Scars Nursery & Gardens

Tropic Beauty Peaches in the Food Forest!

A garden full of Bees is a Happy Garden!

Try it, you might like the results.

New addition to the Food Forest

Kumquat Nagami

What would you want in your Food Forest?

Dune Sunflower
Helianthus debilis

Cheerful little sunflowers on fast growing perennial ground cover. Prolific self seeder and particularly attractive to bees, butterflies and birds! Sandy soils are a perfect spot for these drought tolerant natives.

As I learn my way around this new nursery, sometimes
the anticipation of identifying a plant is unbearable! What color bloom do you think this canna will have?

Get your plants and much more at the 2nd Annual Central Florida Food Forest Festival at Scars Farm on April 22nd from 10AM-4PM.

FREE ADMISSION - $10 per car to park.

- Full Vendor Market, Plants & Meats, Honey, Crafts
- Food Trucks, Desserts, Live DJ, Bartender
- Freeze Drying Products & Info
- Kids Area & Activities
- Walking Tour of Farm Animals: Horses, Donkeys, Cows, Andy the Pig & Chickens
- Permanent Agriculture Gardens
- Wildflower Garden
- Edible Plant & Fruit Tree Sales
- Apiary & Pollination Info
- Shaded Grounds & Covered Seating

ALL Vendors & Sponsors apply here: https://scarsevents.com/vendor-application/

🐾 No Pets Please
🥾 Sturdy Shoes Encouraged
🦼Market & Nursery Grounds Are Solid Enough for Scooters & Wheelchairs. ADA Accessible Bathrooms.

If you would like to volunteer, please join our Scars Farm Volunteers group or email: [email protected]

If you have any questions, please message us or send an email: [email protected]

Look at the size of these mulberries!!!

The Christmas Festival @ Scars Farm event is a few days away! We will have many different types of vendors and we will also be selling plants as well. Credit cards will be accepted.

Breakfast with Santa (8am to 10:30am) - what to expect (included with ticket):

Santa will visit with those who arrive early at their breakfast tables. After Breakfast families can take photos with Santa and the children will receive gifts.

Breakfast is provided by Uncle Nicks’s Italian Deli Bagels - They will have a variety of Bagels, Spreads, Danish, Cinnamon rolls, Muffins, Coffee, Hot Chocolate, Teas, Juices.

Breakfast with Santa tickets ($25.00/per person) are limited and sold online only through 12/15/22 (or until sold out): https://scarsevents.com/event/christmas-festival/

Christmas Festival (11am-5pm) - what to expect (included with ticket):

- Grinchmas Hayride Experience
- Horse & Cinderella Carriage Photo Op
- Various Craft and Service Vendors, Olivor Heritage Farms, The Bee Lady,
- Photo Ops with Santa (2pm-5pm), Elsa (11am-4pm), Grinch on hayride (11am-5pm)
- Horse Rides, Pony Photo Ops, Face Painting, Balloon Artist
- 150ft Obstacle Course for kids and adults age 5+, Bounce House for kids ages 1-4, Batting Cage
- Farm Animal Interactions: Horses, Donkeys, Cows, Andy the Pig & Chickens
- Food Trucks, Desserts, Live DJ, Bartender

You can purchase Christmas Festival tickets online ($15.00/per person) and at the gate ($20.00/per person). No ticket required for children up to 2 years of age.
https://scarsevents.com/event/christmas-festival/

ALL Vendors & Sponsors apply here: https://scarsevents.com/vendor-application/

If you would like to volunteer, please join our Scars Farm Volunteers group or email: [email protected]

If you have any questions, please message us or send an email: [email protected]

Fall Festival @ Scars Farm will have fruit trees/plants Food Forest Tampa, The Reid Farm, S & S Micro Farm and more!

- Full Vendor Market, Local Produce, Meat, Honey & Crafts
- Pumpkin Patch - cash only to purchase pumpkins
- Photo Ops with Maribel, Spiderman, & Cinderella with her Pumpkin Carriage
- Car Show, Horse Rides, Magician, Pumpkin Bounce House, Batting Cage, Pumpkin Bowling, and Costume contest with prizes
- Jet Monster Fire Truck ride to Animal area - separate ticket
- Farm Animal Interactions: Horses, Donkeys, Cows, Andy the Pig & Chickens
- Food Trucks, Desserts, Live DJ, Bartenders

Online Event Tickets: $8 per person online - $15 after 10/15, get your tickets: https://scarsevents.com/scars-events/fall-fest/

Jet Monster Fire Truck Transport to Animals: Donation of $10 required online - $20 after 10/15, get your tickets: https://scarsevents.com/shop/jet-monster-fire-truck/

No ticket required for children up to 2 years of age.

ALL Vendors/Sponsors, please use this link to apply: https://scarsevents.com/vendor-application/

If you would like to volunteer, please join our Scars Farm Volunteers group.

Fall Festival @ Scars Farm
October 22nd 2022: 10am - 5pm
777 Alturas Rd, Bartow, FL 33830

If you have any questions, please message us or send an email: [email protected]

We get odd comments about our dragon fruit and people are surprised after we explain the benefits.

- Carotenoids (may reduce cancer risk).
- Lycopene (may improve heart health and reduce cancer risk).
- Magnesium
- Iron
- Vitamin C

Improves gut health: Healthy bacteria in your gut may help digestion and even reduce colon cancer risk.

Dragon fruit is best eaten raw, but you can throw it on the grill like some other fruits. Enjoy it on its own or add it to:

- Cocktails
- Desserts
- Fish, especially cod, tuna and mahi mahi
- Salads
- Smoothies

Our dragon fruit flowers are starting to bloom and the fruit will start to show up next month.

