Monthly Archives: June 2013

June carrots-delicious

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june carrotsPulled a head of black seeded simpson lettuce and chard tonight along with some new carrots.  I grow 4 varieties of carrots-one that’s a smaller-sized carrot for early in the season, another that’s the size of these carrots shown in the picture, and then two that are larger, storage type of carrots.  For the early crop this year I grew minicor-which were really good.  They came up in about 55 days.  The picture shows Napoli-and they are really good.  In other places I’ve got Mokum and Scarlet Nantes-both excellent tasting varieties that will be ready in the fall.  There’s something about carrots right out of the ground-it almost ruins buying carrots at the store-at any time of the year.  One square will give you 16 carrots….unless, of course, you know the ninja secret for them….

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Dinner tonight

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twe evening dinner salanova, butter chard, carrots 061813Everything is coming up like mad right now with our 90+ degree weather. I went out and pulled some carrots(minicor), some butter chard, and some lettuce. And the lettuce didn’t cost me $3.00 a head at the fancy stores. You can grow this for pennies and you’ll never, ever beat the taste of freshly harvested lettuce. I rinsed, cleaned and dried it, then made us a tasty Caesars salad. I usually have a batch of Caesars salad dressing made up in the refrigerator. For those who love Caesars but end up being disappointed by the store-bought dressings, you ought to buy my ebook. Although the book is about square foot gardening, it’s got a great recipe in there for Caesars salad dressing. It’s a shortcut version-one that you’re not slaving over when guests arrive. It’s made ahead of time, and it’s very good. You can add as much anchovy paste as you want, or you don’t have to add any. You won’t go anywhere that you’re not asked for the recipe. Oh yes-the things that the lettuce, carrots, and chard are resting on? Whelatgrass. I hate the stuff, but I grow it for a few people who love it. I’m telling you, square foot gardening is the easiest way to go.

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Salanova

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salanova 061013A brand new item from Johnny’s-this is Salanova. It’s been sold as a great tasting new “mix” that’s available. Given the results from our gardens, I agree. This stuff tastes excellent! Look at that, 4 perfect heads of lettuce-no room for weeds, no pests, just delicious lettuce. It’s made to be mixed in with other salad greens more than as a stand-alone lettuce, but I’ve used it as a stand alone for the most part. It’s a bit pricey, but I’ll be ordering a lot more. Just like everything else, the more you order the cheaper it gets. I think I paid 7 or 8 dollars for 25 seeds. It was so good I ordered the 100 seed packet. Give it a shot.

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Growing delicious lettuce

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skyphosYou can buy all the fancy lettuce in the world from some of the best stores(like Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Sprouts, etc.)around and you’ll never be able to find one that tastes like this. Even at these stores the produce-if it’s coming in from out of state(and most of it may be)-is at least a week old. You pull some of this lettuce, give it a good rinse, and serve and you’ll have folks asking “what is this?” Lettuce is so easy to grow unless it’s in hot weather. You can still do it, but it takes a little more work in terms of water and shading. You can also start them inside where it’s cooler and then put them out after 2 or 3 weeks which will save you from the direct seeding method. This is Skyphos lettuce from Johnny’s selected seeds. It’s one of our favorites. Growing this in your gardens will ruin it for you when you have to shop and pay those rip-off prices at the grocery stores. Learn how to do it yourself for pennies. Along the way you’ll learn to expect a much better quality of taste for produce and veggies.

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Utilizing all the space in a square foot garden

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efficiency tomato and barbados 060213Here’s a little something-this particular square has already been harvested. It held four-2 star lettuce heads of lettuce. Delicious stuff. I added several trowels full of compost, mixed it up a little, and then replanted. Since it previously held a leaf crop(lettuce), it was time to use either a root or fruit crop. I chose to put in a tomato plant-a fruit category. Knowing that it will take 4 weeks to get large enough to trellis up the vertical grow, I took advantage of the space in front of the tomato plant to grow two mini-heads of lettuce. This particular variety is called Dacine. It will be done in about 25 days. That’s good news too because it’s going to be hot here, and lettuce is hard to sprout and grow in weather that warm. I think you can see that they’ve already come up, and now I just have to keep it well watered and covered and it will be perfect. When the first frost hits sometime in September or early October, the tomato plant will be done and it will then be time for me to replant with a cool crop-another 4 heads of lettuce. By the end of the year, this one square foot will have produced 10 heads of lettuce and probably 10 pounds of cherry tomatoes.

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