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.

A highlight of the winter garden

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claytonia 110113I’ve had a lot of fun harvesting salad greens this far into December. Combining all the different crops to make dinner salads this year has been a real treat. A snip of this, another of that, etc. has left us bewildered at how great these cold hardy crops really are. At last count I have 24 different crops still growing under the greenhouse. And we’ve had a lot of snow and freezing weather to go along with it. With the exception of some lettuce that I let get to big before harvesting, everything is alive and doing well. After a freeze or two those larger leaves of lettuce just turn to mush. I should have started harvesting these lettuce leaves at the smaller stages. Right now my garden is a refrigerator-keeping our food in a cool climate until we’re ready to eat it. One of the biggest and best tasting of the new cool weather crops is pictured here-claytonia. Also known as miners lettuce, it’s a prolific and heavy crop. We’ve been able to not only add this to the regular mesclun salad mixes that I put together, but I’ve also been able to cut some of it and lay it on top of a fancy chicken dish for a garnish. Nobody knew what it was but they all loved it. They also couldn’t believe that I cut it a few minutes before dinner. If you’ve never tried this, keep it in mind for next fall and winter as it will not grow in the warmer weather.

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Almost 8 inches of snow

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greenhouse after the big storm3-120513It was a pretty good snow storm that came through Utah 2 nights ago. I had a problem with the snow load on the greenhouse and had to do some last minute fixing. I also had to change the shape of the greenhouse to the rounded instead of the Gothic arch. The Gothic arch added another foot and a half of height so the wind was really blowing it around. My only concern now it this shape of greenhouse and it being able to handle the snow load. I’ve tried to do this on a major budget but have learned that you’ll need to do some critical things to make it more solid than the simple Eliot Coleman PVC and rope greenhouse. That’s simply not going to work when you have the kind of weather that we have. But he’s in Maine so it should be a little similar I would think. At any rate, it was 8 or 9 degrees two nights ago and underneath the greenhouse it was 34. I’ll post soon to show what it looks like under the greenhouse. It’s great under there. I was able to go out into the garden and effortlessly harvest loose leaf lettuce, mizuna, tatsoi, mache, spinach, and arugula. More snow on the way and single digit temperatures at night for many days to come.

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Arugula and radicchio with a Honey-lime viniagrette and carmelized pecans

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arugula and radicchio saladI have many hobbies-in fact my wife calls me the “hobby king.” To this day I’m not convinced she says that in a good way. But when you have a garden that produces such tasty things as this, how could you not develop a cooking hobby? That’s the case with me. Tonight I harvested arugula and radicchio from the garden. It’s been grown in cold weather so the arugula doesn’t have that overpowering peppery taste that usually comes with it, and the radicchio is no longer bitter. Slice some Granny Smith apples, make some carmelized pecans and a honey-lime dressing, and top it with blue cheese. I promise-you’ll have people asking you for the recipe. The winter harvest-the absolute best.

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My late November garden

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TWE 110813 south viewThe weather has really changed this week.  Today it was 28 when I woke up with temperatures around that for the rest of the week.  Winter is arriving quickly.  My greenhouse plastic has finally arrived and it’s now up.  I’ve had a lot of success growing all winter in northern Utah for years with my basic setup as shown.  I just thought I would put up a greenhouse so that I can garden and harvest without getting snowed or rained upon.  I definitely did it for less than $100.  There is no heat involved-other than the sun-but it doesn’t matter with the crops I’m growing as they all love this cold weather.  Plants have certainly slowed in their normal growing pattern, but now it’s time for the winter harvest.  There’s no work out there to do at this time.  No watering needed, and no pest problems to speak of.  Hopefully we’ll get another snow so that I can post a picture of the greenhouse and what’s growing underneath it.  Fun stuff.

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This weeks activities

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perfect skyphos lettuce 111113This week has been a lot of fun. Usually I’m busy amending all soil, emptying the compost bins and getting ready to close down most of the garden for the season. I ended up bagging a lot of leaves and will finish that chore this week. I’ve emptied my compost bins and have started to fill them up with all the usually things. My biggest job was putting up my greenhouse. It didn’t take me too long-about half an hour. I did it for a grand total of $75, maybe a tad-bit less. We had a light snow earlier in the week. I had the greatest feeling of going out during the storm and tinkering in my gardens with the temperature in the greenhouse at around 50. It felt like I was in a different world under there! This will the most enjoyable winter garden I’ve ever had. I have 96 squares filled with 25 different crops that will be harvested throughout the winter. Probably the best part of this week was the salad I got to make. I snipped some radicchio and arugula leaves which are nowhere near as bitter as they normally would be when grown in warm weather, and combined them with blue cheese and carmelized pecans. I slices some Granny Smith apples and topped it with a honey-lime vinigrette. Can’t wait for salads this winter. You should learn how to grow your own in cold weather. They really taste notably different when grown in the colder climate.[ois skin=”below post”]