David the Good, Florida’s Survival Gardener
Name: David the Good
Occupation: Writer/Mad Scientist
Place of Residence:Florida
Background and Personal History: David’s neurotic obsession with edible plants has led him to grow a variety of species that by all rights should be darned impossible in his climate. At age five, he sprouted a bean in a Dixie cup of soil — and caught the gardening bug. No seed in his mom’s pantry was safe after that. Sensing David’s enthusiasm, his dad put in an 8-foot by 8-foot plot for him later that year and David hasn’t stopped growing since.
David is married to the lovely Rachel, who homeschools their children and regularly improvises delicious meals from the many bizarre plants in their collection (and a few tasty weeds they’ve foraged, too).
In mid-2012, he launched The Survival Gardener as a place to share his ongoing experiments with tropical and temperate edibles. David is the author of four books. He and his family currently own a sandy little plant-riddled one-acre homestead in the middle of Florida and are members in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
Current Projects:
Establishing a half-acre food forest
Testing heirloom corn varieties
Toying with aquatic plants and aquaponics
Breeding chickens
Zone-pushing tropical trees and shrubs by establishing
microclimates
Experimenting with tropical staple crops
Trying to become self-sufficient on an acre
Starting trees from seed
Writing a survival gardening book for the Deep
South
Trying to breed a better tropical pumpkin.
Other Fun Facts: On particularly
hot days, David wanders around the yard with a straw hat and a cigar,
pretending he’s in Cuba.
He has also been known to toss seeds around and guerrilla garden on foreclosed
properties. Shh!
More Places to Find David
on the Web:
