Planning your spring garden

Leave a reply

tatsoi in the square foot gardenIn about 2-3 weeks the winter solstice arrives-markign the first day of winter and the shortest day of the year .  Sunlight hours are at their lowest and for many of us-even colder temperatures lie ahead that will take us through to the end of February.

 

Seed catalogs should be showing up in mailboxes very soon.  Not only is it a great time to pick out some specially selected seeds for family or friends, it’s also a good time to plan your spring garden.  It might seem a little early, but if you’ve got structures in place to protect you garden you might be able to direct seed as soon as the second week of February.  This is the time when sunlight reaches the magic minimum of 10 hours.

 

If you would like to begin planning, do you know what to plant and when?  Which crops do best in early spring and which are more suited for warmer weather?  If you need suggestions on how to get started, why not rely on some of the experts?  There are some quality apps that cost a few bucks, but there’s plenty of free advice available from a variety of sources.  Click here for one I used many years ago.  This particular one works on your computer but you can get apps that work on your iPads or smart phones.  These allow you to put in the size of your gardening area and then to plan the crops.  They even send you reminders of what to plant and when to start them which can help you eliminate a lot of the guesswork.  I like this one even better.

 

Go ahead-break open those catalogs and start spending, and planning.  It will get here faster than you think.[ois skin=”1″]
 

 

 

More lettuce varieties for your square foot garden

Leave a reply

arctic king lettuceI’m always searching for lettuces that can make it through the winter and taste good. Because the leaves get a light frost, I don’t worry much about the taste-it’s always good this time of year.

I received an email today announcing that Cooks Garden will now be rolled in to the Burpee catalog after a couple of weeks. Burpee owns Cooks so it’s not that big of a deal. I just don’t know how they’ll separate the specialty seeds for kitchen cooks as they’ve always done. You might have to search both of them to find this particular lettuce. It’s called Arctic King. This is my second winter season growing it. The very cold night temperatures haven’t seemed to bother it a bit. There’s no leave damage and it’s gotten to about 75% of its normal size. Learn more about it here. Order some and give it a try. You won’t be disappointed. It’s too late to grow from seed this time of year, but this performed very well in the spring garden as well.[ois skin=”1″]

Holiday gift ideas for the gardener

Leave a reply

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″]

Prepping for your spring square foot garden…right now

Leave a reply

fall bagged leavesMost of the work in the garden is now finished for the year.  Rain, snow, less sunlight hours, and  freezing temperatures have sent many of us inside until spring.  There might be one final thing you can do to finish cleaning up in preparation for next year.  That chore is collecting as many leaves as you can.  Its a great source of free organic material that comes from your yard.

The leaves from our property give me plenty for my needs to take me through the entire growing season(except for this year.)  You can rake them up or use your lawn mower to make it a little easier.  Once bagged, I like to put them all together and cover them with a layer of plastic.  This prevents any moisture from getting into the opening at the top of the bag and keeps your leaves dry.  By spring, if no moisture has entered the bags, you leaves will become light and brittle.  This makes it even easier to break down in the compost bin.  And, leaves are one of the best brown ingredients that you can have around to mix with your green material.

Some folks, such as myself, simply bag and keep their leaves for next year.  Others will till them into the ground now or next spring,  Either way, be sure to get as many leaves as you can this time of year.

Another excellent way to use your leaves next year is for a mulch.  In particular, it’s my ingredient of choice to help cool the soil around my lettuce during the summer.  It works like a charm.  Here’s a nice article that talks more about the benefits of leaves.[ois skin=”1″]

Lessons learned: compost in my square foot garden

Leave a reply

IMG_1761I’ve been able to make compost successfully for 15 years.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a square foot garden or a traditional garden, making your own is the best way to do it.  If done correctly, it’s 100% organic, and the best thing is it’s free!  All with material produced from yard clippings, leaves, and uncooked kitchen waste.

While doing an internship with the inventor of the square foot garden in Eden, Utah many years ago, we spent a lot of time making our own compost.  We’d drive around town to pick up horse manure from a nearby farm, some finished compost from a local store, mushroom compost from a nearby neighbor, and maybe a trip to a chicken farm where they manufactured their own compost.  We also had a supply of straw, brown corn stalks and shredded paper to round out the extra material.

We went to work making the compost-alternating green and brown material in layers, mixing it well, and then dampening the mixture with water as we went along.  We didn’t have a fancy compost unit-only free wood pallets for local businesses that were turned vertically to make the containers into a “U” shape.  We’d continued to alternate all ingredients until the pallets were full to the very top.

There are a few simple guidelines to follow that I learned from Mel, which I’ve written about previously.  But one of the biggest things I forgot about was not to use more than 20% of any single ingredient.  That was the source of my challenge this year. I knew something wasn’t right when I wasn’t making compost in my normal 6 weeks.

By mid-summer I didn’t have enough green or brown material because I used so much during the winter and spring season.  I had some but not  near enough to fill up the bin.  And, quantity is one of the things that you need to consider.

So, I went down the street to pick up some free horse manure and I bought a bale of straw.  I had read from an expert that this combination was one of the best to produce a good quality homemade compost.  I started with a layer of straw, then horse manure, and then the small contents I had from my kitchen.  I had no leaves.  I layered to the very top and did all the things I normally do to produce a great compost in 6 weeks.  But nothing was happening.  After 10 weeks I knew something was wrong.

In the meantime I began composting my other bin-this time with my normal ingredients-food waste, dried clippings, spent garden material, shredded paper, manure, and leaves!  Within a 2 week period of time it was easy to see that this pile was breaking down much quicker.  It was heating up, losing volume, and the individual ingredients were getting harder and harder to recognize.

It’s taken a long time to get to the point, but as I thought about the problematic compost pile-I remembered the lesson.  Never add more than 20% of any one thing.  And, leaves,which have been dried, work marvelously in the compost bin-much better than their larger straw counterparts.

As we teach in the square foot gardening system-use the 4 “M’s” to make great compost in as little as 6 weeks..  Mix, mash, moisten, and move [ois skin=”1″]