Seed starting class coming up

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I know it seems soon but it’s not. If you’re interested in having a really early gardening season, this seed starting class is for you. I’ve opened 2 emails in the past 5 weeks announcing a new recall of food/crops. I get tired of reading this but I don’t worry because I grow all my salad greens and most of my root and summer crops. 

This will be a virtual class beginning at 10:00 AM MST on January 9th. Class will go for 75-90 minuted and the cost is $50. Contact me if you’d like to RSVP or if you’ve got any other questions. 

Right now I’m still enjoying my summer harvest of angel hair spaghetti squash. With my frozen cherry tomatoes I’ve had a few pasta dishes making a quick sauce thats done in about 15-20 minutes. There’s nothing better knowing you can feed yourself and family with things that you grew, watered, and took care of. You also don’t spend a second worrying about chemicals or anything like that. 

Winter planting the square foot gardening

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Winter gardening in northern Utah isn’t really gardening. It’s all harvesting. That means a little extra planning. The important point isn’t really the average first frost date but rather the first day we go under 10 hours of sunlight. For us, thats around November 14th. This is just one of my 4X4 SFG boxes planted for the winter. So far, the timing looks good. What’s in there? Lots. Three different kinds of lettuces, green onions, arugula, minutina, claytonia, spinach, turnips, mache, red pontiac potatoes, and tatsoi. They all love the cold and even freezing weather, except the lettuces. The baby leaf lettuces will easily make it right through the winter months. Get those gardens planted!!! 

Let’s cook

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I don’t think I’ve ever posted a recipe on my site. Maybe I should start? This is my angel hair spaghetti squash. I’ve already had about 12 of them, and there’s 30 out there ripening as we speak. Just from 3 plants! I hate heating up the kitchen in the summertime. And, we’ve had a solid month of temperatures in the high 90’s to low 100’s. So, I try to grill as much as possible when I can. Pizza (that’s right-on the grill), veggies, and things like this.

What I like to do with angle hair is simple. I cut squash in half first (from north to south, not east to west), then scoop out seeds. I then coat the entire cavity with olive oil,  sprinkle with salt, and then fresh ground pepper. I put it on the grill over indirect heat face down for 15-20 minutes. You’ll know its done if you can take a sharp knife and easily pierce the skin. Yes, you will char some of the outer portion but it’s very delish! I take it off the heat, start shredding the squash, and then load with unsalted butter! It’s so good. I might add a small amount of salt again, or I might just sprinkle my recipe of blackening spices over it. Of course, you can always just add your own favorite marinara sauce. I eat mine right in the shell. No clean up. 

Square foot gardening: potatoes

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The normal spacing of 1,4, 9, 16 is a little different for potatoes. I’ve been asked how much to expect from a single square of potatoes. This is what I got when I harvested last week. Eight pounds! For the past 3 years I’ve tried without much success to plant these in grow bags. Much has been written about how to do this, and some have reported much success. I’ve never been able to do it. I have, however, always been able to grow potatoes in my SFG soil. Because they take 3-1/2 months from seed to harvest, I thought switching to grow bags would give me the same yield and save room in the SFG beds. It didn’t. I don’t even hill the potato seed. I simply put them in the soil about 6 inches deep, cover with soil, and start watering. Red pontiac’s. They are so good. I’m going to attempt growing some right now in the hope that I can have baby new potatoes for the winter. 

Summer lettuces in the square foot garden

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I wrote an ebook on this and how to do it. We’ve had over 2 solid weeks of mid to hight 90 degree weather. How do you grow lettuce in that kind of heat? With just a few tricks anyone can do it. This is a fun and tasty salad green. When you learn how to do this you’ll never really want to buy the lettuce greens at the store. Like a customer said to me many years ago: “I learned that lettuce actually has a taste.”

I have one of two winter garden classes coming up this weekend. Most in our area have never done it. But once you have you always will. There’s nothing like the winter garden. It’s practically no work. For me, its a matter of better tasting food that you grew yourself. And with this virus thing going on, who knows what will happen? Being prepared for any kind of potential food shortages won’t affect me this winter.