Growing delicious lettuce

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skyphosYou can buy all the fancy lettuce in the world from some of the best stores(like Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Sprouts, etc.)around and you’ll never be able to find one that tastes like this. Even at these stores the produce-if it’s coming in from out of state(and most of it may be)-is at least a week old. You pull some of this lettuce, give it a good rinse, and serve and you’ll have folks asking “what is this?” Lettuce is so easy to grow unless it’s in hot weather. You can still do it, but it takes a little more work in terms of water and shading. You can also start them inside where it’s cooler and then put them out after 2 or 3 weeks which will save you from the direct seeding method. This is Skyphos lettuce from Johnny’s selected seeds. It’s one of our favorites. Growing this in your gardens will ruin it for you when you have to shop and pay those rip-off prices at the grocery stores. Learn how to do it yourself for pennies. Along the way you’ll learn to expect a much better quality of taste for produce and veggies.

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Utilizing all the space in a square foot garden

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efficiency tomato and barbados 060213Here’s a little something-this particular square has already been harvested. It held four-2 star lettuce heads of lettuce. Delicious stuff. I added several trowels full of compost, mixed it up a little, and then replanted. Since it previously held a leaf crop(lettuce), it was time to use either a root or fruit crop. I chose to put in a tomato plant-a fruit category. Knowing that it will take 4 weeks to get large enough to trellis up the vertical grow, I took advantage of the space in front of the tomato plant to grow two mini-heads of lettuce. This particular variety is called Dacine. It will be done in about 25 days. That’s good news too because it’s going to be hot here, and lettuce is hard to sprout and grow in weather that warm. I think you can see that they’ve already come up, and now I just have to keep it well watered and covered and it will be perfect. When the first frost hits sometime in September or early October, the tomato plant will be done and it will then be time for me to replant with a cool crop-another 4 heads of lettuce. By the end of the year, this one square foot will have produced 10 heads of lettuce and probably 10 pounds of cherry tomatoes.

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Gardening transition

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TWE garden transition5 -52613As I put my gardens away at the end of fall, I always get a little sad. It’s the end of something I really enjoy doing. I talked a lot about how much easier it is to garden a lot longer into the fall and even into the winter, but the change of gardening season is still a little bit of a bummer for me. As I get my summer gardens up and planted, I feel the same sadness about the departing spring. We’ve been eating mighty well around here all winter, and the spring has been equally as good. All those things that love warm weather are now in-at least a lot of them are. Gone are spinach, radishes, tatsoi, mizuna, and minutina. I’ve got a last harvest of arugula and 2 or 3 squares of bok choi left which will be gone in less than a week. I’ve still got a good supply of lettuce-after all, what good is it if you’ve got all those great tasting summer tomatoes and no lettuce? I’ll grow lettuce all summer, but it’s a lot more work to do that. I don’t mind because the quality of the food is just not equal with anything you can buy. So, it’s good-bye to spring and hello to summer. Tomatoes, lettuce, onions, carrots, peppers,, cucumbers, beans, chard, scallions, basil, cilantro, rosemary, chives, parsley, potatoes, squash, and zucchini are all in now. And more will be planted in the coming two weeks. Big news coming soon for me with my little side business.

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Tomato suckers

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sungold sucker 330By making sure you buy the right kind of tomato plants(indeterminant)you’ll be able to grow them until they get to be 7 feet tall or even higher. The second trick for growing vertical tomatoes is to pinch back the suckers. Many folks might ask: “what’s a sucker? How do I know if I’m pinching back the right thing? The sucker is coming right out of the middle of the joint that’s pictured. I’ve also heard it referred to as that which is growing “in the crotch.” It might be an odd saying but it seems to help folks understand what to pinch back. In longer growing seasons you can actually take this “sucker” and plant it somewhere else in your garden and it’ll grow an entirely new tomato plant all by itself. This is the key to grow your plants really tall by the end of the season. This particular tomato plant is from Johnny’s. The variety is Sun Gold, and it’s said to be the sweetest cherry tomato available-even sweeter than Sweet 100’s. Unfortunately, I put them out a little too soon and didn’t cover on a freeze and now they’re gone. I’ve got others growing that are close to the taste, but not quit. I hope the information/picture on the sucker helps out…

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Pretty good looking head of poc choi

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perfect head of poc choiHere in zone 6 we’re pretty much in the clear for anymore frosts or hard weather. As it starts to warm up-and it was 90 and high 80’s the past two days-it’s about time to start thinking summer garden time. I’ve got about another 3 weeks of harvesting all the leftover spring crops. Two nights ago I replanted 10 squares with summer crops. If you’re interested in an easy and great crop rotation plan, you might consider my eBook where I talk about this. It’s all easy and it minimizes the likelihood of pests, critters, and diseases. But now is the time to start planting things like tomatoes, beans, peppers, cucumbers, varieties of cut-and-come again lettuce, zucchini, the other squashes, and finally corn! I like to throw in a flower or two not just because of looks but to also attract pollinators to the garden. My preference for this is bachelor buttons. They do the trick, last a long time, and look great. As a side note, I’m now a bee-keeper. It’s been fun to watch and the greatest part is I don’t get stung! These bees are great for pollinating but they’re not aggressive and they don’t have a hive to protect. But they don’t make honey so I miss out on that one. I also miss out on bees stinging the neighborhood kids and creating a whole other host of problems.

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