Elise Pickett knows a thing or two about gardening. She’s a third-generation Floridian and has been teaching locals how to grow their own food for the past 10 years. After learning about how the current food systems affect our health, she started growing her own veggies for her family. Soon her personal journey expanded outwards, and she opened The Urban Harvest, a resource for people who want to start taking control of their food and where it comes from.
Anyone can grow
Elise’s primary goal is to get people growing healthy food. And she wants people to know that they can do this anywhere.
“You can grow food no matter where you live or how much space you have,” Elise says. “You can grow food in as little as five square inches of space on your apartment balcony.”
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Deciding how to start growing your own food can be difficult at first. When you’re trying to learn all the components at once, it’s easy to get frustrated and give up. That’s why she suggests choosing three or four of your favorite vegetables to eat, not just choosing something that’s easy to grow. She adds, “There is just no sense in growing something that you don’t absolutely love.”
Starting with a small container like a tower garden or a single raised bed. Starting small helps you get a feel for the rhythm of the seasons and prevents you from getting overwhelmed. Then, once you’ve successfully grown a few plants, expand it the next season.
Elise herself has only 5600 square feet of space in her lot and she’s able to achieve self-sufficiency in many areas. Take leafy greens, for example. She has not purchased vegetables like lettuce or kale in two-and-a-half years. Just last year she harvested up to 56 pounds of leafy greens!
Growing veggies in Florida
Growing veggies doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, because of our lovely climate, we can basically grow food all year! Elise reminds people that in Florida, our seasons are flipped flopped. Our primary growing season isn’t spring or fall, but winter. Although there are plenty of vegetables you can grow in the summer, including long beans, eggplant and Seminole pumpkin. It’s actually not the season people need to be mindful of when planting.
“It’s being mindful of the seed, what variety and whether it’s adaptive to the season we are heading into,” Elise explains.
Luckily, The Urban Harvest has a solution for that too. On the website is a seed store with a curated collection of open pollinated heirloom seeds and live plants that are specially selected for their ability to thrive in Florida’s climate. They also have a seed club where members receive three different in-season vegetable, herb or flower seeds to grow along with The Urban Harvest each month. They are all crops Elise has grown herself and knows will do well in Florida.
“I have the four S’s and I think they are really important for growing food in Florida — sun, soil, seasons and the seed,” Elise says.
The Urban Harvest
The Urban Harvest is an excellent resource for anyone who is ready to start their gardening journey. Elise offers classes where she teaches everything from the basics of growing to how to compost. She is also available for in-person consultations that can be done over the phone or in person. These custom lessons are tailored to your garden needs.
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Her next class is all about chickens and how to provide sustainable chicken care in your own backyard! The event will be held at Sweetwater Organic Community Farm on Hanley Road in Tampa.
Click here to learn more about The Urban Harvest.
Pictures left to right: (1) Backyard chickens. (2) Elise Pickett. (3) Vertical garden planter. (4) Packet of seeds from the Seed Club.
