I got a phone call from Mel Bartholomew several weeks ago asking if I would be interested in test running a new product he is thinking about selling through the SFGF website.  Its a season extender type of product and it arrived at my home in two parts.  The first part is the actual material used to cover the garden which is the white bundle in the picture below.  I can’t describe what it’s made out of very well.  It is made in Australia and it’s not plastic.  It’s not a vinyl product either.  At a later date I will snap a picture of it and post it.  It’s very interesting material.  All I can tell you is that the inventor was thinking about a way to keep all those nasty white butterflies away from your cabbage and brussel sprout plants.  From the looks of it, I think he’s going to be very successful.  Not sure of price or when it may become available.  A few weeks later another box arrived-from Japan.  This had all the working parts which the cover will be attached to.  There are a lot of pieces in there, and I’m not sure where to start.

But, no worries!  Here’s the instructions that explain it all!

What’s that?  You can’t read it? That’s alright-let me give you a closer look

If anybody around here speaks Japanese I’m all ears.  As a matter of fact, I was just looking at the AWSTATS in my c-Panel and it shows that I actually had one visitor from the country of Japan!  So, if you’re reading this be sure to contact me. This reminds me of  past Christmas Eves-when I would be assigned to put together doll houses, bikes, other toys, etc. that would come with instructions that I could never read or that I couldn’t follow by the pictures they sent.  Or, they were missing one part that prevented me from trying to figure it out.  Like those days, I will get this-it’s just going to take me a while.  In all seriousness though, I think this one is a real winner.  Please comment if you could…happy New year to all….more to come…

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A look at one of the compost bins today.  You will be able to see a bunch of things in there-pineapple, egg shells, avocado, tomatoes, zucchini, egg shell container, etc.  I will empty the contents of my paper shredder into the bins as well.  This starts to go a long way toward that goal of getting at least five different sources of compost to make a great growing medium.  When you combine other things like dried grass, coffee grounds, leaves, banana and potato skins, etc.  you begin to see how easy it is to make homemade compost that turns out great.  After the initial purchase of peat moss, vermiculite, and Garden and Bloome compost, I have never had a need to buy more compost.  I have done this for over a decade now.  I do turn it several times a week during the growing season, but its well worth the effort.  During the winter, I just empty everything out things in the bins and don’t bother turning it over because its so cold in the winter.  There’s a lot more I add to my compost bins, but this gives you an idea.  By the time the weather starts to warm, my compost bins really start heating up.  In a matter of a few weeks I am able to produce all the compost I need in my garden boxes for the remainder of the gardening year.  Besides all the obvious things this does in terms of saving money and landfill space, the greatest satisfaction is knowing that you can make something at home that no store can come close to in terms of overall quality.  You should try it and see what you think.  One successful year of composting will have you asking yourself why you haven’t done this a long time ago…..

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With the gardens completely put away for the winter, I start to enter my least favorite time of the year.  I’m not sure what I will be posting for the winter months-I kind of feel like I need to add something, but not sure what.  I will be involved in some trial things Mel is looking at to add to his available products from the foundation.  Maybe I will just do some updates on those.  Two of these things should be a lot of fun.  I just received the instructions for one of them, and maybe I should put that on as a post because I will need to know if anybody here speaks Japanese.  That’s the language the instructions are written in.  But, the product looks very promising.  Its a special cover that is used to protect plants that help to heat up the gardens, stop them from getting too hot, and completely eliminate things like the white butterfly that seems to destroy brussel sprouts, cabbage, etc.  The Japanese instructions are to an apparatus that supports this growing cover.

 I just received the new Johnny’s Seed catalog.  Its my favorite one of all the catalogs that arrive this time of the year.  They have added quite a few new things in this one.  It looks like they have spent a lot more time on helping growers to increase their profitability with some additional ideas.  Those covers they sell for CSA’s look like a lot of fun.  But, I don’t have the room to do that, and I don’t have the time.   That is why I will be selling just one “share” of fresh produce and veggies to one family this upcoming season.  It will be an experiment, but I think I can do just as well as some of the local CSA’s.  I will provide a little more than what they normally receive.  One of the things I will be growing is strawberries.  The 3X3 red box you see in this picture was used for this last year.  But, I will be planting a new variety of strawberries-the ones that are bigger.  You can also see what I use to protect them from the birds.  It works great.  I made it to fit right over the box and to rest on the ground….

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Here it is the last week of November and Im still doing things out in the garden.  I will have a nice picture of a portion of the last of the ’11 SFG season.  It really turned out to be another bumper crop year for us.  As time goes on, I am always hoping to give some little tips that I have used in my square foot garden.  I know there are many people who have had the total opposite experience that I have had with a SFG.  As I make my way to other gardens and teach classes, this usually boils down to two basic and correctable mistakes folks make when attempting to grow a SFG.  I spend time talking about this in my new ebook which should be available in about another week.  Boy, this whole website, ebook, WordPress, e-commerce thing sure has a serious learning curve!  Its been hard for me but I’m starting to get little pieces of it.  The first thing I do at the end of the season is to remove about half the soil and put it in a plastic tub as shown.  With my pitchfork, I loosen up the existing soil in the box, making sure I get all the corners.I then dump a lot of composted material in the box.  This is made up of all the things in my compost pile(about 20 different items), shredded twigs and leaves, and horse manure.  That’s quite a bit of organic material to add.  I will spread this around evenly.  Believe it or not, this really smells good.  When this is done, I then take the left over soil that I removed earlier, and top the garden off.  All that is left to do is to make sure its leveled-out and let it sit for a few months.  This particular garden had 3 growing seasons-produce in the spring, carrots, beets, cucumbers,  and squash in the summer, and more lettuce in the fall.  As much as I like the looks of the vinyl box, I still think I prefer the wood.  This was given to me by Mel many years ago as a leftover because he was working on a new box design to sell that’s easier to put together.  And, he figured it out.  The vinyl boxes sold by the foundation are great-but a little expensive.  Then again, you never have to treat or stain them, so maybe its a pretty good trade off.

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