Category Archives: Spring gardening

An early spring garden class coming up

How early can you have a garden? Is it easy to do, and what if you don’t know anything about gardening? Those are all questions that will be answered in an upcoming class that I’ll be teaching in a couple of weeks. With a little work and planning you can have an early spring garden and be harvesting by the first of April-when everyone else is just beginning to think about roto-tilling. You’ll be learning about a few things which will be new that’ll help you on a very fun adventure. And, an incredible lesson on how delicious food can taste when harvested just 5 minutes earlier. You can read more about the class here.

Gearing up for 2019

 

I’m not much of a Christmas/holiday person but when these show up, I’m happy. Lots of things planned for this year including growing some selected herbs and cherry tomatoes for 2 or 3 local restaurants. I’m feeling a little bit of pressure because of it, but we’ll see how it goes. There will be a new variety of cherry tomatoes that I”ll be growing this year in addition to the famous sungold, grape, and rainbow. Cherry bomb promises to be an excellent choice for a sweet red cherry. I’ll be growing English cucumbers again, along with a new, less spicy variety of arugula. Looking forward to a brand new season.[ois skin=”1″]

Two Star lettuce

I like to call it All Star lettuce because that’s how it performs. It’s easy to grow and tastes great. I buy it here. Its easy to grow, sweet tasting, and I’ve never had any issues with pest.

In the square foot gardening system this is planted 4 per square. Since most lettuces will say “thin to 6 inches”, this is how you normally space this crop. However, I do grow a lettuce that says “thin to 12 inches!” It’s an amazing buttercrunch variety that I will write about as soon as it starts to get bigger so you can see for yourself.

Now is the perfect time to begin planting for the summer garden. Peppers, tomatoes, basil, carrots, etc. are all the things I’m planting now, along with a continual supply of lettuce. 

Lettuce is tricky to grow in the warm summer months. Unless you know a few tips, it’s going to be difficult to do. My newest ebook talks all about how to grow it through the heat of the summer. I’ve been doing it for almost 2 decades.[ois skin=”1″]

No thinning in the square foot gardens


One of the many great spring crops to grow is arugula. Until recently, I’ve never been a fan. The reason? Too spicy!

I just happen to be out to dinner a couple of years ago at a nice restaurant. The salad was particularly delicious so I asked the server what the mixed greens were and where they got them. Turns out it was arugula. I was sure he must have been mistaken because there was no edge to it. Sure enough, thats what it was, mixed in with 2 or three other salad greens. I tracked down the farm where it came from(California) in an effort to find the variety. I was told they couldn’t tell me because of “proprietary reasons.” What? It took me a couple of weeks but I did find out the variety. In the meantime I learned a good lesson.

Arugula grown in warm weather and then harvested at something less than the baby leaf stage will always be more spicy. Grow it in cool weather and harvest it when young, and the taste is drastically different. This is how I’ve become an arugula fan.

Since arugula spacing says “thin to 4 inches” on the back of the packet, you would plant 9 of them in a square. By only adding one or two seeds per hole, you end up not hardly ever thinning. This is a picture of that: I might have to thin 1 plant. Look hard enough and you might see some claytonia that has overwintered and is trying to grow[ois skin=”1″]

Spring planting with vertical gardening in mind

In years past I’ve planted my spring garden and put things wherever I wanted. When it became time to put in my summer vertical crops I often had to either wait for the existing squares to finish, which meant putting my tomatoes in a little late, or pull the plants which were in the square which hadn’t finished yet. For many years I’ve learned to put in the earliest crops where my vertical summer crops will grow.

What do you grow right now so your squares will be ready for summer vertical crops? All the cool weather crops: lettuce, spinach, chard, endive, kohlrabi, arugula, bok choi, mizuna, kale, even radicchio. etc. Radishes can go in later because they only take about 30 days. I know there will be 7 weeks until the summer crops go in, so this leaves me with time to grow all the things that love spring. Mel always taught to think one season ahead[ois skin=”1″]