Category Archives: Spring gardening

No thinning in the square foot gardens

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One of the many great spring crops to grow is arugula. Until recently, I’ve never been a fan. The reason? Too spicy!

I just happen to be out to dinner a couple of years ago at a nice restaurant. The salad was particularly delicious so I asked the server what the mixed greens were and where they got them. Turns out it was arugula. I was sure he must have been mistaken because there was no edge to it. Sure enough, thats what it was, mixed in with 2 or three other salad greens. I tracked down the farm where it came from(California) in an effort to find the variety. I was told they couldn’t tell me because of “proprietary reasons.” What? It took me a couple of weeks but I did find out the variety. In the meantime I learned a good lesson.

Arugula grown in warm weather and then harvested at something less than the baby leaf stage will always be more spicy. Grow it in cool weather and harvest it when young, and the taste is drastically different. This is how I’ve become an arugula fan.

Since arugula spacing says “thin to 4 inches” on the back of the packet, you would plant 9 of them in a square. By only adding one or two seeds per hole, you end up not hardly ever thinning. This is a picture of that: I might have to thin 1 plant. Look hard enough and you might see some claytonia that has overwintered and is trying to grow[ois skin=”1″]

Spring planting with vertical gardening in mind

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In years past I’ve planted my spring garden and put things wherever I wanted. When it became time to put in my summer vertical crops I often had to either wait for the existing squares to finish, which meant putting my tomatoes in a little late, or pull the plants which were in the square which hadn’t finished yet. For many years I’ve learned to put in the earliest crops where my vertical summer crops will grow.

What do you grow right now so your squares will be ready for summer vertical crops? All the cool weather crops: lettuce, spinach, chard, endive, kohlrabi, arugula, bok choi, mizuna, kale, even radicchio. etc. Radishes can go in later because they only take about 30 days. I know there will be 7 weeks until the summer crops go in, so this leaves me with time to grow all the things that love spring. Mel always taught to think one season ahead[ois skin=”1″]

Preparing for spring

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A little hard to believe-tomorrow we begin the first day of 10 hours of sunlight. This means we’ve come out of the Persephone period and plants will now begin to grow. It will be slow at first but will pick up as spring approaches. There’s still a lot of winter weather to deal with but the garden is ready to be warmed up. Some of the garden has been over-wintered and looks very good.

I usually begin covering my garden with plastic the first week of February so the soil will be ready to plant by February 17th. This year I’ll wait until the first week of March. The reason? I don’t seem to get ahead by the earlier starting date but it does add to my workload.

The next couple of weeks I’ll be selecting and ordering seeds. If you’ve been on my site much, you’ll already know my favorite places to buy. Johhny’s, Burpee, Jungs, and Territorial Seed. There’s a local place I like to buy from-Mountain Valley Seeds.

Crops I’ll be planting will be my regular early spring crops: several varieties of lettuce, spinach, claytonia, beet greens, tokyo bekana, corn salad, chard, bok choi, and maybe radicchio. My cool weather herbs have always been cilantro and chives[ois skin=”3″]

How about some snow with those tomatoes?

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In our geography you often hear that it’s safe to plant summer crops after Mother’s day. It’s snowed twice this week-after the tomatoes have been planted. And unless you’ve got some kind of protection, your tomatoes are no longer among the living.

Yesterday I delivered some tomato, kale, and lettuce plants to a customer. As I looked at his raised bed, you couldn’t help but notice the dead existing tomato plants, squash, and zucchini they had planted a couple of weeks ago during one of those early and rare 80 degree spring days. If you want to do that you can, but only if you’re prepared to cover your crops in case of a weather emergency.

These tomato plants made it through just fine with the use of an inexpensive cloche. I don’t use anything fancy but you can spend a lot of money on them if you want. I think its a good idea to have several of these handy items available for this very purpose. Its a good thing to use when you’re first putting in your transplants as well. It protects not just from the colder weather, but also from wind, which is also a bad thing for plants just starting out.

The other nifty think I like about using cheap orange juice container such as this? If night time temperatures will be getting to low, you can simple put the cap on. It’s important to take them off the next day, especially if the sun will be coming out. After 7-10 days, I’ll remove the cloche as the weather should be safe from here on out [ois skin=”3″]

Here’s one for you: lemon balm

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It’s been a while since my last post as I’ve been recovering from hip surgery, and now starting a new job.I thought I’d leave you with this picture of lemon balm. I’ve grown it for a couple of years and love it. I use it for basic things: adding it to the terrible tasting local tap water, making lemonade, etc.

This particular plant was grown last year and protected from the very harsh, cold, and wet winter we had.Lemon balm is a perennial from the mint family.It’s grown very well and now will be a challenge to keep it cut back in order for it not to shade the squares next to it.

I’ve just stumbled on to another use with lemon balm: extracts and tinctures.It can be used for all sorts of things that I never knew about.If you’re interested in learning more, click here.

Weather is warming up and that means it will be harder and harder to successfully grow lettuce!Thats what my latest ebook is about.If you’re a lettuce lover as I am and can’t stand the fact that you’ll be out of garden grown, freshly harvested lettuce to go along with those vine ripened tomatoes and cucumbers, then this is a book for you.Go ahead, it’s only $3.99, and you’ll learn the 5 tips to grow right through the hot summer months[ois skin=”3″]