Fun stuff in the garden

tatsoi and eliteWent out earlier this morning, pulled off the floating row cover and looked at my plants after a 12 degree low last night.  I wasn’t sure what kind of damage I would find to my plants but everything looks really good.  That’s tatsoi on the left-a great tasting Asian leaf for salads or even better for stir-fries.  On the right is Simpson Elite-a standard lettuce we enjoy growing because of its taste and simpleness to grow.  After this evening we will have low temperatures in the mid 20’s for the next 10 days.  It looks like spring is on it’s way.  And by the time my friendly neighbors have their gardens dry enough to rototill-which I never have to do-we’ll be well into eating what we’ve been growing.  Lots of fun-the easy way-square foot gardening.

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Early spring season starting

covered SFG 0217It’s all about bed preparation for me right now.  This shows my SFG beds covered in plastic.  The first bed in the foreground, which isn’t covered, is my asparagus bed.  No need to cover that.  Then you can see my 2X16 bed on the left, my 4X16 bed on the right, followed by my covered leaves.  You can’t see what’s behind that-an uncovered 3X3 strawberry bed, but then you can see a covered 4X4 box.  If you look hard enough you’ll see a tomato tower in the back.  That’s a 1X4′ box that I use for 8 heads of lettuce and vertical crops like tomatoes, pole beans or squash.  That’s covered too.   I’ve got a bunch of things ready to go out into the garden, but a few of the boxes aren’t quite ready yet. These were the boxes that were in the shade all winter and have been de-thawed in the past week or so. I’m holding off on putting anything in the garden right now. Starting tomorrow(Tuesday)we have snow in the forecast for seven days straight. I was starting to get bothered about this, but I have to remind myself, it’s still February. What a bummer. I’m thinking after that we should see a marked improvement in the evening temperatures. So right now I’m sprouting all kinds of lettuce seeds, pac choi, arugula, radicchio, and swiss chard. My two early tomato plants are about 8 inches high right now and looking very good. They’re especially made to grow in greenhouses, which these will go into later this week. In a couple of weeks I’ll be starting to post youtube instructional videos. I’ll start at the beginning and move on from there-how to construct a good box, gathering items for the compost bin, making the perfect soil, making a grid, etc. I hope you’ll come back to visit.[ois skin=”below post”]

It was hot!

sfg thermostat2I’ve been using a different weighted plastic this year to get me through the winter. Usually I’ve used a 6-mil plastic but now I’ve got a heavier duty commercial plastic covering my square foot gardens. The sun came out early today and it was 43 when I got home from work. I’d been used to plastic covers increasing the temps about 30 degrees warmer than the outside air. The thermostat showed about 82-a 40 degree increase. There’s a lot of things that can grow at that temperature, and the things growing under there right now probably aren’t the ones that can. I had to make sure that I vented it-in this case I just pulled the plastic off about half-way so it stayed fairly warm underneath but protected from the wind. So far things are growing nicely under the plastic-regardless of the harsh winter we’ve been experiencing.[ois skin=”below post”]

Some of the greatest tasting lettuce ever

skyphos nateOn the recommendation from the folks at Johnny’s Selected Seeds, I was convinced to try this variety of lettuce 2 or 3 years ago. They commented that this was one of their most popular and best tasting lettuces they sold, so I tried it. Our family loved it, and so did those customers I grew it for. In fact, it’s become my most requested lettuce of the growing season. It’s a variety called Skyphos. It’s not a warm-weather lettuce so it won’t do well in the middle of summer. But it’s easily grown in spring and fall. As is typical with the square foot gardening method, there will be four heads of lettuce per square. This was not planted with transplants or sprouted seeds. This was part of the original test to see if I could grow this in what has now been described as the coldest January in Salt Lake City in 50+ years. It was directly-seeded right into the soil. It’s grown a little slower than I would’ve liked, but that’s to be expected with hot cold it’s been. Six weeks away for this to be ready. JSS has a brand new variety of lettuce this year that’s supposed to be even better-something called Salanova. I’ve got my seeds ready to plant with that go for in a few days.[ois skin=”below post”]

Transplanting a few things

tatsoi nateI’m now getting ready to plant these 2 squares-one with tatsoi and another with lettuce-Simpson elite. Tatsoi is a very good tasting Asian green that’s easy to grow in low temperatures. Mixing it with other salad greens adds  great variety. Because of the ease in growing these, I’ve now grown 3 or 4 different varieties of Asian greens. (Does that need to be capitalized? It’s not a city) There’s no use in trying to grow summer things in winter, even if you have a heated greenhouse. You could if you wanted to, but it’s a lot of extra work(and money) for something that might not work anyway. I’m not one to fight the seasons-with the exception of lettuces. I will grow those through the dog-days of the summer heat. It’s more work, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to enjoy the produce and vegetables that I’m buying from even the best produce stores. Simpson elite is a new variety for me-I’ve always grown Simpson, but I think I read that elite does better in warmer weather so I’m giving it a shot. Using my trusted trowel-1 of only 3 tools you’ll ever need in a square foot garden-I’ll just drop each of these potmaker cups into the soil, give it a light water, cover with row cover, and away we go. Four-five weeks away from our first harvest of the season. And I can’t wait.

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