Some lessons learned

Right now there's not much happening in the garden. We're waiting for seedlings to grow, and don't have much day-to-day maintenance. We've been using this as a time to reflect on our successes and failures over the past eight months, and we feel like we've learned an enormous amount. The most important lessons?

Patience. Whether it's waiting for hens to start laying, seedlings to come up, or not rushing through a weeding job, patience is perhaps the most important skill we've come to work on. Sometimes things seem to take forever--- it was months before we got so much as a single collard to try, and we've had far more failures than successes.

Persistence. Sometimes stuff just doesn't work out as quickly or as easily as we'd hoped. We kept trying different crops, different planting times, different locations, and we've finally found something that sort of works. There's definitely room for improvement, but at least we've made it this far.

Planting times really matter. At first we kind of figured we could follow some vague guidelines, but realistically, a lot of the recommendations are pretty darn close to correct. It's very very important, especially in Florida, to pay attention to local seasonal planting guides. There's a pretty darn good one in "Vegetable Gardening in Florida". I'm not a fan of the rest of the book, which advocates fertilizers and pesticides out the wazoo, but definitely get it for the planting chart and local variety recommendations.