Monthly Archives: February 2017

How does your cold frame grow?

 

Here’s something fun to see. First picture(top)is October 15, 2016, second is 1/1/17, last one is 2/21/17. A simple sun box, not a cold frame, can do this for you as well. Nothing wrong with the cold frame, its just more work, more expensive, and fairly permanent. I’ve taken off the top sun box level for the last picture so you can see whats happened over the winter. Now I’ll begin to harvest whats in it. Good eating tonight!

I encourage everyone to grow their own food, even those in harsher climates that experience snow, below zero temperatures, wind chill, etc. It’s a rewarding feeling to come out after a hard winter, pull back the top and see whats underneath. I just began watering this box last week-thats 3 full months of no work! those wanting to see how easy a sun box is to assemble(and take apart), see my earlier post. So easy, and all made with wood material thats laying around the house.
Crops in this box are spinach, chard,and the lettuces of sweet repeat, allstar, and black seeded simpson.

One of the keys to growing is the soil. As I’ve said before, if the soil isn’t right, nothing else will really matter. If you live in the area and are interested in learning how to have really rich, fertile soil, I’ll be teaching class this upcoming Saturday. Composting is the answer. Once you learn the proper way to do it, you’ll ask yourself why you haven’t been doing it all along[ois skin=”3″]

Growing microgreens

Winter can feel long, dark, and lonely.  Thats especially true if you’re a gardener, used to seeing plush green colors throughout the year.  Many folks put their gardening chores away right around the Labor Day weekend, or shortly thereafter.  Then they might start back up again in mid-March or the first part of April.  Thats 6 months!  A long time to not see green.

I like to grow microgreens all year, but I particularly enjoy it during the winter months when it seems like everything is cloudy and just brown.  I love growing them not for just the nutritional value and taste, but also because it gives me something to put on the counter during December and January thats alive and green.  They are so easy to do.  Its a great hobby and you get the reward of eating something delicious.  They require nothing elaborate, in fact, they are grown and harvested as you see in the picture-on a windowsill.  A little snip of this on top of a salad, on a baked potato, or even added to scrambled eggs will light your taste buds on fire.  Another great thing about them?  They generally only take about 8-10 days.  If you’ve never tried them you should.

In the meantime, did you see my newest ebook?  It surely hasn’t set the world on fire, probably because there’s not many places that are experiencing warm weather in January and February, so why bother?  There are plenty of us around who love lettuce all year but growing it in the gardens during summer is really hard if you live in a place where temperatures get to be 80-85 plus degrees.  If thats the case, this short ebook is for you.  Warm weather gardeners know the challenges of trying to keep lettuce going through summer.  This ebook teaches the 5 techniques that I’ve used to be able to harvest lettuce in our very warm summers.  I hope you enjoy it. &nbsp[ois skin=”3″]