Category Archives: Summer gardening

My small SFG-CSA

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I’ve had so much fun this spring and summer growing the tastiest things ever. And getting ready  to have a great fall and winter garden. I’m able to grow enough in my 184 square feet of garden space to provide 3 local restaurants with things and 4 families. I can never compete with the food vendors to provide all their restaurant needs. Each week they get a small quantities of just picked cherry tomatoes, one wants English cucumbers, they all get different herbs, one gets kale, and two of them get microgreens. They buy because of the superior taste and the chefs know it. Spring time is very different. But, just picked fresh will beat any vendor item. It’s not farm to table for them-it’s garden to table. 

Yesterday my families got what you see in the picture. Enough lettuce for 5-6 side salads, 4 slicing tomatoes, an acorn squash, an English cucumber, and a sprig of basil. Next week they will get the same but with the addition of a small quantity of red pontiac potatoes. 

Is it just me or is inflation at the top of most people’s worry? Why not have a garden, learn how to do it in the most efficient way possible and save money. Lots of money. And have a better eating experience. The English cucumbers are absolutely out of this world. Our two year old granddaughter had never tasted cucumbers. I had about half of it sliced into pieces with ranch dressing next to it. She tasted it and all we heard for the next 15 minutes was “more.” 🙂 The only reason she stopped was because she was all full! 

 

Hot summers and growing lettuce in your SFG.

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Growing lettuce in the hot parts of the country can be a challenge. There are some like me who want that delicious, freshly harvested lettuce when the cucumbers and cherry tomatoes start  to arrive. 

We’ve had a really hot summer. A solid week of 100 plus temperatures, and maybe 2 weeks of 95-100 degree days. More of them are coming too. You can grow continue to grow lettuce if you know a few tricks. First and foremost is the soil. There is no soil as great as what we have in the SFG method. I’ve got an ebook that discusses the points needed to successfully grow lettuce right through the heat of summer. 

This is a summercrisp called Mottistone. I bought it from Johnnys years ago and now I see it’s no longer available on their site. I don’t know why this happens? You find a great variety of something only to return at a later date to discover it’s no longer there. This is a great tasting summer lettuce. Some will think the speckles are disease issues but that’s not the case. You can still find Mottistone seed. I found it on Amazon, which I personally wouldn’t do. Too many complaints from people thinking they bought a variety of something only to learn that it wasn’t at all what they were expecting. But you can find it here: https://viridishortus.co.uk/Lettuce-Mottistone-TZ-0281-615-05g. 

As summer is beginning to leave us, it’s probably a little late for summercrisps. Order for next year. Keep your seeds in the refrigerator and give it a try next summer. 

Delicious food out of the square foot garden

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If you’ve never had the experience of growing and eating your own food, you’re missing out. The taste is better. The quality is better. It’s healthier. In the SFG the soil reigns supreme, which greatly affects the taste of the food. And it’s also more economical. Growing your own food is like printing your own money.

This past week I harvested some leeks and turnips. The recipe I was making-a leek/turnip soup, called for more turnips than I had, so I made up the difference with a few radishes. I’ve not grown this radish variety before but it was outstanding. It’s Red Head from Territorial. And the soup-it was outrageously delicious. 

One of these days I’m going to have a SFG class at my home and combine it with a lunch, where others can taste what things are like coming out of the garden. All I have to do is serve a salad and you’ll be hooked. Fresh off the vine cherry tomatoes, a few slices of a European cucumber, candied nuts, a thin slice of red onion, and some homemade croutons to go along with one of the 28 different varieties of lettuce that I grow. It doesn’t get any better than this. Coming soon. 

This past week I upped an order from Johnnys which include 3 different types of salanova lettuce. It holds up very well in our hot summers once you know the 5 tricks to have lettuce available during July and August. And, now is the time to think about summer lettuces. Give salanova a try. 

Peppers in the SFG

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Peppers have always been good in my square foot gardens, but they just come on so late in the season. I began sprouting these on March 1st. Eight days later they were ready to be put into pot maker containers where they grew for 6 weeks. I probably should have only left them in there for 5 weeks. They’ve now been put in their final bigger pot maker container where they will grow for 3 more weeks before being ready to plant outside. Maybe 4 weeks depending on the weather. It’s been a very roller coaster spring here in northern Utah. 

Peppers are slow growers. You can certainly buy them at the nurseries and skip all the work you’ve done inside for months. I do it because I can’t find this variety anywhere in the garden shops, and we love them. These lunchbox peppers start to really produce toward the end of summer. And when they do, it’s prolific. I first discovered these peppers at Costco many years ago where you can buy them pretty cheap. But, who knows how they’ve been cared for? Plus, they’ve been on a truck from a location that’s probably 1,000 miles away. We’d rather eat them fresh right out of the garden. Nothing matches the taste of home grown. 

An experiment with green beans in the square foot garden

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I’ve always grown beans, lots of them. You name the variety and I’ve probably tried them. Blue lake, Fortex, Provider, Kentucky blue, slenderettes, tenderettes, both pole and bush varieties. 

The thing I don’t like about each of these is you have to stay on top of them. Wait a week too long and you end up with tough, fat pods that don’t taste very good. And it’s easy to do because they grow so fast. Even still, if you don’t harvest in time the plant begins to shut down production. 

This year I found the bean I will grow from here on out. They are French filet beans. Smaller yes, but more forgiving, and even better, they taste fantastic. You can harvest these beans smaller. And if you miss it by a week they don’t get fat and tough. These are the baby gourmet green beans that come out of the fanciest restaurants.