Category Archives: square foot gardening

The efficiency of a square foot garden

This might look like a boring picture but there’s a lot too see. The pole coming out of the ground was once a  very thriving cherry tomato plant growing vertically in only 1 square. That’s it. Our evening temperatures have been mid- low 50’s and that marks a change with tomatoes. It changes the  quality of the taste and they become mushy and begin to fall off. There were still a lot of green cherry tomatoes on the plant but there’s not enough time for them to ripen. 

Looking more closely, you’ll notice 3 areas of lettuce coming up in the front of the square. I planted this a couple of weeks ago so that it will be perfectly timed to grow before the freeze hits. It’ll only be baby lettuce leaves, but these hold up much better than their more mature lettuces which turn soupy after a couple of freezes. 

I want to make sure my new lettuces get all the sun possible at this time of year. If I pulled up the entire tomato plant it would uproot the lettuces which you see growing. So, I will simply cut off the branches and the lower stem and now I have a square that will grow into winter. I’ll leave the stem in the ground until the lettuces are harvested. 

Beginning in January, this single square housed 25 carrots, 9 spinach plants, an 8′ cherry tomato plant, and now 3 heads of leaf lettuce which will remain until late December or early January. 

Not bad for one square foot. I’ve got 174 of them. 🙂

An arugula story

I’ve never liked arugula. It was always to spicy, too hot. I could pick it out of a mixed salad right away without even seeing it. 

One evening I was at a really nice restaurant where they had a set menu for the event I was attending. When I got there the salad dish had already been placed on the table. It was very good. I heard the server (old school = waiter) tell the person next to me we were eating a mixed arugula salad. What? I couldn’t taste that edgy salad green at all!

Sure enough, as I looked closer I could spot the arugula. I asked the server where they got it and he told me it was a commercial greenhouse operation about 20 miles to our west. I got the name of the business and gave them a call. While they did confirm they do service the restaurant I was at, they also told me they don’t grow the arugula-the get it from a farm in California. After pestering the person on the phone, she finally gave me the name of the farm-Earthbound. We all know Earthbound. 

I then called Earthbound Farms. I told them of my experience eating a salad I thought I would never like and how I was able to trace the product to them. I’m leaving out a lot of the story but this took a lot of detective work. I explained to Earthbound that I simply wanted to find out what variety of arugula they grew. “I’m sorry but that is proprietary information and we don’t give that out.” 

I told her I wasn’t a competitor and that I’m a simple home gardener living 800 miles away and am no business threat to them. It did no good. 

So I began trialing lots of different kinds of arugula over the years. After much time, I think I found the variety. If I didn’t, I can at least grow an arugula that I like which adds a nice touch to my mixed salad greens. 

It’s Astro arugula. But I still had some work to do as it still ended up with too much edge for me. Thinking back to my dining experience, this was during the holiday season. Cold. Chilly. Snow. The breakthrough was discovering that if you grow arugula in cooler weather and harvest it as a baby green, it looses a lot of the edge. That’s the secret to those who don’t like arugula because of it’s spice. Try growing Astro in the early spring and then again for a fall harvest. It really makes a big difference when grown in cooler temperatures. 

An experiment with green beans in the square foot garden

I’ve always grown beans, lots of them. You name the variety and I’ve probably tried them. Blue lake, Fortex, Provider, Kentucky blue, slenderettes, tenderettes, both pole and bush varieties. 

The thing I don’t like about each of these is you have to stay on top of them. Wait a week too long and you end up with tough, fat pods that don’t taste very good. And it’s easy to do because they grow so fast. Even still, if you don’t harvest in time the plant begins to shut down production. 

This year I found the bean I will grow from here on out. They are French filet beans. Smaller yes, but more forgiving, and even better, they taste fantastic. You can harvest these beans smaller. And if you miss it by a week they don’t get fat and tough. These are the baby gourmet green beans that come out of the fanciest restaurants.  

 

How to grow great leeks

If you want to grow really awesome leeks this is the way to do it. Because you typically won’t find them (or anything else if you’re a northern gardener) in nurseries it’s important to learn how to do it yourself. 

Start these inside in early summer. Mine were started on June 11th. You’ll want to plant them in a container that’s deep as the picture shows. If you start them in something that’s too short, you wont’ be able to do the next step. It’s now time to plant them outside. All you do is pull the entire soil block out of the metal container and begin to separate into individual leeks. Then, and this is the important part, drop them into a hole thats 6-8 inches deep. A small amount of leek will be above the soil. At this point, don’t fill the holes with soil. Water in immediately. After a weeks time your leeks will be fully covered naturally with soil. 

When it’s time to harvest you’ll pull your leeks out to discover a white shank that’s 6-8 inches long instead of the normal 2-3 inch leeks you buy at the grocery store. It makes a huge difference. 

This made that…

Remember the last post about Costco rotisserie lettuce? By breaking it up and planting in the SFG’s, we’ve had 20 squares of lettuce just like this. That’s 80 bunches of leaf lettuce! We’re still eating! The cost to do that was about $2. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t save money growing your own  food. What’s the cost of a head of leaf lettuce these days? Two dollars? (and going up!) That’s a minimum of $160 you saved just in the spring season. Keep in mind, this is a multiple harvested crop-at least 2 cuttings, maybe 3-4 per square!

And, it’s all organic because you’ve done it the SFG way. That means it’ll cost you more than $2 for a head of lettuce. Now is the perfect time to begin thinking about your fall garden. Think two months down the road. Example: I’ve now started a lot of lettuce seeds inside to be planted out in 4-5 weeks. The hottest part of summer is largely gone by then and the nights are cooling down.

A great tip coming next post on growing leeks-a must for late fall and winter.