if you’re in the same zone as northern Utah.  Now is the time to start thinking about really cranking things up in your SFG.  Things like lettuce, carrots, radishes, spinach, and onions should be planted if they aren’t already.  In the meantime, if your starting things from seed you should be thinking of everything else.  Tomatoes, flowers, cucumbers, etc.  Because most squash plants come up so quickly, you can grow them directly in the garden once the danger of frost is over.  I like to start my squash inside.  The extra few weeks of early growing gets them up earlier and gives your later forming fruit time to finish(especially things like banana and butternut squash.)  If you’re a serious SFGer and are willing to do the extra work of watching the forecast and covering with plastic at night and during colder days, you can start you cold things outside.  This does not include tomatoes, flowers, herbs, and squash though.  By the middle of may you should have everything in your gardens: all produce with the addition of direct seeding of beets and garlic, squash, beans, carrots, onions, and flowers.  If you run into weather you should be prepared to cover them for protection.  The one item I did not mention was potatoes.  This is all dependent on what you’re trying to do.  I like to grow red Pontiac potatoes and I like them large.  So I will plant those this weekend and let them grow until the first of November.  Some people like to grow new potatoes so they will start theirs anytime between now and the middle of May.  This don’t need the whole growing season since they ar pulled up when they are smaller.  The picture in this post shows what some of my seeds are looking like in my little pot maker cups.  It was taken a few days ago.  Of the first 24 pot maker cups I planted, 23 of them are up, with Heliotrope the only one not up yet.  This is only because Heliotrope takes a longer time to sprout.  The smell of this plant is great in your square foot garden.  Keep this one in mind if you’re looking for adding scent in your SFG…..

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The first think I’m doing is planting seeds with my new Pot Maker.  This is a nifty little gadget.  Here’s a way for you to use your own newspaper to make pots for your seeds.  No more of buying that plastic stuff that’s expensive and only last a year-unless you do a lot of work to take care of them during the off-season.  In which case they might last you two years.  You end up cutting newspaper in lengths of 10 inches by 3.5 inches.  Then, you fold them under the barrel and use the bottom to, in effect, crease the paper.  After you’re done you have a nice little pot to fill with soil and start your seeds.  This is the time to think about what kind of flowers you’d like to have in your garden.  Here in northern Utah we will be able to plant outside in about 6 weeks.  Six weeks out will put your plants at a good size to then be placed in your garden.  Also, start to think about what other things you’d like to grow that will take squares for the whole summer and fall.  Things like tomato plants need to be started right now.  If you’re buying transplants it doesn’t matter-you can buy them whenever your ready.  But b ready to cover them if the weather gets nasty.  Pepper plants, herbs, cucumbers, and squash are all things you can start within the next week or two-inside that is.  If you’re growing tomato plants from seed you’ll need to re-pot them once, maybe even twice.  It turns out that the more you re-pot with tomatoes, the better they do outside.  I think tomato plants are a little unique in that way.  I don’t know of another plant that can be handled that much and still be good when you’re done with them.  This picture?  It’s one square of what has come up in the Food Bank lettuce SFG that I’m growing.  This is Black Seeded Simpson.  Imaging that….64 heads of lettuce in a single 4X4′ garden box…..

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A whole bunch! I’ve done a little experiment. So far this year, this is what I have planted: 48 heads of lettuce, 45 spinach plants, 16 radishes, 9 onions, 16 carrots, 4 Swiss chard plants, 1 rosemary plant, and 32 sugar snap pea plants. This has been grown in 29-1 foot squares. If you did the math with this and planted these items as you would for a regular single row garden this would take up 57 feet. This is not including the 3 feet that most single row gardeners will use between rows when they plant, but let’s keep it simple. This is just in feet. I watered everything in my garden today using 15 litres-call it 15 quarts-it’s close enough. Let’s round up-this means my SFG used about 2 quarts of water per square. If the single row gardener used the same amount of water on their garden(a huge assumption given the fact that their soil wont be even close to yours as far as water retention)to water the same plants, that would amount to 114 quarts! 114 vs. 16 quarts? That’s a reduction of about 86%! Well, what if your single row gardener didn’t have the same soil as you do and had to use more water-a very strong possibility? I hope you can now see why us SFGers say we reduce the water we use in our gardens verses water used in a traditional single row garden by 90%. Reduce, recycle and reuse…..

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