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.

New lettuce variety

2 Replies

queensland 62114I mentioned a little about this several posts back. This is a new lettuce that I’m growing that can’t be found in America. I have a friend who has traveled and gardened overseas and has found this great variety that can be grown in both cold and hot weather. It’s also a different spacing than what us SFGers would normally do. Lettuce is planted 4 per square. This variety is large enough so that it’s only planted 1 per square. It’s non-hearting meaning it doesn’t form that tender inner “heart” that typically is associated with leaf lettuce varieties. Think romaine-Caesar salad greens. You harvest the leaves from the bottom. It continues to grow and keeps going for 5-6 weeks. At that point it sends up a shoot, becomes bitter, and goes to seed. Then you save the fluffy gray seed heads for next year. I’ll be selling this at the end of summer if you’re interested. It’s another great tasting crop to have on hand. The greatest thing is its ability to grow in hot weather-something that is hard to do with all other kinds of lettuce.[ois skin=”below post”]

Lettuce in hot weather

Leave a reply

shaded lettuce 61114Take a look around at your local CSA’s today. As a result of finishing up the spring season, there’s still lettuce in those baskets. But if you live in a warm climate chances are there won’t be any lettuce offered in the hot months. We’re not too far away from that right now. There is the possibility that they buy their lettuce from other sources to keep their supply constant. But what about July/August? It’s been 90+ here already this spring. At temperatures of 80-85+ it becomes very difficult if not impossible to have your lettuce seeds sprout outside. There are a few tricks to learn if you want to enjoy lettuce all summer long. The two main techniques are to water at least twice as much as you normally would and to provide some sort of shade cover during the hottest part of the day. In this way I’ve been able to sprout lettuce in 100 degree weather-and it comes up in 2 days! I’m in the process of finishing my 2nd ebook about this very topic. It’s got 3 additional techniques to use for a successful summer lettuce season. Of all the things we grow in our garden, lettuce is by far our family favorite and it’s the one thing we eat the most of. And when you’ve just harvested fresh lettuce from your gardens for your dinner salad you’ll hate buying it at the store.[ois skin=”below post”]

Do I really need a grid?

Leave a reply

swiss chard 60314You sure do! If you’ve ever seen a raised bed without a grid it’s really nothing more than just that-a raised bed. Nothing sets it apart from the neighbor who also has a raised bed. But if you put a grid, all of a sudden you have to think differently. Instead of planting in rows like you’re used to doing, now you’re forced to plant something different in each 1 foot square. That’s the first reason you need a grid. The second reason-if you’re trying to imagine or come close to planting in squares by just eye-balling it, you’ll never get it right. You’ll be disappointed by the results. Third-it really does set your garden apart from just a raised bed. If you’ve ever seen a successful SFG, one of the first things you notice is the grid-“Oh, here’s a square foot gardener!” The last reason is something that many don’t even consider. It’s this: the grid is the gauge on how much compost you need to add when amending your soil whenever you change a crop. As an example, after pulling your spring crop of chard, you throw the wasted leaves in the compost pile. You then add not just 2 or 3 trowels full of compost, but rather enough until it reaches to top of the grid. This might be 5 or 6 trowels full of compost. Adding just 2 or 3 may not be enough. You can never get enough compost.

[ois skin=”below post”]

Tonights dinner

Leave a reply

A great mesclun mixIt’s a great mesclun mix of red sails and allstar lettuce, radicchio, butter chard, and spinach. I’m a little surprised at the spinach this late in the season after two harvests already. It’s grown back very nicely and we’ve got at least enough for another week. Top it off with some minicor carrots, mozzarella cheese, freshly grated pepper, and then a nice vinaigrette. My entire summer garden is almost completely planted. I’ve left a few squares open for a second planting of zucchini and for summer lettuce. But I’ll soon be emptying out squares of red ace beets, spinach, radicchio, and carrots. This should leave me plenty of open squares for my summer lettuce-which are the greatest to go along with those vine-ripened tomatoes. All my herbs are in-rosemary, cilantro, chives, parsley, garlic, and basil. And I’ve just planted 2 additional squares of red pontiac potatoes. Now’s the time to put your entire summer garden in for zone 6. Tomatoes, peppers, squash, zucchini, corn, all your herbs, chard, lettuce varieties, beets, beans, scallions. And then get ready for a great harvest in a few weeks.[ois skin=”below post”]

Much planted, much to go

Leave a reply

51914 gardenAfter tomorrow I’ll have a lot of newly emptied squares. To date I have a lot of the summer crops in and growing. Tomatoes, cucumbers, summer lettuce varieties, chives, carrots, chard, scallions, potatoes, nasturtium, peppers, basil, and bush beans are all in. In the next day I’ll finish planting all the rest-zucchini, patty pan and banana/butternut squash, beets, scallions, and maybe some thyme. I’ll continue to plant lettuce all summer long to make sure I have a large enough harvest by the time the tomatoes ripen. If you’re looking for a nifty little gadget to tell you what to plant and when, you ought to check this out. It’s free and easy to use. You’ll get an email periodically to remind you what to plant next. Read about it here.  Hope this helps out.

[ois skin=”below post”]