Tag Archives: lettuce

The square foot garden winter harvest

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leeks 091513Here in zone 6 it’s time to fill all your empty squares with things you like to eat during the winter. Most of us try to avoid our gardens during this usually bleak time of year, but you don’t have to. By using the right crops that love cool or cold weather and providing the minimal amount of protection, you can be eating out of your garden all winter. And the eats are good too!! The varieties are a little different than many are used to, but my guess is you’ll love the taste of virtually all of them. If you don’t have your garden filled up yet, you still have a couple of weeks to get many of the crops in that will thrive during the winter months. Leeks, turnips, parsnips, lettuce, spinach, mache, claytonia, mizuna, minutina, arugula, pak choi, raddichio, carrots, etc. are some of the things I grew successfully last winter. I’ll be having my last gardening workshop of the season this weekend if you live locally. Bring a friend and come on out. Visit my website for more information. I’ll be having a one of a kind class during the first week of December. You’ll be hooked when you see it then…[ois skin=”below post”]

Summer lettuce, lettuce, and more lettuce

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july 20, 2013 lettuce mixI’ve written a lot about growing your own lettuce right through the hottest months of the summer. Here’s a picture of a nice mix of salad greens that’s been grown in temperatures of 95+ for the last 3 weeks. If you do nothing to your lettuce in this weather two things will happen. First, it stops growing-almost in hibernation stage. Second, the plant will turn bitter. I’m working on my second ebook in which this will be the subject-how to grow great tasting lettuce in hot weather. It’s almost complete and should be around 20-25 pages in length. I’ve had great success doing this for many years using 4 or 5 techniques which I’ll be sharing. All with nice looking picture along the way. This thing about paying $2.50 or more for an organically grown head of lettuce doesn’t have to be. I’ll show you how to do it for pennies, and how to do it right through temperatures that otherwise make it virtually impossible to do so. It will be very cheap-$3.99. That’s a small price to pay to learn how to do it right. I’ve found some good practical advice on the internet about this, but I’ve been able to add 2 or 3 additional techniques that I do to make it even more likely that you’ll produce a non-bitter tasting head of lettuce during the summer months. I hope you’ll give it a look when it’s here.[ois skin=”below post”]

June carrots-delicious

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june carrotsPulled a head of black seeded simpson lettuce and chard tonight along with some new carrots.  I grow 4 varieties of carrots-one that’s a smaller-sized carrot for early in the season, another that’s the size of these carrots shown in the picture, and then two that are larger, storage type of carrots.  For the early crop this year I grew minicor-which were really good.  They came up in about 55 days.  The picture shows Napoli-and they are really good.  In other places I’ve got Mokum and Scarlet Nantes-both excellent tasting varieties that will be ready in the fall.  There’s something about carrots right out of the ground-it almost ruins buying carrots at the store-at any time of the year.  One square will give you 16 carrots….unless, of course, you know the ninja secret for them….

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Dinner tonight

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twe evening dinner salanova, butter chard, carrots 061813Everything is coming up like mad right now with our 90+ degree weather. I went out and pulled some carrots(minicor), some butter chard, and some lettuce. And the lettuce didn’t cost me $3.00 a head at the fancy stores. You can grow this for pennies and you’ll never, ever beat the taste of freshly harvested lettuce. I rinsed, cleaned and dried it, then made us a tasty Caesars salad. I usually have a batch of Caesars salad dressing made up in the refrigerator. For those who love Caesars but end up being disappointed by the store-bought dressings, you ought to buy my ebook. Although the book is about square foot gardening, it’s got a great recipe in there for Caesars salad dressing. It’s a shortcut version-one that you’re not slaving over when guests arrive. It’s made ahead of time, and it’s very good. You can add as much anchovy paste as you want, or you don’t have to add any. You won’t go anywhere that you’re not asked for the recipe. Oh yes-the things that the lettuce, carrots, and chard are resting on? Whelatgrass. I hate the stuff, but I grow it for a few people who love it. I’m telling you, square foot gardening is the easiest way to go.

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Salanova

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salanova 061013A brand new item from Johnny’s-this is Salanova. It’s been sold as a great tasting new “mix” that’s available. Given the results from our gardens, I agree. This stuff tastes excellent! Look at that, 4 perfect heads of lettuce-no room for weeds, no pests, just delicious lettuce. It’s made to be mixed in with other salad greens more than as a stand-alone lettuce, but I’ve used it as a stand alone for the most part. It’s a bit pricey, but I’ll be ordering a lot more. Just like everything else, the more you order the cheaper it gets. I think I paid 7 or 8 dollars for 25 seeds. It was so good I ordered the 100 seed packet. Give it a shot.

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