What Actually Grows in Central Florida?

When we imagine eating with the seasons, the picture that comes to mind is often borrowed from somewhere else.

Autumn means apples and pumpkins, perhaps a basket of root vegetables beside a kitchen window overlooking leaves turning amber and red. It is a beautiful image, but it isn't exactly October in Orlando.

Our autumn has its own rhythm.

While much of the country is winding down its growing season, Central Florida is entering one of the most interesting times of the year for growing food. The intense heat of summer begins to loosen its grip, our gardens become hospitable to an entirely different collection of plants, and Florida-grown produce begins shifting toward the abundance of our cooler months.

Once you start paying attention to that calendar, eating seasonally here becomes considerably more interesting.

October on a Florida Plate

So what does Florida taste like in October?

This month, Florida-grown tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and sweet corn are moving into their seasonal harvest windows. Oranges, tangerines and grapefruit are appearing as citrus season gathers momentum, while avocados, guava and carambola, or star fruit, are among the fruits still available during this transitional month.

Some of these foods may be familiar enough that we barely think of them as seasonal. That is part of what makes deliberately looking for Florida-grown produce so enjoyable. The same tomato or cucumber takes on a little more meaning when we know that this is actually its time here.

Weather, of course, has the final word. Growing and harvest windows shift with temperature, rainfall and the inevitable surprises of Florida weather, so a seasonal calendar is better understood as a guide than a guarantee.

Still, it gives us a wonderful question to bring to the farmers market or produce section: What was grown in Florida this week?

The Garden Is Just Getting Started

October becomes even more interesting when we look at what can be planted rather than only what is being harvested.

For Central Florida gardeners, fall marks the beginning of our cool-season vegetable garden. Around the middle of October, conditions become increasingly favorable for planting crops such as carrots, beets, radishes, spinach and mustard greens, while transplants of broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, cabbage, lettuce and other cool-loving vegetables can begin making their way into gardens.

That may feel wonderfully backward to anyone accustomed to thinking of spring as the planting season.

Here, a backyard garden, raised bed or collection of containers can become increasingly productive just as northern gardens are being tucked away for winter. Our geography gives us an opportunity to rethink the agricultural calendar we may have absorbed from books, magazines and popular culture.

You don't need a vegetable garden to appreciate this. Simply knowing what is growing around us changes what we begin to notice.

Growing Here Now

If you'd like to experiment with eating a little closer to home this month, look for Florida-grown tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, sweet corn, avocados, guava, carambola, oranges, tangerines and grapefruit.

As we move deeper into fall and winter, the selection changes again. Florida's cooler months bring increasing availability of crops such as leafy greens, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, radishes, beans, strawberries and other foods that thrive when our temperatures become gentler.

That means seasonal eating in Central Florida doesn't have to be restrictive. It can simply become an exercise in curiosity.

Instead of beginning with a list of foods we think we should eat, we can occasionally reverse the question and ask what the land around us happens to be producing.

Learning the Taste of Home

There is something appealing about becoming familiar with the edible rhythms of the place where we live.

Central Florida is more than a backdrop to our daily lives. We inhabit a subtropical landscape with its own soil, rainfall, growing conditions and seasons, even when those seasons don't resemble the ones printed on calendars or pictured on autumn greeting cards.

Learning what grows here gives us another way to know this place.

Maybe it begins with choosing Florida citrus when it comes into season, buying tomatoes from a local grower or planting a pot of lettuce on the patio. None of it needs to become another rule about how we ought to eat.

The invitation is much simpler than that.

The next time you choose what will nourish you, look around and see what Central Florida is growing for you right now.