Which specific area, how far south, name a town in the area and I can get you an informed answer.

Gainesville, FL area for miles and miles many annual fields are open sand.

Many farmers today are either unaware of or choose to ignore the lessons we should have learned from the dust bowl days of the 1930's. I often hear, from farmers, that the cost/benefits of cover crops are not there today.

And then many others are unaware that florida sand and climate is a different paradigm from any in the continental US.

For example, the seeming unawareness above (Kimm and maple) that winter is the growing season for many crops in north and central florida. OTOH, the subtropical grasses that are used for pasture don't grow much during the winter unless irrigated.

Are they truly fallow, or just recently seeded?

Unless you drive past the fields daily and track what's going on over a period of months, you aren't in a position to say much about the farmer's methods.

which crops are winter grown there, Pat? isn't it dry season? And assuming they are vegetables, they just fertilize the hell out of them right?

I'd say in general that is correct, Glib. The big winter crops in the northern part of peninsular florida, as far as annuals go, are cabbage and potatoes. Of course all kinds of truck is grown in the muck further south, all winter.

I have driven around a lot all over north/central florida during that season and I can't say that bare fields are at all common, in fact I can hardly recall seeing a bare tilled field. There is a lot of peanut land in parts of north florida, I don't go there so can't say but perhaps they leave the peanut fields bare all winter. Can't imagine why they would do that, and I greatly doubt they do.

From central southward one will easily see citrus groves being ripped out due to the diseases, and so those fields are bare for a while of course. There is no commercial citrus around Gainesville.

The area around Gainesville is indeed fallow, waiting only for the watermelons to go in. This is cropland.

Pasture lands are already covered with grasses but appears to go dormant during the winter season.
Farmers that want winter pasture for their cattle do have a grass available to them(Annual Ryegrass?) that will grow and produce fodder in January through March. I've seen that for myself.

I gather from what I've heard here that winter cover is not used because of the expense.
Which to me is surprising, because here in the sands of Central Wisconsin we've learned we can not afford to not cover for Winter.

Thanks for the responses. :)

Winter cover is generally not used because it would have to be irrigated to amount to anything. It doesn't pay to buy the seed, consequently. Most annual crops in FL are grown on plastic, certainly melons, so maybe what you are seeing is fields with the plastic stripped off.

Irrigation + equipment costs play a lot into areas where you find more manual picking than mechanical harvest...especially since a lot of our manual picking farmlands are located in warm areas.

Some farmers who don't mechanical harvest rent tilling equipment (if they even bother) because the expense of owning the machinery doesn't make sense for them.

A winter crop may be more trouble than it's worth, even just cover crops beyond leaving plant litter on the ground.

That's a shame.

Sowing grass seed isn't that tough and irrigated fields are the ones I'm talking about and plastic should be gone at harvest in July.

I can't imagine that farmers leave the plastic lying on the ground after the crop is picked. There would also be a second crop after the melons.

I was hoping for some one who was intimate with agrisystems of that region.

Most curious as to why irrigation land goes fallow when cole crops would fit perfectly into that rotation, from my ideal anyway. There must be a reason. In farming every opportunity is pursued unless there is a real reason to NOT do something.

Again, thanks everyone. It did help give some new perspective on Southern Life. :)

Actually, maple you have put your finger -knowingly or not - on an interesting phenomenon: florida is one of those places in north america where traditional mid-latitude humid-climate arable practice meets entirely unfavorable conditions. In fact, it's where the soils change from clays to xeric sands (parts of north florida and south georgia) is precisely where the dividing line is.

This is very relevant when one studies the post-colombian history of the region. In the mid-atlantic region the european colonists did well: european livestock and grain/legume/vegetable rotations based on frequent plowing was productive, at least for a few generations. The british planters in the Carolinas attempted to introduce the rice-culture into the north florida east coast (St John's river valley in particular) with far less success.

European homesteaders in florida always defaulted to hunter-gatherers backed up by trading for staples from other regions. The simple reason is that xeric sand cannot be tilled and made to produce abundant crops that are adapted to better soils and milder climates unless that sand is constantly damp (irrigation) and fertilized (soluble NPK). Ma and Pa Baxter didn't have those things.

The muck soils are a different story, however the draining of florida swamps for vegetable production ranks among the more heinous enviro-crimes of the 20th century.

Pnbrown, it's good to see a poster here sharing their knowledge as you do. Indeed, the further south you go into Florida the closer it gets to being a quasi "wet/dry tropical" climate, where winter is the dry season. I say quasi because, it isn't below the tropic of cancer and other than Key West, the entire state has at some time seen frost.
The low rainfall coupled with the high sun angle and xeric soils means winter crops would have to justify their irrigation to be worthwhile. I haven't been in Florida in the winter in a long time, but I have been in southern Texas in winter, and observed that the sun is noticeably strong compared to what we are used to even here in MD. (which likewise seems like life in a tanning booth compared to the UK)

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:2119669}}

Howdy Mapler: having lived in Gville for 8 years ending about 15 years ago, I remember the miles and miles surrounding Gville being dominated by pines, not production fields. If you are seeing brown ground that may be recently frost killed pastures. Fall crops can be grown in that area so you may also be seeing not yet fully developed cover crops.

