Tag Archives: lettuce

Winter garden makes it through

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This will be a short post about the tasks I’m doing now. Really, its all just preparation. This is the time to order seeds and to warm up your soil. We can still count on some snow and freezing temperatures but spring time is a couple weeks away.

For our climate, there is little advantage in planting before April 1st. I’ve done the experiments of planting on January and February 1st, Presidents day weekend, and the first week or two in March. When I compare that to what I plant the first week of April, it’s obvious that the extra work doesn’t get you much. Many of the crops don’t make it, and the ones planted in March easily catch up to those planted earlier.

I like to plant, spinach, chard, radish, bok choi, and some different kinds of Asian greens such as tatsoi and tokyo bekana. These are easy to grow and are direct seeded. April 1st marks the time for me to begin the summer crops: tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, and peppers.

The picture you see is the winter garden. I planted that in late summer, covered it, and did virtually no work. I don’t think I even looked underneath the cover for 2 months! Its loaded with claytonia, corn salad, green onions, rosemary, spinach, lettuces, etc. I’ll post this later in the summer time for those who want to learn how to do it, the timing, and the crops to grow successfully[ois skin=”1″]

Preparing for spring

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A little hard to believe-tomorrow we begin the first day of 10 hours of sunlight. This means we’ve come out of the Persephone period and plants will now begin to grow. It will be slow at first but will pick up as spring approaches. There’s still a lot of winter weather to deal with but the garden is ready to be warmed up. Some of the garden has been over-wintered and looks very good.

I usually begin covering my garden with plastic the first week of February so the soil will be ready to plant by February 17th. This year I’ll wait until the first week of March. The reason? I don’t seem to get ahead by the earlier starting date but it does add to my workload.

The next couple of weeks I’ll be selecting and ordering seeds. If you’ve been on my site much, you’ll already know my favorite places to buy. Johhny’s, Burpee, Jungs, and Territorial Seed. There’s a local place I like to buy from-Mountain Valley Seeds.

Crops I’ll be planting will be my regular early spring crops: several varieties of lettuce, spinach, claytonia, beet greens, tokyo bekana, corn salad, chard, bok choi, and maybe radicchio. My cool weather herbs have always been cilantro and chives[ois skin=”3″]

Growing tomatoes vertically

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Here’s the short continuation to my last post. Using one of these, a t-post, is the perfect thing to grow your tomatoes vertically. They are solid and wont be blown over in 70 MPH winds, which is not the case with some of the cheaper and more flimsy aluminum posts that some folks will use. These cost about $5 each and will last forever.

The other important things to remember when using a t-post are: 1)growing indeterminate tomatoes, 2) keeping the suckers pinched back, 3) tying the tomato stem to the t-post every foot or so(I use velcro but string works just as well), and 4) buying the right size post. I buy 8′ posts and pound one foot of them into the ground, leaving 7′ above for the tomatoes to grow. They’re a struggle to take out of the ground by the time the season ends, but I think it’s the way to do it. My tomatoes will sometimes overshoot the tops of the post, in which case you have two options. The first is to do nothing and let them grow. My season is short enough that they don’t end up growing too much over the top. The second option is to cut them off as they overshoot the t-post.

I hope that gives you a good idea of what works for me. Speaking of what works, you ought to check out my new ebook. This is the season where it’s most applicable. As any gardener will tell you, growing summer lettuce is very difficult if you live in a geography that is hot and dry. If you live in a more moderate part of the county where you continue to get moisture through the season it might not be as hard. Lettuce seeds won’t even sprout once it gets to 80 degrees. This book explains the 5 techniques that I’ve used to successfully feed customers in our hot and very dry climate. For me, its a real downer to have vine ripened tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots ready but no lettuce. And once you’ve had lettuce harvested from the ground 5 minutes before consuming it, you’ll never want to buy store bought again[ois skin=”3″]

How does your cold frame grow?

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Here’s something fun to see. First picture(top)is October 15, 2016, second is 1/1/17, last one is 2/21/17. A simple sun box, not a cold frame, can do this for you as well. Nothing wrong with the cold frame, its just more work, more expensive, and fairly permanent. I’ve taken off the top sun box level for the last picture so you can see whats happened over the winter. Now I’ll begin to harvest whats in it. Good eating tonight!

I encourage everyone to grow their own food, even those in harsher climates that experience snow, below zero temperatures, wind chill, etc. It’s a rewarding feeling to come out after a hard winter, pull back the top and see whats underneath. I just began watering this box last week-thats 3 full months of no work! those wanting to see how easy a sun box is to assemble(and take apart), see my earlier post. So easy, and all made with wood material thats laying around the house.
Crops in this box are spinach, chard,and the lettuces of sweet repeat, allstar, and black seeded simpson.

One of the keys to growing is the soil. As I’ve said before, if the soil isn’t right, nothing else will really matter. If you live in the area and are interested in learning how to have really rich, fertile soil, I’ll be teaching class this upcoming Saturday. Composting is the answer. Once you learn the proper way to do it, you’ll ask yourself why you haven’t been doing it all along[ois skin=”3″]

My very small cold frame winter garden

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This is supposed to be a cold frame but it really isn’t.  I learned this idea from Mel Bartholomew many years ago, and he writes about it in his first book, which is a condensed version of what he wrote earlier in the publication of The Avant Gardener in 1978.  The article is long out of print so you wont be able to find it easily.  This is called a sun box.  A google search for sun box will give you nothing close to what this is.

What’s the difference between a cold frame and a sun box?  A cold frame is something that is usually fairly permanent, and usually fairly good sized.  It’s usually dig into the ground and placed at a low angle on the southern side of a yard to get as much of the sun as possible, especially in the winter months.  The back of traditional cold frames are much higher than the front and they can be pretty heavy and bulky.  It’s covered with a variety of things ranging from expensive, self venting tops to cheap things such as wood with plastic stapled to it to act as a protective covering over the top.  Cold frames can be very expensive or pretty cheap.

A sun box is different.  It is not dug into the ground.  It is not permanent.  The back is the same height as the front.  In fact, its nothing more than portable wood boxes that have been placed on top of each other.  Thats it.  They can be moved around, taken apart, added upon, etc. in about a minutes time.  They are great for last spring and summer.  When you tomatoes(or anything else) need to be hardened off and they begin to outgrow your cold frame, you’re almost forced to plant them in the garden.  All you need to do with a sun box is add another portably wood box on top of what you already have.  Then all I did was buy a $5 glass window at the Re-Store to place on top for protection.  We’ve had a tough winter so far with more coming.  As you can see, the salad greens have done amazingly well.  And I just had a small salad-it was wonderful.[ois skin=”3″]