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.

How to make money with your square foot gardens

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I don’t know about you, but I think it’s fun finding ways to make money with your hobbies.  It’s already something you love to do, so why not get paid for it if you can?  This past week I took an ad out in the local classifieds.  The title was simply “Organic Produce for Sale.”  I mentioned the fact that it’s too late to join a CSA-for the most part that is.  I had so many calls that I simply couldn’t handle them all! There are many people that will gladly pay 25-$30 a week for fresh organic produce and vegetables.  You can even pay that much(or more)at some of the “organic” grocery stores that are very popular these days. If you look at a place that sells great stuff, like Whole Foods, you will notice that many of the items they sell may not even be locally grown.  Their from New Mexico, Texas, California, etc.  And that is OK but you know what that means-its been on a truck for at least 2 days, probably more.  Some of it even comes from Mexico-and you never know about the water supply down there being used to irrigate.  So, I think I’m giving a pretty good deal.  If you’re interested in seeing the ad for ideas, click here.  For $125 I’ve already landed my first customer with more calling.  I only have about 150 square feet back there in my gardens, and I’m still working on feeding our own family through the rest of this gardening season.  So I just have to plan things out.  Since I’m growing the things that I normally would grow anyway, I probably wont need to order any new seeds.  With the things that are already growing in our garden I figured that I only need 22 squares to provide 6 weeks of fresh, organic, and delicious tasting things for one person.  I’ve put together my planting schedule leaving a couple extra squares left over to adjust for mistakes or flops.  I’ve figured out my quantities and the dates I will be delivering to their homes.  I’m out and about during the day anyway so it’s no problem for me to harvest, give a quick rinse, and then a final rinse before I deliver to a location.  Granted, you wouldn’t want to do this with for a lot of people because it would eat up your profits and time-unless you wanted to include that in your price.  Everything will be wrapped in paper towels with the exception of the beans and sugar snaps-they will be in zip lock bags.  My costs will be kept to a bare minimum.  All I need to buy is paper towels and zip-lock bags.  That’s it.  Let’s say I only find one customer(which I have).  I don’t think I will spend $20 in zip-lock bags/paper towels/other things but let’s say I do.  I just made $100 doing what I love to do, and doing what I do in my garden anyway.  Let’s say I get customer number two.  Now I’ve made $200 with virtually no extra effort.  With customer number one, I just paid for all my supplies for next year-and then some.  Pretty easy.  What do you think?[ois skin=”below post”]

Mid July activities in the square foot garden

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If you’re anything like me your probably spending just a little less time in your garden at this time of the year because of the heat. This is a good time to plan what you want in your garden as those tomatoes start to produce and ripen. If you can shade your garden at this time of year, you’ll be able to still grown lettuce and radishes. I was surprised that I was able to still grow radishes in temperatures in the high to upper 90’s. Just make sure you water and shade them more and you should be able to successfully grow them. And when those tomatoes come pouring on in a matter of a couple of weeks, will you have any lettuce ready to harvest? Sure you can just purchase store bought lettuce, but you can still grow your own. And it’s better than anything you can buy at the store. When the weather gets this hot, germinating lettuce seeds is the biggest challenge. Once again, shade and extra water will get you what you’re after. Once the lettuce seeds germinate and break the soil, a lot of your hard work is done. It will grow quickly in this kind of weather but you should still keep the sun off it if you can. At least the hot afternoon sun. You’ll keep your lettuce from tasting bitter and will reap the rewards of great home tasting lettuce. The other fun thing that might be showing now in your gardens are flowers. I don’t grow many, but most of the ones I do all have a specific function. Nasturtiums-edible, nicotiana-fragrance, daisy, bachelor buttons, and sunflower seeds-attracts bees(pollinators), and finally celosia. The reason I like celosia is it’s brilliant red color later in the fall. I’m partial to reds and whites, so I place white alyssum at the base of my celosia. They’re all easy to grow and will reward you with great color as we get into the fall season. Come to think of it, we’re not that far off from that. Keep those compost units working so that you’ll be ready to harvest and amend squares as you pull from your garden. And the timing is such that if you’ve worked your compost correctly, you’ll be just in time to prepare for your fall gardens with finished composted material.[ois skin=”below post”]

Now that you harvested a lot of squares, what’s next?