To others who haven't lived and farmed veggies in The FL sands, yes, soluble fertilizers are used that go to row crops on poly mulch via drip tape quite commonly. Some may believe it is all done in a slap dash who gives a damned way but I and the veg crops nutrition PhD I worked for for 8 years all over the state can attest to the fact that that is not the case. The sum of our years of work was greatly appreciated by the growers and implemented widely on many vegetable crops saving producers money, improving their bottom lines AND protecting Florida's aquifers.

Hey Pn: What do you think of growing crops way down south in FL on the Marl ground?

Mapler: all of our experiments were planted in the Fall or Spring and we did do work on cole crops also, sadly, it's been so many years ago I don't remember exactly when we harvested anything. I do remember that there was a window for the warm season crops that had to get hit before the oppressive heat and humidity combined made for an impossible to deal with disease situation, nobody grew squat at that time I think.

Michael, yes, I'm aware that UF has worked very hard to educate growers about fertilizer and ground and surface waters.

I do know the difference between dead grass and barren sand. Also I can distinguish between no activity to planting prep from January til March. :)

I sympathize with the past view of pine trees everywhere but every winter there are a few hundred acres of trees cleared, just in our rural region alone.
Our last trip down there had the forest next door harvested.

Mapler: You wouldn't be talking about the White Springs or Live Oak rural areas would you? If you get a chance, try going to Torreya State Park along the Apalachicola river, fantastic place!

Mapler: pardon my thick headed ness but, what color are the fields you are talking about? The brown ones would be pasture and the green ones cover.

Are you seeing bare sand, what color is it?

A few acres of cole crops are still being grown there this time of year but it's pretty risky.

I'm trying to get you some answers via my former boss who's still down there doing veggie research, please be patient with me.

Hi again Mapler: My researcher buddy tells me there are some sandy fields SW of Gville and there may be some scattered around to the west but they aren't a big part of the landscape.

As far as the pines getting cut, I seem to remember the pines there in large part were planted, not native. Gotta make room for all of those snowbird condos and golf courses, you know.

Somebody previously mentioned being a bit mystified at irrigation not being used for cover crops, that would be another huge expense for the systems and assumes the state would permit drilling the wells. I know drip systems are used on many farms but that's a whole different ballgame compared to pivots or side roll systems.

The term "Pasture" is in reference to fields for grazing animals and are typically grasses, clovers and such, at least from my POV in Wisconsin.
When I talk about barren fields it has to do with open soil with little vegetation on the surface, dead or alive.
Rolling acres of open sand is what I question in that if Annual Rye was planted after harvest there seems to be enough rain as demonstrated on the charts to keep it going through the season as a ground cover.
I've seen green pastures that were evidently supplemented with new grass for cattle grazing and there was no irrigation.

I have never seen rolling acres of bare sand in florida that was not directly associated with building development. Maple, why don't you find it on google earth and give us the link?

It's true you will sometimes see some green pastures in florida in winter - those have surely been fertilized in the fall with synthetic (don't forget the strong relationship between fertility and drought-resistance). In sumter county where beef cattle is the major business I used to see the occasional very green field of winter rye or wheat - clearly somebody drilled it in and once it germinates in december if it has fertilizer it will grow pretty good through the winter. Maybe that pays if you have cattle to graze it and save the cost of some hay, but clearly it would not when green manure crops don't work in florida sand.

It might work well to let it get to flowering stage and then crimp or mow it and let it be a mulch to plant through later as an experiment to see what spring crops would make without irrigation.

Wind erosion control for sure and even some water erosion control is the purpose of winter cover crops whether they stay green all winter or not.

I'm not trying to convince anyone that I saw what I saw during my times in FL, only had a simple question. :)

Mapler : Some more info that may help with your question : Are you talking about winter cover cropping? There are two seasons there for cover cropping, winter and summer (between the spring and fall crops). One reason may be that a lot of FL farmers grow a spring and a fall crop on the same ground and maybe they don't have time to get a cover crop established in the winter (November/Dec) that will do anything before it is time to plant the next spring crop in Feb. and 'the soils are too cool to get good germination of the cover crop. Also, bare ground is more conducive to nematode control - not having anything growing that they can feed on helps reduce the populations and reduce the need for chemicals. Unlike Wisconsin they don't have the harsh winter to kill off the bugs. Basically I agree with you that FL farmers could be doing more cover cropping, but there may be reasons for their lack of cover cropping that are related to an individual cropping system. And there also may be some poor-quality farmers that could do better. Hope that helps.

That sounds about right.

Thanks michael365, the business about the nematodes makes sense.
The idea that individual farmers may or may not want a cover crop, because of timing also makes sense.

In Wisconsin we may finish up a harvest in Sept. or Oct. and have the cover crop down and be only 3-6 inches tall before the ground is frozen.
In the Spring it is still holding down the soil from wind erosion because its dead bodies mat down the surface. So our cover crops may not even grow for 2 months before they are killed or covered by snow.

Glad to help, you're welcome Mapler. Took me a while to get the info from that far back stirred up and to the front of my mind in a somewhat coherent form for you :)