Category Archives: Spring gardening

Holiday gift ideas for the gardener

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green ice lettuceHow about some suggestions for the upcoming holidays? Since my birthday follows so close to Christmas it’s a fun time of year. I spend a lot of time reading through the seed catalogs in order to find new things to try. And, I usually try a lot! The folks who do the marketing for these companies-they are very good. One gets the idea after reading any description of seed packet that all of them are equally great. I don’t think that’s the case.
One of my favorite things to receive from family or friends are gift certificates to seed companies I love to buy from. There are many to choose from, but I’ve become partial to those I’ve done business with.
The picture for this post is a lettuce variety called Green Ice from Burpee’s. You can read the specifics of this variety here(read reviews.)  I’ve grown this for two yeas and I continue to be very pleased with it’s ability to withstand the colder temperatures of the early spring and late fall. It’s a crispy type of lettuce that tastes very good. I like to harvest for our daily salads by snipping a few leaves of several lettuce types. That way, the head lasts us longer and it allows us to have a very different tasting salad every night.  Green Ice has come back twice after the first snip of it’s outer leaves.
As we move into the winter months I’ll be making more recommendations of the items I’ve had success with and which do well in our climate-zone 6B.  Many of these will be different lettuce varieties.  It’s my favorite crop, it’s easy to grow, it’s cheap, and it tastes so good when just harvested from the garden.  You’ll hate buying lettuce from the stores after you’ve tasted your own.

And, you don’t have to limit yourself to seeds.  What about a friend or family member who is planning to have their first garden next spring?  They will need more than just seeds.  Maybe an entire seed starting kit would be the perfect gift for them with all the supplies needed to get them off to a great start?

 

The best thing about buying from catalogs?  No question-the great variety.  And with the way square foot gardeners plant, only using 2 or 3 seeds per hole, your 700 seeds of lettuce are going to last you for a long time [ois skin=”1″]

Square foot garden-low tunnel class coming up

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square foot garden low tunnel for the winter monthsYou northern Utah gardeners-if you’re wanting to learn how to have a winter garden or one that gets going 6-8 weeks earlier in the spring, this class is for you. You bring the number of 1/2″ EMT pieces and I’ll bend them for you while you’re here.

These structures are rock solid, mobile, and are much less expensive than traditional greenhouses. You won’t have to worry about some of the problems with permanent greenhouses either-like excessive salt build up-because they’ll be taken down in the spring time. These are sun driven systems only. You won’t be needing any fancy heating or water systems.

If you are interested in attending please contact me. We will begin promptly at 10:00 A.M. and end at 10:30 A.M. No Utah time arrivals please!

Although you will see what my square foot gardens look like, there will be no SFG instruction at this class. Its specifically how to construct a low tunnel only. You can learn more about the class here.

Planning your square foot garden

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braising greens: red and green mustard, hon sai tai, kale, and tatsBeing deep into the spring months, it’s time to now focus on what and when to plant for your summer garden. Choosing to not worry about wide swings in weather in certain locations leads some people to only have a summer/early fall garden. There’s certainly merit to that thinking. In the next several weeks the weather in our zone will start to really heat up. By then many will be done with all the tradition cool spring crops-spinach, lettuce, varieties of Asian greens, swiss chard, mizuna, etc.<br><br>
What to plant for summer? The first thing you’ll need to think about is the space needed for vertical gardening. In the square foot gardening system all vining crops are grown up on a trellis made out of 1/2″ electrical conduit. It’s virtually indestructible and will last a long time. This means crops like indeterminate tomatoes, squashes, pole beans, and melons will be growing up, not out. This method is highly efficient. By keeping your crops off the ground you minimize the damage by certain garden pests but also give your plants better air-circulation and exposure to the sun.

By knowing the food needs of your household you can plan for the quantities of each crop. Cherry tomato plants can bring 10-12 pounds of fruit throughout the growing season. Can you use that much? Can you use more? If so, how much more? Lets say your family will consume in the area of 35-40 pounds of cherry tomatoes this summer. That means you’ll plant 4 cherry tomatoes using just 4 square feet. And yes, you only need 1 square foot to grow a tomato plant that will be 7-8 feet tall by the end of summer. Just make sure you’re growing indeterminate plants, not determinant and keep those “suckers’ pinched back. You’ll do this for all your vining crops.

Along with these items you’ll need to plan all the other things you want to grow. Beets, carrots, beans, certain types of lettuce, basil, etc. Once you’ve figured that out you’ll arrive at the number of squares needed for this summer. If you’ve planned it out and find that you don’t have enough squares, you need more square foot garden boxes. If you’ve got a lot of squares left over, you’re garden is too big. We like to minimize the size of our gardens in the SFG system. We grow only what we need and what we love to eat. Our goal is to have each family member enjoy a fresh, just harvested salad every night of the growing season and nothing more. This eliminates the all-at-once harvest that’s come to be associated from most home gardens.

