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.

It begins

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johnnys seeds2Opened up the mail today to find my Johnny’s seeds had arrived.  It’s my favorite place to order because of their variety, track record, customer service and it’s money back guarantee.  This is a small sample of the items I ordered.  I got so pumped when I got them that I’ve already started some indoors.  It’s going to be zero tonight but the forecast shows things will warm up at night in about a week.  So, I’ve begun-in anticipation of selling some pretty cool things to a small number of customers.  Right now I’m planning on the first delivery of crops by the second week of March.  It takes a little planning but it’s pretty easy to do.  I know how many squares of each item that I need to grow and how long it’ll take to grow them.  I usually add another 7-10 days just to give myself a little leeway.  Some of the things I’m growing right now are very different from what I sell during the regular spring season.  And that little thing in the upper left hand corner?  That’s my PotMaker that I bought from Burpee’s last year.  I no longer have to go out and buy plastic cells and trays to grow.  I use plain old newspaper.  When it’s time for these crops to go into the garden I just place the newspaper cup right in the ground.  It completely decomposes in about 8 weeks.  If you’re anything like me these seed catalogs are like candy-you always bite off more than you can chew.  Well, I probably did buy more than I needed, but with the square foot gardening method, some of these will last me for 6-8 years.  With a SFG you never have to worry about all that heavy thinning-you just plant what you want to harvest.  You need 8 heads of lettuce?  All you need to do is to use 2-1 foot squares.  Each square can grow 4 full heads of lettuce.  You simply put a pinch-2 or 3 seeds-into each hole, cover, water, and sit back.  You’ll have to snip off the extra seedlings that grow with a scissors(1 of only 3 tools that you’ll ever need.)  In six weeks you should have 8 perfectly formed heads of lettuce that have only taken up 2 square feet.  This is a great system.

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It’s growing!

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experiment boxI can’t believe this-it’s been below zero(with windchill factor)for more than a week now. Today was the first day we’ve had that reached a high of 30. It’s been dark and gloomy. This is my experiment box that I’ll talk about at a later date. With it I do all kinds of things that show how easy and efficient it is to have a square foot garden. I’ve got 13(hate that number)radishes growing and 4 heads of lettuce. I’ve peeled back the protection to snap the picture but it’s been covered first with floating row cover, and then plastic. I lightly water it once a week and that seems fine. I’m not completely surprised that it’s growing because I’ve done similar things in the past. But it hasn’t been this cold for this long before. This was planted a little earlier than my regular gardens-which have nothing growing in them that I can see. At least not yet. Maybe that experiment won’t work. But I did receive my new seed packets from Johnny’s and I’m getting very anxious to start planting. In four weeks I’ll begin-President’s Day weekend. I won’t do hardly any work to have my soil ready to plant-one of the beauties of the square foot gardening method. It’ll be in perfect shape by then. The only work I’ll do is to cover my gardens with plastic and let the sun do its magic. In a about 5 days-bingo! If you’re interested in putting in a square foot garden(hope you are), now is the perfect time to start gathering materials-wood, soil components, nylon netting, grid material, and electrical conduit. It’s a one time expense that will serve you well over the years. If you live in Utah and would like a SFG but don’t want to put the whole thing together yourself, my good friend Belinda has a great business that will do it for you. She’s the best.  Her business is called Gardens to Go and you can read all about it here. Spring is getting closer and I can’t wait. I’ve got some terrific new things I’ll be growing for our family and others. Thanks for coming by….

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Under the tunnel

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heat in high tunnelThe recorded windchill temperatures at night have been in single digits all week. I haven’t been able to see anything that’s come up yet but I’ve been able to take a quick peek under the plastic to observe what the picture shows if you look hard enough-heat coming up from the ground. The sun has come out occasionally but I haven’t put a thermometer under the plastic to know how warm it’s gotten. Past experience has shown it to be 30+ degrees warmer then the outside air. I planted another square today of lettuce and radishes which means there should be eight squares growing soon-hopefully. I’ve got all cold crops planted under the tunnel so we’ll see if this little experiment works. The towel under the tunnel(previous post picture)has been used to cover the squares that have been planted so far. It’s just meant to provide another layer of protection-especially in this kind of weather.[ois skin=”below post”]

What a difference a couple of days can make

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high tunnel2We’ve been hit hard with a lot of snow the past few days. This is what the high tunnel looks like after a little sunny weather. In a few days I’ll post a picture of what it looks like underneath as I’ve got 7 things planted under there right now. With night temperatures in the mid to high teens it’ll be interesting to see if anything under the tunnel actually grows. I think it will. I snapped a picture under the tunnel earlier today and you can see steam rising from the soil-a good sign. I’m not quite sure about this, but I think my brussel sprout plant has actually started to grow again. Pretty fun stuff.

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Step one in prepping your square foot garden in winter

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storm sfgWe live in Zone 6 here in Salt Lake City. The weather usually has people thinking that gardening season is over. I think they’re right-for the warm weather crops. This will be my winter experiment. Can I grow garden produce and vegetables right through the winter despite the snow and extended freezing temperatures? What I really should’ve done was to have my gardens planted in early October for winter harvesting vs. winter gardening. I’ve grown in late winter before, but those gardens started in the 3rd week of February. January is our coldest month so this will be a challenge. You’ve probably seen how I’ve prepped my soil in the fall from previous posts. After 13 years my soil of Mel’s mix is now 100% compost. It’s a heavier soil mix but still perfectly suited to do anything you need. Given the fact that the soil is as good as it can be, the next thing I have to do is thaw out the soil. I went back to the gardens the other day and tried to put a pitch fork into the soil-no go. It was frozen solid. So I need to heat the place up. You can see my method from the picture-an unheated greenhouse. This is nothing more than flexible PVC held in place by re-bar inside the SFG boxes. Now all I need to do is cover it with plastic-the equivalent of putting a sweater over my boxes. The trick is to take advantage of free solar energy(sun)to then warm your soil in preparation to start planting. Your biggest challenge is to protect your garden from the wind(think windchill.) By covering with plastic you’ll also be able to protect your plants from wet/freeze/dry periods. This is what’s really hard on plants. The last key is growing things that don’t mind cold weather. I think one of the biggest mistakes we sometimes make is trying to make warm weather crops-summer items-grow in the off-season. Why force it? Growing cold weather things will make your job a lot easier. And the cold weather will take away some of the bitterness associated with some of these crops. Because your gardens are limited in size with the square foot gardening system, it then becomes much easier to protect and take care of it. With just one layer of plastic your boxes will be at least 30 degrees warmer during the day. At night-about 15 degrees, maybe a little higher. Two days after this snowstorm hit my soil was cold but no longer frozen. I should be ready to plant in about another 4 or 5 days. Just cover your garden, heat it up, make sure you’re choosing cold weather crops, and you’ll be ready to plant in about a week-two weeks at the most.  I hope you’ll come back to visit so you can follow this winter garden experiment.

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