Tag Archives: potatoes

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. 

Winter planting the square foot gardening

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!!! 

Potatoes in the square foot garden

I don’t think I’ve ever posted about potatoes. If I have, it has been a while. The basic spacing of 1, 4, 9, and 16 in the SFG system is excellent, but with potatoes, I learned to change that up. Potatoes are planted 5 per square, and I always make sure each seed has at least two eyes in them. I do not hill. I do not let them scab over before putting them in soil. I just bury them 7-8 inches deep, cover, and start watering. In about 5 weeks they break the surface. I’ve grown potatoes in grow bags before, but I’ve never been able to match the yield than I can when planted in the square foot gardens. The soil really makes a difference. How much can you expect? I always harvest 5-7 pounds of red pontiacs every year. And the taste. 

Growing potatoes in the square foot garden

IMG_0451Alright-square foot gardeners talk about growing things in only 6″ of soil. That’s true most of the time, but for potatoes not so much.

In Mels book on SFG he talks and shows pictures of his “top-hat” as it’s referred to. This is a simple wood structure that has four side, with no top and no bottom. It can be a 2X4, 2X6, 2X8, etc. Place this top-hat on any square(or squares), fill it with more Mel’s mix, and then you can successfully grow potatoes or any other root vegetable with more soil available.

I make sure that each seed potato has at least 2 eyes, and then I place 5 of them in each square. If it works out, I can count on 6-7 pounds of potatoes per square foot. I don’t bother hilling the potatoes. I just bury them 6-8 inches in the soil, cover them up, water, and then in a matter of weeks they will break the top surface.

Let them grow until the stalks turn brown and start to fall over. Cut back the growth and then reach down to find little gold nuggets. Once you’ve grown your own new potatoes you’ll never want to buy them again.

My favorite potato to grow is Red Pontiac. I grew a purple variety last year and they were okay. Nowhere near as good as the red’s, so I’ll stick mostly to that. Growing different potatoes does give you a contrast in taste and color.[ois skin=”3″]

Square foot gardening-the winter potato harvest

winter stored and protected potatoesIt’s been a mighty cold winter so far! We’ve already had to deal with frozen water lines on New Years day. Talk about starting the year off on the right foot!

One of the things I can always rely on, no matter what the weather brings, is a good potato harvest from my square foot gardens. Under protective covers I’ve got somewhere in the area of 35-40 pounds of potatoes. This is plenty to get us through the winter. If I needed more to feed everyone I would just have to plant more at the right time. Each square of potatoes is further protected by a thick layer of fall leaves, which provide even more protection. The only work I have to do for harvesting them is to pull back the protective covers, locate the square of potatoes, and then dig in for the gold. Even with temperatures in the single digits(and lower at night)the dirt is loose. None of them have frozen because of the three layers of protection.

This year I experimented with several varieties of potatoes. I’ve always been partial to Red Pontiacs. The taste is unsurpassed. However, I’ve now discovered a few other varieties that are every bit as good, but they come in different colors. You can see the Red Pontiacs, but you’ll also see the yellow and purple potatoes. The taste is magnificent! I’ll certainly be planting more of these this year.

And this year is almost here for us northern U.S. gardeners. I’ll be harvesting what I have under protection for at least another month, when I’ll then begin planting anew. Get those seed catalogs out! Right now I’ve seen one variety of squash that I’ll be growing for the first time. I’ve always heard great things about it, so I’ll be trying it. Its an Italian squash called Tromboncino. Give it a look.[ois skin=”1″]