I’m beginning to empty out squares that have previously been filled with spring crops. I’ve got transplants of certain things ready to go right now. A typical summer garden for me might include the following: zucchini, bush beans, pole beans, cherry tomatoes, many squares of selected lettuce varieties, basil, peppers, spaghetti squash, green onions, carrots, swiss chard, and cucumbers. That will be the content of a single 4X4′ box. In another box I’ll have lettuce, melons, banana squash, New Zealand spinach, kohlrabi, pole beans, beets, and a transplanted rosemary plant. And what about corn? In my mind corn is a huge nitrogen and space hog. It takes up valuable space for too long and it’s dirt cheap in the summer. For those reasons I’ll let the farmers take care of the corn[ois skin=”1”]

Square foot gardening-the cloche

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tomato clocheI’ve always enjoyed growing tomato varieties that are difficult to buy locally. Because of that I order all my tomato seeds from various seed catalogs. This particular tomato is a “sun-sugar” and it’s very sweet. Like one of my customers said: “it tastes like grapes with a slight tomato flavor!” They have been transplanted once into bigger pot makers a week ago.

But we all want to be the first person in the neighborhood to harvest tomatoes. Some folks go out and buy large tomato plants that already have the yellow blossoms on them thinking they are closer to their summer dream. And that’s all it is-a dream. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, it’s very hard to have tomatoes by the end of June in zone 6. Look around at your neighbors and you’ll find that everyone starts getting tomatoes at about the same time. Still, I planted this outside today with temperatures in the low 70’s. But the night temperatures are still a bit cool-mid 40’s with one night predicted to be 39. I could just wait for a week but I don’t want to-I thought I might try an experiment. I’ve got a lot of extra plants growing inside in case it doesn’t work.

In the square foot gardening system we teach “recycle, reduce, reuse.” Don’t throw things away. I cut the bottom off a plastic orange juice bottle to be placed over the plant to act as a cloche. By removing the cap I can prevent the inside temperature from getting to warm. The other advantage of this is we had some stronger winds today. Not only does it protect against cold but also the wind-which is especially damaging to new plants. By late afternoon I put the cap on-trapping the heat of the day inside the container for some of those cooler evening temperatures. I’ll remove the cap first thing in the morning and let it warm up. In a future post I’ll share what other things I do with this kind of bottle.

For those who may not know, I also have a Facebook page under the same name as this blog. I hope you can visit-I post different things than I do here and I’m actually more active on that than I am on the blog. I try hard to put the daily happenings of my square foot garden on Facebook while spending time on some of the more specifics with the blog. My hope is that you can visit both as they augment each other nicely[ois skin=”1″]

Why use the square foot gardening soil?

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composting with leavescomposted and amended squareI’ve always commented on the importance of soil. It can make or break you. Your soil will be the most determining factor in having a successful gardening year or not. And all your friendly neighborhood gardeners? They complain bitterly throughout the year because nothing seems to grow very well back there. They keep doing the same things year after year and expect different results. I won’t tell you what the definition of that is!

But it doesn’t have to be that way! There is so much good information out there about soil. It’s not hard to learn about what it takes to have great soil Every year I see neighbors tilling their leaves into the garden during fall. Then they rototill again in spring when it’s usually still too wet and cold. They might add horse manure at this time. All this is very good except for the fact that there isn’t enough material in their amendments to substantially change the composition of their growing medium. Ten bags of steer manure covered over a plot of land that’s 30X40 feet doesn’t do much at all.

There’s no question that if you wanted to work hard at improving your soil you can get it. But it’s a lot of hard work. And knowledge. This is where your county extension folks come in. They really know their stuff! And after several years you might have that dream soil by following their direction.

My point is you can have perfect soil right away. Just three ingredients gives you that loamy, loose, and friable soil in about 15 minutes. No need to wait years to have that perfect soil. Coarse vermiculite, peat moss, and a good blended compost in equal portions(by volume not weight)are all you’ll need. And you can have that tomorrow without becoming a master gardener! No need to learn about acidity, soil composition, pH, etc. Just combine these ingredients and you’ll see just how easy it is to have that perfect soil without all the time, knowledge, and costs associated with things like limestone, ground powders, bone and blood meal, special fertilizer blends etc. Though it’s always a plus to have this extra knowledge, it’s not needed to have a great garden right now. I’ve been a square foot gardener for 15 years now and I’ve never had any soil issues. Ever. At this point my soil is 100% compost because those 3 ingredients mentioned earlier are long gone after this amount of time.

As you look around the internet at composting methods, you’ll learn about all sorts of ratio’s and formulas. While much of that is probably pretty good, why make it difficult? Coming to one of my square foot gardening workshops will prepare and teach you the simplicity of making great compost. And you’ll never be able to buy compost as good as you can make it. Not even close. So if you’re a northern Utah gardener looking for a better way to garden, think about attending my SFG workshop on April 11th. A quick email is all that’s needed to register. You’ll also learn the trick in the pictures above and what I’m doing. Good stuff Maynard[ois skin=”1″]