Ourlando Local Food Alliance Farm To Table Event

Join us at Farm To Table event! Sunday November 15th from 12:30-2:30pm at the Enzian. Simple Living Institute is part of Ourlando's Local Food Alliance which promotes small farms, local organic foods, and connecting farmers to consumers and creating a local economy. Admission is $18 and you get food, drink, and to see the feature film Food Fight. Simple Living Institute will have a booth. Let us know if you would like to volunteer. Help us to connect the dots - local farmers, producers, restaurants, markets, and the public to help build a sustainable, local food economy.

Simple Living Plant Sale and Farm Day

Fall is prime gardening season in Florida so get your gardens ready. Come out to our fall plant sale this Saturday, October 17th, from 9am to 4pm, at the Econ Farm, and pick up some starter plants to get your garden growing. We will have vegetables, herbs, fruit trees, natives, and flowers. We are growing varieties well suited to our Florida climate. Stop by to visit our farm and learn more with our free demonstrations on how to start seeds, feed worms, use a solar panel, start a garden, and sift compost.

Schedule of demonstrations
9am- Wetlands Exploration
10am- Making and Harvesting Compost
11am- How to Start a Garden
12pm- Planting seeds
1pm- Worm Composting
2pm- Natural Pest Control
3pm- Solar Energy

>More Info & Driving Directions
>View Flyer (.pdf)

Pumpkin Harvest

This summer our garden was completely overrun by cover crops such as black eyed peas, volunteer flowers, and squash vines. We grew luffa squashes for sponges and transplanted some mystery squash from the compost pile. When mid-September rolled around, it was time to clear the mess. The squash vines had taken up the entire 600 square foot garden bed and overrun about 20 feet into our driveway. In the process we found 10 Seminole pumpkins, a dozen luffas, and 3 large green crooknecks. We cut a Seminole pumpkin in half and cooked it on the campfire. It was so delicious it didn't even need any salt or butter. We are currently storing the pumpkins under our house where it is cooler and shady and hope they will last a long time.

Organic Gardening Workshop

This weekend is our Organic Gardening Workshop. It will take place at the Econ Farm and you will learn hands on how to start a new garden, plant seeds, and amend the soil for planting. The workshop is for any skill level of gardener. Fall is the prime gardening season in Florida. You will learn what to plant when, seed spacing, and garden design. Come out to see our gardening techniques. Advanced registration is required so make sure and contact us to register. The workshops will be limited to 15 people because there is not a lot of room for people in the garden:)

Seed Exchange

We had a great seed exchange last night at our Organic Growers meeting. We all sat at big round tables like for a banquet dinner and separated the seeds according to family or season and swapped. It was a one for one trade or people bought coupons for twenty-five cents each if they brought no seeds. The event went really well, I got to meet some new people, and get new seeds.

Fall gardening season is upon us!

Here in Central Florida we are entering fall gardening season!

This is a very exciting time because in the next couple of months we have an opportunity to plant all sorts of yummy vegetables. At our Econ Farm, we have already planted seeds of tomatoes, peppers, and some brassicas such as broccoli, collards, and cabbage. Now that it is September it is time to plant, plant, plant! Get em in the ground: cucumbers, zuchinni, yellow crookneck squash, green beans, carrots, radishes, sweet peas and so many more. Happy planting:)

Seed planting time!

Today we planted about 500 seeds with volunteers from Simple Living Institute, Inc! This is the last chance to plant warm season veggies like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant from seed. We planted a couple flats of cucumbers, yellow squash, and zuchinni. I'm gearing up for the fall with lots of collards, broccoli, cabbage, swiss chard, and bok choy. They should be pretty good size in a couple of months and we will be raffling them off at our upcoming growers meetings and selling them at our fall plant sale at the econ farm saturday October 17th.