Author Archives: Jim

About Jim

I'm a certified square foot gardening instructor that enjoys teaching others how to grow their own great, healthy, organic food. I also enjoy cooking, biking, playing my guitar, reading, and card magic.

The garden diary

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I love the idea of keeping track of what happens in the garden during the year. I looked at my sun box today and tried to remember what and when I planted. Besides the accuracy when doing this, it’s also good to remember challenges and success from the previous year, crop rotation, and any other things you might have learned. 

This is a box planted on 11/27 of last year. I love growing lettuces because I try to have a salad every night of the growing season. Even in winter, although those greens are very different. This will be ready in about two and half to three weeks from now. I’ve got another box which was planted later which will be harvested shortly after this box has been exhausted. 

By the time both of these boxes are done, my raised beds will take over for the rest of the season with salad greens and all the other crops I love to grow. The boxes will be put away until early fall, and the space taken up by them will be planted in perfect time for my summer items. 

This will give you the earliest garden

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It’s called winter sowing. Save a plastic container like the one in the picture. I poke 9 holes in the top and 9 in the bottom. I do that by heating up the tip of a Phillips head screwdriver over the gas flame on the stove. Then push it through the plastic. Easy. Mark the top of the container with whatever you plan to grow. This one is half rosemary and thyme. 

Moisten soil with warm water and fill container to the top. Now add your seeds. Lots of them. Thinly cover with more soil and close the top. Then leave the container outside in your sunniest location. Do no work. Check container on occasion to make sure it doesn’t dry out. 

In 2 months you will have a container stock full of whatever you planted. You can now start dividing up the starts and putting them in your garden. 

Seeds know when to come up. The beauty with this method is there’s no work until it’s time to start breaking them up to plant and also no need to harden off. The seedlings have already come through harsh weather and are used to the elements. For those who start seeds inside  (and I do), you know the extra work of  hardening off, which takes a week or more depending on weather. 

Prepping your square foot garden for winter and….

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Setting you up for major success in the next growing season. While my work for making compost is done for the year-at least the active part-there’s one last item that I’ve done for years to continue improving the tilth of the soil. 

If you live in an area where there’s freezing temperatures but can still work your soil it’s not too late. I remove 4-5 inches of soil, add a layer of fall leaves, and then put the soil back on top. When you come back in the spring to plant, you most likely won’t be able to find any leaves. The earthworms have been doing their job all winter long. 

This is a great way to continue improving your growing medium with a free and natural resource. Don’t throw those leaves away! Save and use as many as you can and then use the remainder next year to make the best compost around.

If you’d like to learn more about how to make that compost, you can find the recorded class available on this site under the “shop” section. You won’t be sorry. When you learn how to do it you’ll never need to buy another fertilizer again. Ever. 

Trick to growing massive amounts of anything

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I’ve been a little slow this summer with the blog. But it’s been a great year. We’ve had another record breaking summer of heat which is good for some things but not for others. My favorite-lettuce-is tough when it’s that hot. I’ve written an ebook that teaches you how to successfully do that. 

Now it’s fall and I’m wanting to have lots of salad greens into the deep winter season. The picture says it all. Put some potting mix in a small container. This one is 4X7″. Heavily sow your lettuce (or whatever you’re growing) seeds and cover lightly with soil. Do all the right things-water, providing light, proper temperature, etc. These were started indoors 5 weeks ago. When it’s time to plant outside, start breaking them up into pieces or “plugs” to drop in your squares. While I normally plant 4 lettuce plants per square, this method amplifies that. The end result is a square with a huge amount of lettuce in it. This is a new technique that I’ve started doing the past two season. I’ve planted 98 “plugs” from this one container.

For color, taste, and texture I’ve planted a few lettuce mixes that were just fabulous. All star gourmet, gourmet mix, tried and true heirloom mix,(huge surprise-buying lots more now) and lofty salad mix. I can’t put into words how wonderful they’ve tasted. 

Overwintered greens in the square foot garden

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Very late last fall I planted many squares with different things, mostly salad greens. I did something I’ve not done before during our winter season. I usually plant earlier and then use floating row cover until the temperatures get below 28 degrees. That’s when I then add a layer of 4 ml UV plastic over the row cover and leave that on for the winter. I’ll vent if it gets over 40 degrees and it’s sunny. For the most part it stays under both covers from late November until about March 1st, with just a few venting days.

This past year I used no plastic. I wanted to see if it could grow and come up as an early spring garden in our harsh winters using just row cover. It was a record snowfall/cold winter for us in northern Utah. I pulled the floating row cover back weeks ago. The lettuce weren’t as big as the picture shows but it was certainly growing. It made it right through the winter. Now I have this really early spring garden with delicious lettuces.

every night. Snip a few greens and it keeps coming back! For a while anyway. This is a true overwintered garden vs. a winter garden. They are different. 

Keep in mind that this will not work if you have freezing temperatures with big, mature heads of lettuce. It only works with baby greens that were started and got slightly established late in the season. One or two of the bigger heads of lettuce turn to mush after a freeze or two. We all were a little tougher when we were smaller, just like lettuces 🙂