uh Detroit Red really like this we use them for um pickling I’m going to be canning a bunch to pickle pickle canning so that we can use them in Pickle beet salads which who doesn’t love that oh with some goat cheese oh my gosh so yummy um but then we also use the greens for again the smoothies you’ll notice the theme there’s a lot of smoothies and just smoothie it’s how we say so young and fresh looking down here if you didn’t know I’m 80 divided by two so let’s now talk about Peppers we have lots of peppers they’re cubel Peppers which I started from seed from Cuban naels I had bought that makes sense I bought plants planted them I kept some of the seeds I replanted they did fine I found that I was having some I needed more Peppers that’s what it was and I did not have enough seeds or time to order seeds so I bought a lot of starts and so this is where just I went to the the Home Depots I went to the lowees and I bought peppers if you were going to do the same the ones I have found that work the best jalapenos jalapeno jalapenos uh banana peppers potentially have too many banana peppers and cubanela peppers those are kind of my hands down consistently they work they do really well it’s a tie between whether I like using cpanel’s more or banana peppers more I would if you can find them at the store either is good we also do AIS Peppers or Aid Del Peppers those ones of course I got the seeds from my neighbors but you can pick them up online did I find them at Southern Exposure I think I did so Aid do say we’ve planted and grown for years I didn’t grow as many this year um we originally got our seeds from our neighbor but I did pick up a packet cuz this fall I wanted to try these ones and see how these ones do versus what my neighbors gave me I love these ones they are definitely ones that like snacky Peppers that’s what they are you go grab your black cherry you grab your upper glazed tomato and then you grab you grab your short and sweet carrot and then you grab your AI Dulce Peppers they’re just like Yum Yum Yum Yum they got a little bit of a bite this is not like jalapeno spicy no no no but they do have a little bit of bite so I do want to be clear about that if you don’t like any spice I like spice so they’re just like M I tried pimento upon recommendation it did not go well for me I tried California Wonder again I keep trying they looked so good at starts I put them in the beds up front they did not go well I tried well I accidentally received green bell peppers they were labeled as jalapenos they were not surprised they were green bell peppers and yet again they did not do well so can you grow a pepper on these plants sure but I did not grow an abundance of peppers they did not pay for themselves they did not spark joy in me so I don’t know how much I would try these ones again I have California W seeds again so I will try them again and see if I can get something going um but overall those kind of classic bell peppers they were generally a bust for me but bananas cels jalapeno Aid do all those big fan of onions onions we did Texas granos Texas Early Grano I was a little late again and trans oh no I made them in start trays and then life LIF and I forgot to water them so I killed them all and unlike the other ones that I abused um more susceptible to die so they did then I replanted them again in bed remember very late because the beds weren’t done and took us a while and those grew they made onions they didn’t make a lot of onions um they’re still growing some of them I think this I blame this more on me than I do the Texas ganos I am interested in starting those again I also did some munching onions we just did I think some Evergreen ones plus we just bought ones from the store you know you just go into the Publix you buy the bunch of green onions you cut them up you cook with them and then you take the bottoms you shove them in the ground I shoved a lot in the grounds those are great what was interesting is one bed grew way bigger than the other um and I know someone in the comments said that’s because one set was leaks and one set was was from onions that is not accurate because all of them were mixed together people who are in my membership and see the weekly Vlogs no they were all mixed together and then I counted them all out getting even more shuffled together and then I just took the and divided it into two and half went into one bed and half when the other so there was no this set went here it was all mixed and one set didn’t grow as big and once that grew huge so that just shows the difference in soils now one of the things you guys might be wondering about is the fact that like I don’t have a ton of different crops like you didn’t hear any cauliflowers you didn’t hear any cabbages you didn’t hear I don’t know what else radishes definitely not going to hear radishes I tried radishes one year Ben was like I don’t like radishes so I only grow them for the flowers now but you’re not hearing like tons and tons of different crops and that is one of the things going into this year that I really focused on was simplify to increase a quantity of single crops so I could have more tomatoes so I could have more kale more beets more carrots and just have more Peppers of everything which was much more helpful when it came to reducing our grocery bill being able to do canning is because instead of having lots of little bits of things we had lots of certain things and then we could fill in the little bits with groceries and I found that that was much more helpful this year than what I’ve done previously whereas I grow a little bit more variety of crops but I tended to be much less efficient with using them so that’s one of my strategies is it right is it wrong it just is and that learning really came from my review last year as I really thought through all the crops what went well what didn’t go well what do I want to do differently and one of the things I thought to myself is having little amounts come from more variety was not very effective for our household now this might work really well for you and that’s okay there are more than one right way to do these things you really need to start to learn about how you do things and hopefully me sharing what I do helps you come up with your own game plan and think about what worked what didn’t work and what you might do differently I can’t wait to read your comments down below and see like what it is that you guys found success with this year I know I’ll be definitely taking inspiration as I go into fall planning from your list plus my own and after hearing all this list if you’re thinking yourself I’m so excited I want to get planting right now now go ahead and check out the June ultimate Garden guide it’s going to go through the vegetables the fruits and the flowers that you should be considering for the month of June and of course what always keeps us on track not only for the garden guy but for taking notes on what went well you can grab a wild fling garden planner we have them right here at www. Wild floridian. planner okay I’ll see you soon bye