Welcome to Ready-to-Grow Gardens! We can help you to grow your own organic food.


Our company provides the essential materials and services for successful organic edible gardens in Miami and the greater South Florida area.

Reclaimed Greenheart Garden Beds

By designing, installing and maintaining food-producing gardens in homes, schools, businesses, and public spaces we are trying to do our best to improve a currently problematic food system.  We are helping to grow food as locally as possible.

An excellent way to grow your own fresh organic produce is with our raised bed edible garden packages. These have everything needed to start, including a beautiful reclaimed wood frame, our rich soil blend, organic fertilizer, organically grown edible plants, and mulch.  All delivered and installed for you.

Raised bed gardens are ideal for growing vegetables and herbs because they help to contain the soil (prevent erosion), are easier to keep free of weeds and make it easier on the back.  Since you don’t usually walk inside of them, not only will you not compact the soil, but you can use every square foot for planting plants instead of having paths.  Also, our gardens are built out of an extremely durable and attractive reclaimed wood called Greenheart that lasts much longer than the lumber raised beds are usually built from.  Better yet, since they the wood is reclaimed, our garden beds aren’t contributing to deforestation!

 

Reclaimed Greenheart Garden Packages

For more information on our raised bed garden packages visit our raised bed garden page.

We also provide a wide range of various supplies you might need for your garden, including soil, compost,  mulch, as well as an excellent selection of organically grown vegetable, fruit and herb plants.  Other services include garden replanting, consultations and regular garden maintenance services.  If you’d like, we can transform your  yard into an edible oasis planted with our great selection of edible fruit trees, perennials, and annuals as well as cover crops for increasing the fertility and biodiversity of your soil.  Being in our unique South Florida climate, one can grow tasty edible plants all year long. The options are endless!

For more information or to set up a garden installation email Dylan Terry, or call him at 786-436-7703.

Ready-to-Grow Gardens Owner Dylan Terry, photo courtesy of Anais Alexandre

 

 



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Time for some replanting!

As many of you with gardens are beginning to do considerable harvesting, it is very likely that there will be more room made in your gardens.  To get the most out of your garden, it is wise to continually plant new plants (or seeds) as plants are removed, or trimmed back.  This is particularly relevant to short season crops like lettuce, bush beans and radishes.  For those of you that have your garden under control, but need some plants to fill in the gaps, or for those of you that would like a full-on replanting, we wanted to let you know that we have an excellent selection of veggie and herb starts that we grow organically from seed or cutting.  Here they are:

Herbs:

  • Borage
  • Chives
  • Cilantro
  • Comfrey
  • Cuban Oregano
  • Dill
  • Egyptian Mint
  • Epazote
  • Lavender
  • Lemon Balm
  • Lemon Grass
  • Mint
  • Nasturtium
  • Oregano
  • Parsley
  • Rosemary
  • Sage

Veggies:

  • Arugula
  • Bak Choy
  • Bean
  • Boniato (tropical sweet potato)
  • Broccoli
  • Cabbage
  • Carrots
  • Chicory
  • Chinese Cabbage
  • Collards
  • Cucumber
  • Eggplant
  • Endive
  • Escarole
  • Kale
  • Lettuce
  • Mizuna
  • Mustard Greens
  • Pepper (Hot and Sweet varieties)
  • Radish
  • Sorrel
  • Spinach
  • Shungiku
  • Sweet Potato
  • Swiss Chard
  • Tomato (Around 20 varieties, mostly heirloom)

 

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Does your garden need help? We can visit it regularly…

Many gardeners are too busy to give their gardens the attention it needs to reach its full potential, and some are beginners and need expert advice and assistance in getting their garden to flourish.  We wanted to remind you that Ready-to-Grow Gardens can provide regular garden visits.

In our garden visits we do the following:

  1. Help harvest and prune existing plants
  2. Train and stake vining plants (like tomatoes)
  3. Add compost and mulch as needed
  4. Add organic fertilizer
  5. Use organic pest control
  6. Coach, and give advice on how to maintain and enjoy your garden correctly

Visits are typically once a month, but can also twice a month, or once every 2 months.  Prices are based on frequency of visit and size of garden.

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Consider an automatic irrigation system for your garden!

Although we wish people never left their gardens, the truth is we can’t always be there every morning to water. Typically lawn sprinklers either under or over-water garden beds. RTG is proud to announce that we now install automatic irrigation systems for edible gardens.  These systems are very convenient for the busy or traveling gardener.

Our reliable, easy-to-program timers allow you to control when and how often you water, and attach directly to a hose spigot. At the garden we use water saving drip lines and micro-sprinklers. The drip line emitters deliver water directly to the root-zone, minimizing losses to evaporation. The micro sprinklers are great for the salad greens and seed propagation because they provide a light sprinkling that perfectly moistens the soil without compacting it.  This irrigation jargon translates to the best way irrigate a raised bed vegetable garden.  Systems start at only $200 and quickly pay for themselves in time and garden growth.

Advantages of automatic drip irrigation system:

-       Eliminates daily hand watering
-       Cares for your garden when you’re out of town
-       Uses a fraction of the water compared to traditional sprinklers
-       Does not compact soil
-       Reduces diseases problems caused by overhead sprinkler and hose watering
-       Operates independent of lawn sprinklers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tomato Hornworm and parasites

Tomato Hornworm and their parasites

Tomato Hornworm and their parasites

In the photo, a tomato hornworm is covered with cocoons of pupating braconid wasps. The braconid wasp is considered a parasitoid of the hornworm because it causes the hornworm to die as it pupates. By the time the wasps undergo metamorphosis, all of the hosts insides have been digested, thus by the time they are ready to pupate, the caterpillar will die. While this may be detrimental to the tomato hornworm, it is considered beneficial for gardeners…as the tomato hornworm can be a signifant pest.

Although this form of biological pest control occurs naturally, it can not always be guaranteed.  Other organic approaches for controlling tomato hornworms are removing by hand, or spraying tomato plants with organic insecticide BT (bacillus thuringiensis).

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Interview on Miami NewTimes Short Order

Click here for an interview on Miami NewTimes food blog Short Order.  Special thanks to the reporter Anais Alexandre, who also included it on her local food/music blog The Jam Garden.

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Winter 2012 Issue of Edible South Florida

Click here to see the new issue of Edible South Florida, including my edible gardening column, and an article about rainwater harvesting by guest columnist Chris French, the most recent addition to the Ready-to-Grow Gardens team. See pages 14 and 15 of online viewer to read us.

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Great Articles about our Progress

Here is a superb article focusing on our edible garden at Arquitectonica, and written by Beth Dunlop, the famous architecture writer:

http://www.editor-miami.com/Edible-Gardens-for-Everyone

 

Also, here is a great article about Surfside Community Garden (which we installed):

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/05/2535915/a-community-garden-grows-in-surfside.html

 

 

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Our Growing Season So Far

Here are some highlights from our fall/winter growing season so far.  Remember, an edible garden is one of the coolest presents one can receive and can enrich one’s relationship to food and what they eat.

Continue reading

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Ready-to-Grow Gardens does demo at South Miami Farmer’s Market and helps replant South Miami City Hall’s Edible Garden

Raised bed garden demo outside South Miami City Hall, photo courtesy Penny Rosen

Chris French, most recent member of the Ready-to-Grow Gardens team, divides lemongrass, photo courtesy Penny Rosen

photo courtesy Penny Rosen

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Surfside Community Garden Installed and Ready for Planting!

We are pleased to announce that Ready-to-Grow Gardens has installed a community garden for The Town of Surfside, FL.  The opening ceremony is this Saturday!

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