Author Archives: Jim

About Jim

I'm a certified square foot gardening instructor that enjoys teaching others how to grow their own great, healthy, organic food. I also enjoy cooking, biking, playing my guitar, reading, and card magic.

Square foot garden potatoes

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There are probably a lot of ways to plant potatoes. For me, I don’t want to leave them out for several days before planting, and I don’t want to worry about hilling. This is the method I learned. Cut your seed potatoes so the each piece has at last 2 eyes. I bury them right into the soil, cover completely, and start watering. They are planted 6 or 7 inches deep and will be ready in 4-1/2 months. I like them big.

I spent $2.50 on 3 pounds of Red Pontiac potatoes. By the time I cut them up, I had enough for 8 square feet. That will yield somewhere around 45+ pounds when finished. And the taste? You’ll never beat them! 

My experience is that potatoes do best in garden soil, not so much in grow bags, tires, wood boxes, etc. These will start to pop up in about 4 weeks, and in the SFG, they are planted 5 per square. 

 

Putting old man winter to bed for a season

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For years it’s always been a problem to clean off the plastic which has covered my winter garden for 4-1/2 months. They’re a real mess. Melted snow mixed with mud, birds flying overhead, worms all over the place, your muddied footprints, etc. If you wash them down and don’t let them dry you end up with algae on the plastic when it’s time to use them again. If you don’t hose them down they look terrible with caked on mud, leaves, dirt, etc.

Using just spring clamps to hold the plastic down on each end and grow bags to hold the other ends down, I can easily wash front and back and let them dry in the sun. It only takes about 20-25 minutes to dry out. I have the back opened up so it doesn’t get too hot. Then it’s just a matter of folding them up and putting them away until needed. 

Hosing and cleaning plastic is always a challenge when you lay it on the ground. You have to anchor all the corners and then you have pooled water all over on the surface. You lift up and shake the plastic and then the wind catches it like a parachute. Having these quickly erected poly tunnels make things so easy. I can now clean my plastic without worrying about wind and pooled water everywhere. 

Another reason to take one of my upcoming fall or winter gardening classes, all of which will be posted right here on my blog. 

Spinach soil blocks

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Planted with soil block on 2/12 and placed in the garden on 3/8. This spinach is ready to go in a little over 3 weeks from start to planting. If you haven’t learned about soil blocking-you should check into it. No fancy soil needed, no replacing the ever cracking 6-cell  plastic containers, transplant shock minimized, and little work to do indoors. 

Soil blocking can be one of the strategies used for an extra early spring garden provided you’ve got some kind of protection from the elements. It doesn’t have to be fancy either. Four pieces of rebar, some sturdy PVC, and 4-6 mil UV protected plastic can give you all that’s needed.

If you’d like to learn how to soil block and to also have a really early spring garden, you can follow my class schedule here on this site. Classes are held at public locations but also in a very comfortable environment at my home. Space is always limited and I never have enough room for everyone who wants to attend, but I try my best. I’ll  even teach you how to do it on a budget so you don’t have to buy the fancy soil block unit that will cost you about $50-60. 

For those who might be interested in learning how to be a square foot gardener, my class on that is Saturday, April 20th at my home. I’ve only got 3 more seats available. Imagine, a garden where you don’t have to weed or thin. A garden that gives you 100% of the harvest in only 20% of the space. No hard work. No heavy digging. No need to root-till. It’s the way to go. Details can be found on this home page. 

Winter sowing and time to transplant

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I’ve written in the past of winter sowing-a method of planting that requires no fancy lighting, no hardening off, and really no work to speak of. There is little care to worry about other than making sure things under the container don’t dry out.  

This is simply a plastic milk container that’s been cleaned out and then filled with moistened potting mix. You then seed heavily, tape the container shut and then put it outside in the sunniest location you have. Remove the cap-you won’t be needing it. This serves as your venting  so things don’t heat up too much. The cold doesn’t matter for lettuces. They know when it’s time to come up,. 

We had two pretty heavy snowfalls this year when I went out and couldn’t even see the container. It was totally covered in snow. I sowed this on Jan 15 and it was ready to be separated and planted on Feb 24th. This small container was enough to seed 2 full squares of lettuce. Thats 8 “bunches” of lettuce, not 8 individual heads. These come up in big mounds. You can see what it will eventually look like from a picture I posted last  year. Big, billowy lettuces ready for you to harvest, clean, and eat. 

Five and a half weeks later. And, you did no work. 🙂

 

The garden diary

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I love the idea of keeping track of what happens in the garden during the year. I looked at my sun box today and tried to remember what and when I planted. Besides the accuracy when doing this, it’s also good to remember challenges and success from the previous year, crop rotation, and any other things you might have learned. 

This is a box planted on 11/27 of last year. I love growing lettuces because I try to have a salad every night of the growing season. Even in winter, although those greens are very different. This will be ready in about two and half to three weeks from now. I’ve got another box which was planted later which will be harvested shortly after this box has been exhausted. 

By the time both of these boxes are done, my raised beds will take over for the rest of the season with salad greens and all the other crops I love to grow. The boxes will be put away until early fall, and the space taken up by them will be planted in perfect time for my summer items.