hey all I just got a trailer in Sebring Florida. Now here's the thing Sebring is a zone 10 I garden in the boreal forest a zone 2...there are possibly slight differences in technique, and plant choices.
I want to plant an edible landscape/food not lawns garden with lots of herbs, both medicinal and culinary and grow absolutely nothing that I have up here in the great white north.
Yes for a while I will be a snowbird, so I may even have to look at landshare or a woofer set up until I will be spending more time down there than a few weeks a year. The husband who can retire before me will spend more time down there right away but yeah not the gardener. He mows, he rakes...sometimes. So this will have to be a really really low maintenance design, but I want to put the bones of it right away and I will start slowly so as not to shock the neighbors too much.
So I guess I am asking
what kinds of edible vines, shrubs, perennials , or dwarf trees that everyone would recommend leaning heavily to natives and heritage/heirloom. Also before I order something stupid on line or in some hardware store garden center. I have seen invasive species sold here in mine for the garden but your weeds are tropical plants up here and cost me twenty bucks. So before I cause the next zebra mussel, purple loosestrife, or what ever horrid thing can some one give me a heads up. Is there any rules about rain barrel irrigation, or solar panels other than the normal. Where I am right now I can have chickens, vegies in the front yard and bees....in town.
I have never thought ever about a garden in the tropics. I try to keep stuff from freezing in minus 40 and I love the snow. It covers up the weeds, it covers up so many many sins. It also forces a person to sit down and stop .......and clean the house. I like my winters it's the only time I have to take er easy as it were.
Here in Alberta I have just about a thousand square feet in garden/cultivation and will stop at this for now. I need to consolidate what I have done finish up the odds and sods and complete some projects that have gotten started and set aside for other priorities like planting, weeding harvesting etc.
So any suggestions for the boreal gardener who loves to see hummingbirds visit my scarlet runner beans, I even grow arctic kiwis and goji berries up here, so what would you put into a blank slate in southern central Sebring Florida.
cheers from a slightly bemused
Bina
PS will vanilla orchid vines grow in Florida, what about cinnamon, or black pepper or lavender and rosemary.