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.

We talk about these kind of people when….

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we teach square foot gardening. I wrote an ebook, in part, because of the vast amount of bad information that is floating around out there about square foot gardening. It’s amazing to read and it’s all over the place. This is an example of that. We had a great article about square foot gardening in one of the local papers yesterday. I read it and then saw some of the comments. There was a lot I could talk about but this one will do. Here is what it said: “I also think that the claim that most things only grow in the first 6 inches of soil is inaccurate. Here is a link that discusses root depth (among other things) of common garden vegetables. Most have a tap root longer than 6 inches within 3 weeks of planting! Do you really think you are going to be able to maximize your garden production by stunting the growth of your roots so early on?” How does that old saying go? “A picture is worth a thousand words?” Well, then here you go. This is a picture of 4 perfect heads of lettuce that grew in a 6″ container of Mel’s mix. End of story. We have pictures at the foundation of plants that are 8 feet tall which have been grown in 6″ of soil. Here’s the real problem. Folks who think like this(he’s a master gardener by the way!)have been trained in the university agricultural methods. That’s great-for farming! Not so much for us backyard gardeners. The reason he thinks this way? Simple. In the agricultural courses your taught that you’ve got to have these long tap roots. And you do! The reason why is that these old farming lands have been stripped of much of the nutrients and trace elements(despite all their efforts to amend their soil with manure in the off-season)and these roots have to keep going down, down, down in order to hunt for food(nutrients)and water. The reason why it works in 6″ of Mel’s mix is that everything you need is right there! No need for big tap roots! No need for plants to keep going down in order to find nutrition and water. Our gardens are at least 33% compost while the typical farm land is less than 5%. Therein lies the big difference. So, don’t be intimidated by your master gardener friends. Mel wrote his book and found that the experts, as a general rule, all came to the conclusion that square foot gardening couldn’t work because it’s too easy. And, their right-it is easy…..

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Square foot gardening goes big time….

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A great little article just showing up in one of the local papers. I was aware that pictures were being taken during one of the SFG workshop classes and I even had a 10 minute interview after class was over. But a week later, I was told that it didn’t turn out so I thought this was a bust. Earlier tonight I got a message from a friend telling me that it was out. Anyway, you can find it here…..[ois skin=”below post”]

How much does 1 square of spinach produce in…..

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a square foot garden? This will give you an idea. I’ve already harvested this once for several family spinach salads. Now it’s time to cut it again for the second pass. This is just in one square! You will notice how tight and full the space is-which is one of the main reasons why we don’t have any weeding issues in a square foot garden. There is no room for weeds to get a foothold. Here in northern Utah, it’s time to plant corn. Corn should be planted 4 per square. It’s always a good idea to space it out a little bit. Realizing you’re going to get at least one good ear from each stalk, if you plant 4-1 foot squares, that’s going to give you at least 16 ears of corn. If you planted an entire 4X4 square foot garden at once with corn you would get 64 ears at the same time. You’ll want to stretch it out if you can. I will plant my second group of 4 squares in a week. Since I use an entire 4X4 box I will be planting corn for 4 weeks. That way I don’t get the all at once harvest. Then all you do is water and sit back and watch it grow. “Knee-high by 4th of July” is the quote we hear often. And it’s a pretty good gauge. In a couple of weeks it’s Mother’s Day and that’s the time to really start packing things in your square foot garden….[ois skin=”below post”]

This is a new one in a square foot garden…

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wheat grass! I’ve never done this before and I’ve never known anybody to grow it. I didn’t follow any of the 1,4,9,16 spacing rules for planting either. I just sprinkled it over the square, covered it my homemade compost and watered it in. I think you can see the label-it must grow pretty quick because it’s supposed to be 4″ tall in a week. I’m growing this for two reasons. First, we’ve got a couple of people in our family who juice the stuff. Not me-I wouldn’t want anything to do with it. Second, when it’s done I will turn it over and will effectively compost this square with a cover crop. This will add a significant amount of nitrogen. I’m telling you, this soil is just loaded with all kinds of good stuff. No wonder why everything grows so well and so easily! If it does grow that fast I suspect I’ll be growing a square every other week. Today the weather was sunny, a little cool with a light breeze. I’ve been experimenting with a new technique that I will be sharing with those attending my workshops. It makes your square foot garden more productive in terms of time and yield. I think I can say it works because I’ve duplicated it three times now. Things in your SFG should be coming along pretty well if you’re in zone 6. You’ll have about 3 more weeks before you can begin to really load up your gardens with all the fun summer things-like squash, zucchini, pole beans and tomatoes. Do you know how to grow zucchini in 1 square foot? If you’re not then it’s taking up 9 spaces. Come to one of my workshops….I will show you how to only use 1 square for zucchini and all the other ninja secrets, and there’s quit a few of them..and by the way-that thing below the post asking for your email if you like this blog?  It’s not quit ready to go yet  That’s the other project I’m working on and I’ll have that fixed very shortly. Pretty slick though, isn’t it?…..[ois skin=”below post”]

What to watch for….

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this time of year in your square foot garden. It’s hard spending all this time planning, planting, watering, and caring for your gardens ony to come out one morning to discovered it’s all been killed off by an unexpected frost. I think it’s a good idea to get in the easy habit of looking at the weather forecast. When I looked today I saw the following projected evening low temperatures: 51/41/32/35/40/42. We are usually colder in our neighborhood than they are where they record the official temperatures. Of course, by limiting the size of our gardens, it’s a simple matter of protecting them with plastic. There is no way you’re going to be able to do that with a traditional garden. Well, not easily anyway. So knowing this, I won’t cover my gardens tonight, but I will for the next several days. That way I won’t have to worry about anything I’ve grown being ruined by a frost. This picture shows my sugar snap peas. These are planted 8 per square, and you plant them just as they’re shown-at the back of the box. You will find some bad advice about how to grow sugar snaps in the SFG method on the internet. This way they grow right on up the strings. If you look closely you will see that I use tent posts to push into the ground to make the string taut. If you’re string/nylon is not tight, things will start to droop instead of climb. I should have my first batch of sugar snaps in about 10 days. One last thing-you will notice some empty space in front of the sugar snaps. This can be used to plant more letuce, spinach, carrots, onions, etc…..t [ois skin=”below post”]