When America Went Crazy for Mulberry Trees

"In the early 19th century, mulberry trees became associated with economic prosperity and morally upright productiveness, leading to a speculative bubble.

In the early nineteenth century, mulberry trees became associated with economic prosperity and morally upright productiveness. This led to an enormous speculative bubble that popped disastrously, as Amy Chambliss wrote back in 1960.

Known as the ideal food of the silkworm, mulberries were important to American industry from the start. Even before the Revolutionary War, Georgians grew the trees and processed silk for the British Empire. But it was only after independence that the industry became a symbol of something more.

One early evangelist for silk was Ezra Stiles, who became president of Yale College in 1778 and immediately began urging his faculty members to plant an acre of mulberry trees for each of their children. Observing that silk culture had “ever claimed the attention of the best and most cultivated minds,” Stiles distributed mulberry seeds and silkworm eggs around New England. His diary, Chambliss writes, contained “frequent dartings away from academic matters to the latest developments in silk.” At Yale’s 1789 commencement, he wore a gown made from the silk he’d raised.

John Quincy Adams saw Mulberry trees as “placing the farmer on the same basis as the capitalist.”

Stiles was not a lone eccentric. Silk-raising had a strong popular appeal as light work that could turn women, children, and old or feeble people into productive household members, keeping them away from idleness and mischief.

“It could be carried on in orphanages, poorhouses, and institutions of correction, and thus cut public expenses and lower taxes,” Chambliss writes. “It supposedly gave a spiritual uplift to all engaged in it by reminding them of how much beauty comes into the world through a plain-looking worm.”

Chambliss notes that “practically every state north of Virginia” subsidized silk raising. In 1826, the federal Secretary of the Treasury issued a manual for the industry. A decade later, John Quincy Adams recommended increased silk production as a way to avoid excessive imports. Because mulberry trees grown from cuttings could quadruple annually, Adams saw them “placing the farmer on the same basis as the capitalist.”

By this time, mulberry trees were already turning into a speculative bubble.

“People who were inclined to go into the silk business anyway, after learning about state subsidies and reading the government propaganda, rushed to buy,” Chambliss writes. “Some speculators who got in early made 1,000 percent profits, others 500 percent.”

Mulberry trees quickly became a far more appealing business prospect than actually producing silk. Many trees changed hands four or five times before reaching a buyer who would introduce them to silkworms. By the late 1830s, young trees that had once sold for three to five dollars per hundred were worth 100 times as much.

The bubble burst swiftly with a credit contraction in 1839 that ruined some large operators and convinced smaller players to unload their trees as fast as possible. After a heavy freeze in 1840, followed by a blight four years later, the nation’s silk industry disappeared entirely. Echoes of that long-ago mulberry craze reverberate in the countless “Mulberry Streets” that dot American cities and suburbs." - Livia Gershon

Any mulberry fans out there? Here are some Florida varieties.

- Dwarf Everbearing Mulberry
- King White Pakistan ('Shatoot') Mulberries
- Pakistan mulberry
- Boysenberry Black Mulberry
- Callie’s Delight Contorted Mulberry
- East Coast Mulberry
- Edible Leaf Mulberry
- Ho’O Mulberry
- Pandora’s Box Weeping Mulberry
- Silk Hope Mulberry
- Wacissa Mulberry
- White Beauty Mulberry
- White Railroad Mulberry

The butterflies and bees are in heaven.

Wildflower is starting to trickle in and over an acre will be full bloom by our next public event on Saturday, 4/16/22 EggFest 2022 at Scars Farm.

You can't just eat one and much better tasting than a Lay's Potato chip. ;)

The Central Florida Food Forest Festival is blowing up! 40+ vendors/food trucks confirmed so far!

Organic Turmeric $8/lb while supplies last.

Turmeric — and especially its most active compound, curcumin — have many scientifically proven health benefits, such as the potential to improve heart health and prevent against Alzheimer's and cancer. It's a potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant. It may also help improve symptoms of depression and arthritis.

Message us to schedule pickup.

The crew put up this hoop house in no time at all. Great job guys!

Bartow Florida
March 5th, 10AM - 4PM

We’re so excited to see you the first Saturday in March! Full vendor market, food trucks, edible plants & fruit Trees and fun for the kiddos! Sales. Meet our animal friends and enjoy a beautiful day at Scars Farm.

Florida Food Forest Festival on Sat Mar 5th from 10AM-4PM.
FREE ADMISSION
$5 PER CAR Donation to PARK, proceeds go to our Animal Sanctuary.

Walking Tours of:
Farm Animals, Sanctuary & Pastures
See Our New Almost 50 Foot Long Chicken Coop
Visit Andy the Pig
Permanent Agriculture Gardens
Wildflower Garden
Apiary & Pollination Info
Edible Plant & Fruit Tree Sales
Full Vendor Market, Local Produce & Meats, Honey, Crafts, Local Small Biz
Plenty of Easy Parking
Shaded Grounds & Covered Seating
Food Trucks, Desserts & Snacks
Kids Area & Activities

Vendors Wanted - Fill out our registration form here:
https://docs.google.com/.../1FAIpQLSfnBMBAYYBU0G.../viewform

How many of you are covering your plants in preparation for Saturday night?

Did you know that instead of commercial rooting powder, you can use Aloe Vera as a rooting hormone?
Aloe Vera is a wonderful and yet simple rooting hormone. Use fresh aloe gel from inside the aloe vera leaves. Simply cut a thick aloe leaf from one of your plants, and scrape out the gel. Blend the gel in the blender with a little water to form a thick slurry and use it for rooting or cloning.

Can you name a better tasting fruit than a strawberry? After taste testing ours, we can't think of one. Maybe its the seaweed fertilizer? ;)

First one to guess the name and origin of this plant can take some home. We have a couple of them in the garden.