Category Archives: Spring gardening

Spinach soil blocks

Planted with soil block on 2/12 and placed in the garden on 3/8. This spinach is ready to go in a little over 3 weeks from start to planting. If you haven’t learned about soil blocking-you should check into it. No fancy soil needed, no replacing the ever cracking 6-cell  plastic containers, transplant shock minimized, and little work to do indoors. 

Soil blocking can be one of the strategies used for an extra early spring garden provided you’ve got some kind of protection from the elements. It doesn’t have to be fancy either. Four pieces of rebar, some sturdy PVC, and 4-6 mil UV protected plastic can give you all that’s needed.

If you’d like to learn how to soil block and to also have a really early spring garden, you can follow my class schedule here on this site. Classes are held at public locations but also in a very comfortable environment at my home. Space is always limited and I never have enough room for everyone who wants to attend, but I try my best. I’ll  even teach you how to do it on a budget so you don’t have to buy the fancy soil block unit that will cost you about $50-60. 

For those who might be interested in learning how to be a square foot gardener, my class on that is Saturday, April 20th at my home. I’ve only got 3 more seats available. Imagine, a garden where you don’t have to weed or thin. A garden that gives you 100% of the harvest in only 20% of the space. No hard work. No heavy digging. No need to root-till. It’s the way to go. Details can be found on this home page. 

The garden diary

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. 

Overwintered greens in the square foot garden

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 🙂 

Winter sowing of cilantro

First put together 10 weeks ago, this cilantro is now ready to be separated and placed into squares. So far I’ve put them in 7 squares-28 plants, with about 5-7 more squares to go. Winter sowing is such a good practice. I took an empty olive oil container, cleaned it out, and then cut it around the mid-line. After filling it with moist soil, I added the cilantro seed, watered in again gently, closed the container with scotch tape, removed the top cap, and then placed it in my gardens which are covered with plastic and spun bound fabric.

There have been days where I pulled the plastic back to vent because it can really get warm under covers. I’ve done no work with this container. Try this easy technique next winter to enjoy an early spring garden. The seeds just know when it’s time to come up. One of the best things about winter sowing is you don’t have to worry about hardening your new plants off. They’ve been living in the very cool environment from the beginning. 

All that’s left for me to do is to separate the seedlings and put them in the squares of the SFG. Four plants per square. So far I’ve planted 7 squares or 28 seedlings with a lot more to go. By the time the neighborhood starts to think about planting their gardens in a month (still too early unless they’re ready to protect from more snow/freezing temperatures), I’ll have begun harvesting cilantro. I’ve already been enjoying over wintered carrots, parsnips, tatsoi, mache, claytonia, spinach, mizuna, and salad greens. 

For those who may be interested, I have a beginning square foot garden class at my home coming up in a couple of weeks. Space is limited. See details here

The ease of planting in the square foot garden

One of the greatest things about a square foot garden is you don’t have to do it all at once. I like to do a few little things every day during the growing season. Easy things. As I look to previous garden diary notes, this month and April are the most active months for me as far as active planting. 

Today I planted 2 squares of red onions, 2 squares of red pontiac potatoes, and 3 squares of lettuces. I turned the compost pile and watered anything that look a little dry. My winter sowings look really good and in a few days I’ll begin to separate those up and put them into squares. Cilantro, spinach, and tatsoi are the most ready to go. 

Planting two or three squares every few days means a lot less work. It also means you won’t have an all at once harvest. By the time Labor day rolls around, when most of your neighborhood gardeners are burned out from weeding, watering, and the overall work load of their gardens, you’ll be thinking of ways to extend your season because it was so little work. 

And you enjoyed 100% of the harvest. 

Eat better tasting food without all the pesticides on them. Save money. Take control of your food supply.