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. 

A brand new square foot gardening technique

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I don’t think I’ve seen this before and it came out of an experiment that i tried last year. And if it’s been done, I’d like to see the picture. I just needed to duplicate it, and I have. This square is still not done growing. Lots to go!

When I interned with the master himself-Mel Bartholomew, we did lots of things. For all lettuces, we always planted 4 per square. If there were some of the larger lettuces around such as something like Encino, we didn’t know about it or maybe Mel decided he didn’t want to grow it. But, if we had, that would have been planted at one per square because the packet says “thin to” 12 inches. 

This new planting is what I’ll call bunch or plug planting. This particular variety is such a favorite of mine. Five different kinds of lettuce. Not only does it taste great, it looks great. It started with an over-seeded winter sowing (see earlier posts.) When it was bulging out of the container, I started removing bunches, or plugs of lettuces and then planted them-4 per square. The end result? Look at my garden last year. Big and billowy lettuces of red and green all over the garden. We’ve had the best tasting salads around, we saved lots of money, and all we had to do was harvest and clean. I’m not paying the prices at the store for the low quality/quantity they have available. 

Come out to one of my classes. I’ll show you how to do it the right way as I was taught from the inventor of the system. I sure do wish he was still with us. He was way ahead of his time. I miss the phone calls we used to frequently have. I’d start asking questions, then he would start asking questions. We talked about doing so many things with the foundation-things that have, sadly, not come to pass. We would exchange ideas for hours sometimes over lunch or dinner. We’d talk about life, retirement, money, how to take the SFG system all over the world. We talked of travel, about the safety of the food supply. We talked of farmers, of gardeners, of the volunteers with the foundation. He knew my family. I knew about his. I knew about where he lived and what he did for a living, and why he came out of retirement twice. I knew how he became a millionaire. I saw how he saved money. I saw the interest he would take in others if they expressed an interest in learning about the SFG. I saw how he would talk to chicken, horse, and mushroom compost places. I saw how he talked to produce managers to gather things that would eventually be thrown in the trash which ended up being used for our many composting classes in Eden, Utah on the Montessori school grounds. I was also there when they told Mel the foundation was no longer able to be there, which helped prompt him to eventually move to live in San Diego. The last few years of Mels life-he didn’t even own a car! That wasn’t because he couldn’t walk because he surely could. “Why do I need a car?” he asked me. “Everything I need is within walking distance!.” So out went the car. This post is turning out to be all about Mel. Maybe I should have a dedicated post to just him? Man, I sure do miss him. 

 

Square foot garden potatoes

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There are probably a lot of ways to plant potatoes. For me, I don’t want to leave them out for several days before planting, and I don’t want to worry about hilling. This is the method I learned. Cut your seed potatoes so the each piece has at last 2 eyes. I bury them right into the soil, cover completely, and start watering. They are planted 6 or 7 inches deep and will be ready in 4-1/2 months. I like them big.

I spent $2.50 on 3 pounds of Red Pontiac potatoes. By the time I cut them up, I had enough for 8 square feet. That will yield somewhere around 45+ pounds when finished. And the taste? You’ll never beat them! 

My experience is that potatoes do best in garden soil, not so much in grow bags, tires, wood boxes, etc. These will start to pop up in about 4 weeks, and in the SFG, they are planted 5 per square. 

 

Putting old man winter to bed for a season

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For years it’s always been a problem to clean off the plastic which has covered my winter garden for 4-1/2 months. They’re a real mess. Melted snow mixed with mud, birds flying overhead, worms all over the place, your muddied footprints, etc. If you wash them down and don’t let them dry you end up with algae on the plastic when it’s time to use them again. If you don’t hose them down they look terrible with caked on mud, leaves, dirt, etc.

Using just spring clamps to hold the plastic down on each end and grow bags to hold the other ends down, I can easily wash front and back and let them dry in the sun. It only takes about 20-25 minutes to dry out. I have the back opened up so it doesn’t get too hot. Then it’s just a matter of folding them up and putting them away until needed. 

Hosing and cleaning plastic is always a challenge when you lay it on the ground. You have to anchor all the corners and then you have pooled water all over on the surface. You lift up and shake the plastic and then the wind catches it like a parachute. Having these quickly erected poly tunnels make things so easy. I can now clean my plastic without worrying about wind and pooled water everywhere. 

Another reason to take one of my upcoming fall or winter gardening classes, all of which will be posted right here on my blog.