When life handed Brightman Logan lemons, he planted organic vegetables.
A pioneer in the native plant industry, Logan's landscaping business plummeted with falling real estate values. Growing organic vegetables for the local market was the next-best solution.
"It's not native plants but it's sustainable," he says. "If people really understood how and where their food is grown, it would be a giant stride forward in reducing environmental damage and increasing our health."
From the farmer's perspective, it's an enormous step from the native plants that have become acclimated to living in Florida's unique climate for thousands of years to the pampered vegetables grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizer. "There was a learning curve," he admits. "Food is a whole new thing for us."
Logan began growing organic vegetables at the family farm outside Zephyrhills in 2008. Like most Florida farmers, they plant cover crops during summer months and focus their energy on growing fresh vegetables during the cooler fall and winter months. One sunny August morning, a combine had plowed under the cover crop of nitrogen-fixing cowpeas and was spreading 20 tons of used coffee grounds on an eight-acre field.
As the combine roars across the field, tiny seedlings are being babied in a shade house by Logan's daughter, M.J., who also serves as director of sales and marketing for Magnolia Organics. "She wasn't particularly interested in the business when we were growing native plants, but she really wanted to get involved in the vegetables," Logan said.
Along with the expected lettuce, tomatoes and greens, M.J. selects some unusual crops to introduce to customers. Bright lights chard, for instance, features nearly fluorescent colors to tempt even fussy kids into trying it. Kohlrabi is a relative of broccoli, but with a milder, sweeter taste. Spaghetti squash looks and tastes just like pasta but has fewer calories.
Rather than setting up as a CSA (community supported agriculture) program where members receive standardized boxes of vegetables, customers can order vegetables online or visit farmer's markets in Hyde Park and Wiregrass. Monthly "farm days" are scheduled on the second Saturday of the month from November through June with activities for both adults and children to help connect families to their food and the people who grow it. The Logans also are working to coordinate neighborhood deliveries in areas like Brandon, Lutz and south Tampa.
Although the landscaping industry has been impacted by the decline in the real estate market, Logan is taking the long view and preparing for the rebound with a new line of patented native plants.
"One of the problems with native plants is that they aren't always uniform in a landscape," he said. That problem can become a benefit when he selects plants that offer better color or improved growth patterns.
He's also continues to work with developers, showing them that using native plants in their landscapes offers significant savings in terms of water, fertilizer and maintenance costs, plus they provide nearly year-round color as well as habitat for wildlife.
While Logan has made native plants his life work, it was almost an accidental career for the fifth-generation Floridian who grew up in south Tampa. He spent hours listening to tales about natural Florida from his grandfather and then paid friends and neighbors to drive him out to land that his family owned near Zephyrhills where he spent weekends exploring the woods. After earning a degree in biology from Mercer University, he came back to Tampa and went to work for Biological Research Associates.
"We were working on some of the state's first wetlands mitigation projects and needed plants," he recalled. "There was a peat bog on the land so we started transplanting them. That became the capital I needed to start a real nursery in 1981."
He and his wife, Nan, built a Florida cracker-style home on an island in the middle of the bog just down the dirt road from the nursery. "It's a great life," he says. "Some days I go all day without seeing a paved road."
For more information: www.magnoliaorganics.net or www.allnativefloria.com, 800-449-2363
Other organic growers in the Tampa Bay region include Eco-Farm in Plant City (email ecofarmfl@yahoo.com), Scotty's Produce in Polk County (email pegjeffcamp@yahoo.com) or Passion for Produce (www.Passionforproduce.net). In Pinellas, about a dozen growers have banded together to create a network that supplies a wide range of produce and food at http://stpete.locallygrown.net. Sweetwater Organic Farm (www.sweetwater-organic.org) in Tampa, one of the first CSAs in the nation, has sold out its memberships for the 2011-2012 season but does have a waiting list.