Erin's first post on Gardening in Miami

Hey, Everyone! My name is Erin, I'm serving for a year in the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s Young Adult Volunteer program and DOOR in Miami. Its been really fun to start a garden down here, because I'm originally from Iowa... which has been covered with snow while I'm starting a garden in Florida.

So far, my lettuce, cilantro, onions, and broccoli are doing really well. I also have spinach, cayenne pepper, and basil, which are sprouted, but not taking off like the others yet. I had also planted carrots, cherry tomatoes, and sweet peas, but those didn't come up at all - I'm blaming it on the recent cold weather. I've replanted tomatoes from seed, and I plan on planting green beans, so we'll see what happens. Also, Heidi just gave us two tomato plants which she had started, and I just planted those today.

Like Heidi, we threw some potatoes into our compost and have two beautiful plants growing very well. At first we had no idea what they were, but they were growing so well that my roommate, Megan, decided against weeding it. I've recently discovered that one plant has a good size potato, and the other has a tiny little potato that's started.

Another exciting addition to our garden is a lime tree! My sister and brother-in-law, who live in Vero Beach, gave me two lime trees from their yard. One did not take well with the transplant. It had a lot of roots, and I couldn't dig more than a foot into the ground before I hit solid rock. I read that lime trees don't do well if there are air pockets around the roots, and with the challenge of not being able to plant it very deep (because of the roots), it didn't have much of a chance. The other tree - which might be a key lime - is doing very well. It has new leaves and little buds, so maybe we'll have limes this year!

There you are- my first update of our garden. Here are a couple more pictures: