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.

My first square foot gardening mistake this year….

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is this.  I hope I can explain it clearly.  This is a portion of my 2X16′ bed thats been covered with 6-mil plastic in preparaton for heating up the soil.  As you can see from this picture the plastic can’t cover the last 4′ of my box completely.  The reason-and this is the mistake-is that I put my tomato tower in the wrong place.  This was used last year to grow sugar snap peas.  It will be used again for them in the next few days.  My mistake was that I put the tower to much in the center of these squares instead of the back of the box.  Things grew great on the tower last year but because I didn’t move the tower toward the back of the box, now when I cover it with plastic I can’t cover it entirely.  The tower is in the way.  It’s an easy enough fix though.  As soon as the soil heats up I will pull off the tower, remove the 2 pieces of rebar which reinforce the tower and then move everything back to the edge of the box.  I will then be able to completely enclose my 2X16′ square foot garden.  I hope you can see the advantages with limiting the size of your garden.  In a traditional single row garden you couldn’t do this.  First, your soil is nowhere near being ready.  You’re neighbors are at least 2 months away from rototilling their garden area.  Second, how do can you protect those kinds of gardens?  Maybe there’s a way but it’s got to be a huge thing to figure out.  There’s lots of huge things about traditional single row gardens…including the huge amount of time you spend pulling weeds while us SFGers are out enjoying and harvesting our organic veggies and produce….

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Season start of square foot gardening…

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I read somewhere that a blog is nothing more that a public journal.  That being the case, I’m going to document all that I can this season.  When I started, what I did, how I did it, etc.  I will also be making an effort to keep track of everything that I harvest.  I have an idea that I am developing that will be of benefit to all who are interested in feeding their families healthy, organic, and delicious produce and veggies.  Today is the 3rd of May and I have just gone out and covered my 2X16′ SFG bed.  You can tell we’ve had a bit of snow the last day or so.  My guess is that tomorrow the snow under the plastic will be gone-maybe even today-and my soil should be ready to plant in just a few days.  You always continue to learn things in the SFG method and that’s no exception for me.  I’ve already spotted my first mistake.  Nothing serious that can’t be fixed but a mistake nonetheless.  Once the soil is softened up I will be able to fix it.  I will share that information on my next post.  I hope that you can follow me throughout the gardening season to see how this all progresses.  If there are things that might be of benefit to you and your SFG efforts, well then that would be great.  If you’re already a master at SFGing and don’t find anything that betters your garden, that’s OK too.  We’re among friends here.  I believe this is my 13th year of SFGing.  And every year I seem to learn something new by either personal experience or by interacting with other SFGers.  About the picture: this is 6-mil plastic that can be purchased at any Lowe’s or Home Depot kind of store.  It’s then held up by flexible black plastic that I like to refer to as “ribs.”  The ribs are held in place by small PVC inserts that I added to the insides of the beds every so often.  Cover it with the plastic and weigh it down with water buckets to keep it from blowing away.  If the sun comes out you can just add about 30 degrees to whatever temperature it is outside.  Right now its about 35 degrees.  When/if the sun comes out this covered garden will get to be in the area of  65 degrees.  You can grow all sorts of things in that temperature.  Since it’s still in the low to mid 30’s at night you will need to keep your gardens covered in the evenings.  Last-always remember to vent your plastic.  I have 4 slits right in the middle of the plastic that are about 6 inches long.  That’s good enough to keep it from getting to hot under there…..

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I just got my seeds and then…

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It does this!  It’s about time to start thinking of planting sugar snap peas.  A little later today I will make my way out to the garden and cover it in preparation for heating up the soil.  The weather is reporting that by Sunday it should be in the low 50’s.  With that, my 2X16′ garden will be ready to plant in about a week.  I’l try to get some good pictures of the apparatus that I use to protect my gardens.  It’s all rather simple and just takes a little bit of time to put it all in.  I have a series of three pictures in gallery 1 that shows what I have done to amend this particular bed.  I do the same with all of my beds but this gives you a visual of how it’s done.  The picture is a 2X4′ bed that has been emptied of its contents, leaves added and then finishing the whole box off with homemade compost.  All those leaves?  When I turn the soil over with a trowel-the only tool you’ll need in a square foot garden-all of them will be gone.  They will be completely decomposed.  The result is a rich, vibrant and healthy soil that you can grow just about anything in.  Because you never walk on your soil and you’ve amended it with compost you no longer have a need for heavy equipment like rototillers, shovels, etc.   That soil is going to plump right up.  It’s so lose, friable and even fragrant that you can almost hear it saying back to you ” please plant me!”  Start thinking of having your own square foot garden this year.  It’s the only way to go.  No weeding, no heavy digging, no hard work, no kidding….

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Vertical gardening…

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adds a third dimension to your garden that really sets it apart from any other kind of gardens in your neighborhood. I grew a couple of these birdhouse gourds one summer. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with all of them outside of using them for, well, birdhouses. I ended up using two of them and giving a few more away. We’re all looking for little ways to make some extra cash so I ended up selling the leftover ones on eBay. I think I sold them for $15 dollars each, and I had several of them to mail off. Who would have ever thought that someone would pay money for those things? It turns out that there are people who do this for a hobby with the different kind of gourds. With these they coated them with some kind of varnish, drilled holes in them, painted them, and then put them out for birdhouses or bird feeders. Wow. That was a surprising thing. As we speak I am trying to sell two of them that I had from last year that I forgot about. They are a little smaller but someone will end up buying them. If I remember correctly I think I planted 1 seed per 2 square feet. You can see it really starts to grow. There are a lot of advantages of vertical growing. For me, I don’t have to worry about going out there in late summer and turning my ankles on vining plants covering the ground. Anything that vines you can grow vertically. That includes the obvious things like tomatoes(indeterminate varieties), cucumbers, all the varieties of squash, etc. When I teach I always get someone who wants to argue about zucchini. “You cant grow zucchini vertically.” Yes, you can. And, you can do it in one square foot to boot. The argument always goes away when they see the pictures of it. The other advantages are that you get better air circulation, better exposure to the sun, and you end up giving your garden a cleaner look. Who wants to step over things while your making your way through the garden? If you have any critters causing trouble it’s also easier to find them on the vertical tower. Otherwise you end up looking all over the place in your garden if you have any kind of infestation. For squashes, I usually don’t even waste time starting them early inside-I just plant the seeds right in the soil. There have been some years when I have made an arbor with vining flowers. I think the most dramatic time I did it was when I grew angels trumpet. The variety I grew that summer flowered at night with silver and blue pedals. It is a very, very fragrant flower-every bit as aromatic as something like nicotiana, which I also love to grown every other year.  It made me want to go out and spend time in the garden when it was getting dark-a strange thing.  But, it smelled so good!   So, don’t limit your vertical garden to just veggies-let your imagination run wild. Give vertical gardening a try. Once you’ve been successful with it you’ll wonder why you haven’t been doing it all along….[ois skin=”below post”]

My square foot gardening blog is…..

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starting to get a lot of visitors. I finally broke the 1,000 visitors per month in January which is big news for me. I haven’t figured out all the tricks on SEO’s and all of that stuff yet to drive traffic to my site and I’ll probably never will figure it out. I’m in the age bracket where all this html and css stuff is very difficult to pick up and learn. Hopefully it’s been helpful to those who have visited. I’m sure getting a lot more visitors than I am comments, and I don’t know what to think about that. So, please post comments if your so inclined. Let me know what you like, what you don’t like, suggestions, etc. However, the big news is this-I sent a copy of my ebook to Mel Bartholomew. He liked it so much that he is selling it on his website-the official SFGF site. He also asked me if I would like to write a book with him. What would you say if he asked you that? So, stay tuned on that one. I’ll be meeting with him later in the month to talk about all sorts of fun things. I ordered some seeds today from Johnny’s. Its going to be a great year, and it’s one that will start a little earlier than usual. I have a reason for doing this that I will talk about later in the year. I do want to get those sugar snap beans in the garden as soon as possible so I will be putting my plastic covers on in another week to start heating up the soil. I’m going to be posting more often as time gets closer and as the season is upon us. My goal with this posted picture wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. I wanted to show an example of square foot gardening efficiency. As you look at the sugar snap peas, you will notice that they are right in the middle of the squares. To increase the production of these 4 squares what I should have done was this: grow the sugar snaps closer to the back of the garden. Then you will have room to grow 2 heads of lettuce right in front of each square. Or, you could grown carrots, onions, etc.-whatever you like. Now instead of harvesting all those sugar snaps out of 4 little squares, you also would be able to harvest 8 heads of lettuce. I’m pretty sure I have a picture of this very thing in my gallery. You can do all sorts of tricks like this to maximize your space in a square foot garden. If you can build a garden box, fill it with Mel’s mix, and then add a grid, you too can have a garden that gives you a lot of satisfaction…not to mention the good eats it provides….

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