First Year of Your New Property

When people move down to Florida they dream of juicy tomatoes all year long because after all it’s the sunshine state and it’s always warm here. It’s true that’s it’s warm here for the majority of the year, but we get hit with high humidity and a great deluge of rain almost every few days at the start of summer. Needless to say, its perfect mosquito, yellow fly, horsefly and oh yeah, aphid season. While you will be tempted to start planting things, you need to use the first year as your detective year and start preparing for the second year.

• Get Your Soil Tested – It really is that important! The soil in Northern, Central and Southern Florida all have different types of soil and can vary greatly. You need to know if nutrients are missing or if someone has spilled a chemical in the soil prior to selling the land. I recent discovered a poor soul who had some tree work done and one of the machines used to do so had the hydraulic line bust and spew toxic liquids all over the driveway, trees and into the ground soil.
• Know Your Sun – For one full first year, buy yourself a notebook and make drawings showing what sections of your yard get the least to greatest amount of sun. You need to document spring, summer, fall and winter, and yes it will make a difference. Be sure to jot down any special notes on the two solstice days during the year.
• Download A Plant App – Take your phone and download a plant identification app and then do the same to your spouses phone. The two common apps that I’ve been told about using successfully are ‘Picture This’ and ‘Plant Net’.
• Identify Current Yard Trees/Shrubs/Plants – Now that you’ve got your app, you need to start identifying what’s safe, what’s dangerous and what’s invasive. If you’ve got toxic sumac, poison ivy, nightshade and pokeweed on your property, you will need to know before your pets or kids go running around.
• Identify Survival Crops – You need to know what crops your family will eat if the economy gets worse and you have to rely on your gardening skills to keep you alive. Frequently, the humble potato has been at the receiving end of anti-carb hatred. In reality, if the crap hits the fan, you’ll need all the calories you can get to survive, and tubers have a fair amount of those. Potatoes are an annual crop and must be harvested after a certain period of time, whereas the sweet potato can simply over winter in the ground and will pop up green growth in the spring when the temperature changes. You’ll find many permaculture gurus who will extol the wonders of Taro, Yacon and Cassava but if you’ve never ate them in your life and don’t know how to prepare them, don’t worry about planting them. Go watch videos or read books about survival crops!
• Plan Water Systems – If city water or your well ceased to function tomorrow, how would you get access to water? You need to start looking at how you would like to integrate catchment and storage systems on your property. This can be as simple as integrating rain barrels for water catchment, digging berms and swales or having ditches and culverts installed to move water away from your living area.
• Figure Out Fertilizer – If you haven’t seen the numerous accounts of “mysterious explosions/fire” at fertilizer plants, you aren’t paying attention. You need to decide how you are going to get fertilizer onto your plants without having to run down to your local Ace or Home Depot. Because I haven’t gotten chicken coops or rabbit hutches installed on my property yet, I purchase bags of worm compost from my local Ace Hardware. However, my local place has been out of stock going on three weeks now and doesn’t know when they will get it back in. Thankfully, I don’t need any right now but when it comes back in, I’ll have to stock up. I’ve got backups, but do you have any? Notice, I didn’t say go out and buy chickens, rabbits and worms, but rather you need to start figuring out where you’ll get free fertilizer for down the road. As a side note, some individuals have found Grazon contamination in bagged and bulk compost, so do deep research to ensure there’s no possible contamination. Ask questions like, “Were your animals fed hay that was treated with Grazon?” or “Has this manure been composted for more than 3 years or is it newer?”
• Begin Your Home Educational Library – I personally prefer the scent and feel of a real book in my hands, but feel free to stockpile E-books if that’s your cup of tea. Whichever you prefer, start gathering books and spend your free hours reading and educating yourself as much as possible. Do keep in mind that gardening tips and tricks from a farmer in Colorado, will not necessarily be applicable in the Florida environment.
• Track Your Groceries – Usually people tell you to track your costs associated with groceries, which is a fine thing to do but I’m recommending you get a journal and keep track of how many products you buy that need tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, etc. and use that information to decide on what future crops you’ll need to grow in order to supplement your normal groceries.
• Build Your Stockpile – If the grocery stories ran out of food tomorrow, a food tree you planted yesterday isn’t going to be of much value to you in the long run. What makes sense the most? Spend $100 on groceries that you can eat anytime the crap hits the fan or spend $100 on fruit trees that won’t yield any real food for 4-5 years? You need to not only stockpile your food supplies, but first aid, prescription drugs, toiletries, and home needs (TP, paper towels, etc).

Did you notice at no point did I tell you to run out and purchase fruit frees, build a garden bed or buy animals? That’s because those things will be planned for later and you need to get your finances in order so you can afford those things coming in the next few years. It’s okay to dream of cows, beehives and worm bins but you’ll end up wasting money if you jump into those projects without enough saved income or animal care education.

As I always say, if you need consultation feel free to contact me at my usual haunts and I wish you happy homesteading!