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No doubt you’ve already had a pretty good harvest from the spring season.  And right now you’re probably emptying out squares from that harvest.  All those early spring squares will now be empty and ready to be re-planted.  But just think, a lot of the nutrients that were in the soil to begin with during the spring season have been depleted a bit.  Now it’s time to replant that square with something entirely different.  If you end up putting the same kind of item in that square, it may work.  But chances are also good that it may not work because all those critters that loved what was in that particular square will now be very happy with you.  By planting the same thing you’ve made it easy for them to find their food.  Make them work for it.  Plant something different in those squares.  Before you do, you’ll need to amend your soil with some new fertilizer.  I’m speaking about compost that you’ve been making over the last several weeks.  All you need to do is add enough trowels(1 of the 3 tools you’ll ever need in a square foot garden) full of compost until you’ve replenished the overall volume-to the very top of the square.  Then just mix it all in and you’re ready to replant.  By doing this in the spring, summer, and later in the fall, you’ll be able to amend your growing soil perfectly throughout the course of the year.  That’s how simple it is.  I’ve got some newly uploaded pictures of a compost operation that I’ve been doing this year.  I’ve tried to show-in pictures-how simple it is to make your own compost.  You’ll find them in the photo gallery on the main page.  I hope it helps those who are wanting to make their own compost but feel a little intimidated by the thought of it.[ois skin=”below post”]

A look at corn in a square foot garden

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I haven’t grown corn in a few years only because it takes up an entire 4X4′ box and it’s pretty cheap during the summer months.  The first year I grew corn I had over 100 ears in this same box.  While it’s true the second ears were a bit smaller it was still a lot of corn grown in a very small area.  This has a while to go, but I’m beginning to see some tasseling.  You’ll also notice the different sizes of stalks.  I planted 4 squares of corn every 5 days to avoid the all-at-once harvest.  This particular variety is Spring Treat-available everywhere.  I picked this variety because of it’s shorter time to harvest, its ability to germinate in cooler temperatures, the shorter stalk, and the sweetness of the corn.  It’s been planted 4 per square.  Given the right conditions, this should produce at least 64 heads of corn.  That’s only counting 1 corn per stalk, and I think I’ll get more than that.  This was also a weaker attempt at the 3 sisters method.  I will do this again next year, but I’ll be sure to do it correctly.  You can see the butternut squash beginning to grow in front, and the pole beans beginning to climb the tower in the back.  I’ll have a post on the 3 sisters later, but it should have been done differently.  In theory, this isn’t the 3 sisters method at all.  I had already begun growing my pole beans before I had put corn in as closely as it needs to be.  Pole beans in the back, corn in the middle, and butternut squash in the front.  What you can’t see as easily in this picture is more squash-which I will not grow vertically-and bush beans scattered among the corn.  This will add the needed (hopefully)nitrogen that corn requires.  It’s my idea of a middle ground technique for the 3 sisters method given the fact that I didn’t start out planning it correctly.  But it will produce a lot of goodies for us by the time it’s all done.  Total square footage used for this project of at least 64 ears of corn, a summers load of pole beans, a harvest of butternut squash, and a summers growth of bush beans: 24.[ois skin=”below post”]

Holy Smoke!

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Just when I thought SFG teaching was done for the year something strange happened.  I’ve had up on the site a SFG Workshop that’s to be held in September.  It was billed as “Fall Crop” because we’re closing down some of the garden but then planting several 4X4′ boxes for the last 5-7 weeks of the year.  We’re also doing some things on advanced composting, prepping your soil for next year, and some other very cool things.  Your neighbors have had their gardens pulled up since Labor Day at this point and want nothing to do with gardening until next year.  The only real requirement I had for this workshop was that you had to have taken the introductory class.  Well, the interest was so heavy with so many folks that didn’t take the introductory class that I’ve now had to schedule 7 additional classes to be held at various locations throughout the valley.  That gives you some idea of the number of people interested in planting at this great time of year.  After all, because of the cooler temperatures the water requirements are lower, all your lettuces, spinach, radishes, etc. can easily be grown, and the bugs are gone.  To all my fellow SFG instructors-we’ve always taught about how easy it is to extend the season with a SFG.  We’ve taught about being able to start a SFG at any time of the year.  Now it’s time to show it.  I hope you don’t let this chance pass you by.  By doing these in the fall, you’ll have a new core of people ready to go in the spring as well.  Give it some thought and see if it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun.