My husband and I took an over night trip to Gainseville over the weekend. Our friend artist, Celino Demitroff pointed us to the McRorie community garden just down the street from his apartment.
The small piece of land is densely packed with small garden plots which are available for free.
Gainesville is a different growing zone (8b) than Daytona (9a), and you can see the difference in the plants. This tropic lemongrass looks very petite and manageable compared to plants in Daytona that are taller than I am.
The greens were flourishing in the cold.
Red Russian and Siberian Kale. The Kales looked about like mine, maybe a bit larger.
But their cabbages and corn salad were huge. Loved this cabbage.
I even saw something new. The leaves of this plant look like eggplant. It has thorns on the branches and leaves and fuzzy hairs on the orange fruits. After a bit of searching I found this page on flickr, and I believe the plant is Naranjilla AKA Quito Orange AKA Golden Fruit of the Andes AKA Bed of Nails. The botanical name is Solanum quitoense.
