Here’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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As 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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