Do this right now for a great spring garden

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Amending soil is one of the most important things you do as a food gardener. You’ve gone through months of growing things and have depleted lots of nutrients and minerals that next years plants will need.  Adding manures really isn’t the answer. Not just because it doesn’t add much nutrient value, but more so because of the weed seed it contains. Who wants to weed? Weeding is the biggest issue that pushes people away from having a garden. 

Easily done, quick, and free-why not  remove a few inches of your soil, add a layer of fall leaves, and then cover them back up? You can do one last water in if you’d like, but this time of year rain (or snow)  is usually plentiful. You’ll come out next spring and your leaves will be gone but your garden soil will have been freely amended with some of the best organic material available. Those earthworms have been eating good!

What do leaves bring to your garden soil? 

Nitrogen: leaf development and overall vigor

Potassium: water regulation, improves drought resistance

Phosphorus: root development and fruiting

Magnesium: chlorophyll and photosynthesis 

Calcium: supports root and leaf development

Iron: chlorophyll development and prevents yellowing

I’m probably missing some trace elements but those are the main characters. Do the easy work now while you’re still able to move soil around. Once the ground freezes, it’s a lot harder to do. 

New class coming up starting early 2026!

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Many gardeners look to extend their season on both ends of the year-earlier in the spring and later in the fall. Climates have much to do with limiting those options unless you want to either buy a greenhouse (permanent, expensive, and pest issues) or do a lot of extra work at home. Seeding trays, heat mats, watering, table set-ups, and light management can burn even the most dedicated gardener out. 

Next year I have a new class to offer. It’s a winter sowing class. It will be shorter in length than my other 9 classes, but you’ll really  like this. You will particularly like the lack of work it requires and the big impact it will have on your early spring gardens.

This will be at my home and space will be limited. Keep an eye out-this is going to be a really fun one to attend. Combining this will the all the things in the square foot gardening system, you’ll have the biggest and baddest garden around. 

 

Transplanting in late summer

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Started on 8/6, these encino lettuce soil blocks are now ready to be planted in the garden after being inside for 23 days. I’ve got 10 of them and they grow to the size of an ottoman! Such a tasty and great head of lettuce to be used in later fall and during the winter months. I love using soil blocks because they are so easy to transplant and shock is virtually eliminated. So much better than starting and grown in plastic cells. 

There are no seedlings to be found at stores at this time of year. That’s why you need to take my class on seed starting, what to plant, and when to plant in order to have a great fall/winter garden. Our weather has begun to cool off so it’s the perfect time to transplant these into soil. 

By starting inside during our extended 95-100 degree summers I’m able to have lettuce through  the end of December. Our family loves salads. So for us it heavy on lettuces (32 different varieties), cherry tomatoes, slicer tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, carrots, and garlic. We have lots of other things growing as well, but these are the mainstays. 

Tasty gems from my square foot garden

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I don’t post much about cooking the things I grow but this is one of them. Except for the freshly shaved parmesan cheese, everything in the picture was harvested a few minutes earlier and cooked up in about 2 minutes. I don’t have a zucchini spiral machine but I do have a peeler that does almost the same thing, except the noodles are thinner than what you would see with a spiral. No difference in taste though! 

Italian zucchini, fresh basil, garlic, and tomatoes. How can it be any better? Because zucchini has such a high water contend, you don’t want to overcook or you’ll end up with soggy noodles and water in the bottom of your bowl. A tablespoon of olive oil, heat it up, add a few cloves of garlic and cook that for about 30 seconds. Add your zucchini and cook for about a minute or a minute and a half, along with a sprinkle of kosher salt and some freshly ground pepper. I don’t let the zucchini get limp. I like some body to it. Put it all in a bowl, top with parmesan, add your tomatoes, and then a pinch of fresh basil. I want some more. 

Plantings of Mache in my square foot garden

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This is such a great and tasty gem that many in the U.S. are not familiar with. I finished teaching a class last night and ended up having a discussion with a couple of the attendees. Somehow we ended up talking about things being harvested during the winter season and I mentioned “mache.” 

“Did I just hear you say mache?” She’s from Germany and knows this crop well. She commented how much she love and misses it. Mache is next to impossible to find here in the states but that’s very different in Europe. The MBC (mache, brassica, and chicory) salad is iconic in many parts of Europe. 

This plant was discovered long ago on corn or wheat fields in Europe. When they found that it was edible (and delicious), and even did better grown as a winter crop, it became a favorite winter crop of peasants. It’s thought of as a winter annual. 

Mache is so good it goes by 3 different names: mache, lambs lettuce, and corn salad. There are two types of varieties that can be found. One is Dutch variety-which has larger leaves and is said to grow better as the weather gets warmer. My favorite is the other-the French variety, often known by the name Vit. It’s smaller and has always done very well in my winter garden. It’s highly nutritious and makes a very distinctive and tasty salad. 

In an effort to see if mache can be grown in late winter, I planted 3 squares of Vit in my SFG today. This is planted in a 9 per square spacing.