Tag Archives: lettuce

How does your cold frame grow?

Leave a reply

 

Here’s something fun to see. First picture(top)is October 15, 2016, second is 1/1/17, last one is 2/21/17. A simple sun box, not a cold frame, can do this for you as well. Nothing wrong with the cold frame, its just more work, more expensive, and fairly permanent. I’ve taken off the top sun box level for the last picture so you can see whats happened over the winter. Now I’ll begin to harvest whats in it. Good eating tonight!

I encourage everyone to grow their own food, even those in harsher climates that experience snow, below zero temperatures, wind chill, etc. It’s a rewarding feeling to come out after a hard winter, pull back the top and see whats underneath. I just began watering this box last week-thats 3 full months of no work! those wanting to see how easy a sun box is to assemble(and take apart), see my earlier post. So easy, and all made with wood material thats laying around the house.
Crops in this box are spinach, chard,and the lettuces of sweet repeat, allstar, and black seeded simpson.

One of the keys to growing is the soil. As I’ve said before, if the soil isn’t right, nothing else will really matter. If you live in the area and are interested in learning how to have really rich, fertile soil, I’ll be teaching class this upcoming Saturday. Composting is the answer. Once you learn the proper way to do it, you’ll ask yourself why you haven’t been doing it all along[ois skin=”3″]

My very small cold frame winter garden

Leave a reply

This is supposed to be a cold frame but it really isn’t.  I learned this idea from Mel Bartholomew many years ago, and he writes about it in his first book, which is a condensed version of what he wrote earlier in the publication of The Avant Gardener in 1978.  The article is long out of print so you wont be able to find it easily.  This is called a sun box.  A google search for sun box will give you nothing close to what this is.

What’s the difference between a cold frame and a sun box?  A cold frame is something that is usually fairly permanent, and usually fairly good sized.  It’s usually dig into the ground and placed at a low angle on the southern side of a yard to get as much of the sun as possible, especially in the winter months.  The back of traditional cold frames are much higher than the front and they can be pretty heavy and bulky.  It’s covered with a variety of things ranging from expensive, self venting tops to cheap things such as wood with plastic stapled to it to act as a protective covering over the top.  Cold frames can be very expensive or pretty cheap.

A sun box is different.  It is not dug into the ground.  It is not permanent.  The back is the same height as the front.  In fact, its nothing more than portable wood boxes that have been placed on top of each other.  Thats it.  They can be moved around, taken apart, added upon, etc. in about a minutes time.  They are great for last spring and summer.  When you tomatoes(or anything else) need to be hardened off and they begin to outgrow your cold frame, you’re almost forced to plant them in the garden.  All you need to do with a sun box is add another portably wood box on top of what you already have.  Then all I did was buy a $5 glass window at the Re-Store to place on top for protection.  We’ve had a tough winter so far with more coming.  As you can see, the salad greens have done amazingly well.  And I just had a small salad-it was wonderful.[ois skin=”3″]

The winter garden

Leave a reply

january-winter-garden-2017I thought it would be good to post on the first day of a new year. I hope this upcoming season is a great one for all! I also hope you’re using this time to think about, plan, and prepare for your garden, hopefully in early spring. We’ve got about 4 weeks before we hit the minimum 10 hours of daylight, where its a good idea to start planting certain cool weather crops. It does take longer to get them going and its more work. For those wanting to do less, you can still plant in early March and probably have a harvest around the same time as us early January planters.

This will be the first year in as long as I can remember that I wont be planting on Presidents Day weekend. I’m going to put it off until the first week of March. Right now the garden looks good, and I’ve been harvesting plenty of overwintered carrots, chard, beet greens, scallions, spinach, and small leaf lettuce varieties. The radishes are gone, but were good earlier in winter.

I’ve literally done nothing in my garden since November 28th. With the right crop varieties and the right protection, having a 4 season harvest is a very simple thing to do. There’s been no watering and only harvesting. In about 4 weeks it’ll begin to look pretty empty. I’ve got my compost ready to amend the soil when the time comes to get cranking on the early spring season.

One last note: my ebook is a few days from being released. I’ve been threatening now for 2 years and it’s finally here! Its an book about growing my favorite crop, lettuce, in the hot months of summer. For the most part, I’m pleased with the final product. I don’t consider myself to be a very good writer so it takes me a long time to finish. Its 12 pages long and will sell for $4.99. It talks about the 5 techniques I’ve used to successfully have lettuce all summer. I hope you’ll like it and will have a chance to give it a favorable review. I’m hoping to have it available on all the major online outlets very soon as well as here on my blog. Stay tuned.[ois skin=”3″]

Square foot gardening for the winter

Leave a reply

imageOkay, it’s the first week of September and the weather has definitely changed!  No more 100’s, and probably no more 90’s.  Nights are getting into the mid 50’s.  Here is zone 6 it’s time to begin planting for the winter garden.

This week I’ve planted several squares of lettuce, and I will follow that up with another batch of lettuce plantings next week.  This is called succession planting.  It helps you prolong the harvest period during a time when plants virtually stop growing.

I’ve got my favorite lettuces for winter gardening.  One of the best is Queensland.  It’s virtually impossible to find in the U.S.  Other varieties that I grow successfully are Prize Head, EZ serve, Nevada, four seasons, gourmet mix, and black seeded Simpson.  There’s been a lot written about Salanova-a fairly new lettuce that, when harvested,  gives you equal pieces of beautiful lettuce leaves.  It’s a bit on the pricey side, but it sure looks good, tastes great, and it stores for a longer time.

Try a winter garden this year.  It’s the best time to garden.  No pests, hardly any watering, and it’s delicious.[ois skin=”3″]

Square foot gardening classes and herbs

Leave a reply

chivesIt sure is nice to have fresh chives available at this time of year.  They’ve been under wraps all winter and were planted last fall and I’ve already begun to cut them back because they’re such heavy producers.  They’re also a perennial crop-every year they’ll come up without hardly any work on your part.  That presents a bit of a problem if you don’t keep them trimmed back because they will invade other areas of your square foot garden.  For me, I keep them in place for 2 years and then I dig them out and plant something entirely different in that square.  And now is the perfect time to start your herbs inside in preparation for planting out mid-May.

I’ve been planting lots of lettuce and other salad greens directly into the garden the past few weeks.  Everything is already up and in a few weeks I’ll begin harvesting great lettuces for daily salads.  I’ve mentioned some of my favorites-Green Ice, EZ Serve, Four Seasons,  and Simpson Elite are some of the varieties I’ve been busy with.  You can buy these from Burpee and you’ve still got 3 more days to order seed packs with free shipping.

If you’re a northern Utah gardener and are interested in learning how to be a successful square foot gardener, I’m holding my second class of the season.  You can read about it here.  These are classes that teach the basic fundamentals with the addition of learning how to build a tomato tower, or vertical support structure.

If you’re interested in learning how to make compost better than you could ever buy in the nurseries, then I have an entirely different class which you can read about here.  Lots of fun things coming up this gardening season[ois skin=”1″]