Tag Archives: minutina

Winter planting the square foot gardening

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Winter gardening in northern Utah isn’t really gardening. It’s all harvesting. That means a little extra planning. The important point isn’t really the average first frost date but rather the first day we go under 10 hours of sunlight. For us, thats around November 14th. This is just one of my 4X4 SFG boxes planted for the winter. So far, the timing looks good. What’s in there? Lots. Three different kinds of lettuces, green onions, arugula, minutina, claytonia, spinach, turnips, mache, red pontiac potatoes, and tatsoi. They all love the cold and even freezing weather, except the lettuces. The baby leaf lettuces will easily make it right through the winter months. Get those gardens planted!!! 

My square foot winter garden is here

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snow covered winter gardenCan you believe there’s a garden back there? That’s thirteen inches of snow my low tunnel endured! Wow! We had more snow yesterday than we did all of last year. I had several low tunnel/winter gardening classes at my home this fall. Several of the participants doubted that the hoops would be strong enough to withstand a serious snow storm. I assured them that it would and here’s the proof that it does.

Often times in northern Utah after a snow storm we get very cold night temperatures with the clear skies. I like to keep the snow on the hoops as an insulator for a couple of days until it warms up a bit. To do that I use a broom to sweep the snow off the top. Another thing about the snow is that it seals the tunnel completely along the base of the garden. Thats perfect for me because I don’t bury any of my coverings. I keep the material taut and then weigh everything down with 5 gallon bucket filled with water-which are now ice. These are certainly heavy enough to hold things in place. And this winter we’ve had 2 days of 50 and 70 MPH winds.

Tomorrow I’ll broom a portion of the snow off and lift the top up to harvest enough salad greens to last us for a few days. It’s easy to do because the protective covers have been pulled tight along the length of the hoops. Lettuce, spinach, mizuna, and carrots will be the choice this week. Spinach, claytonia, and chard next week. A different lettuce, minutina, beet greens, and tokyo bekana the week after. I wish I could tell you how fun it is to eat seasonally like this.[ois skin=”1″]

Square foot garden-low tunnel class coming up

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square foot garden low tunnel for the winter monthsYou northern Utah gardeners-if you’re wanting to learn how to have a winter garden or one that gets going 6-8 weeks earlier in the spring, this class is for you. You bring the number of 1/2″ EMT pieces and I’ll bend them for you while you’re here.

These structures are rock solid, mobile, and are much less expensive than traditional greenhouses. You won’t have to worry about some of the problems with permanent greenhouses either-like excessive salt build up-because they’ll be taken down in the spring time. These are sun driven systems only. You won’t be needing any fancy heating or water systems.

If you are interested in attending please contact me. We will begin promptly at 10:00 A.M. and end at 10:30 A.M. No Utah time arrivals please!

Although you will see what my square foot gardens look like, there will be no SFG instruction at this class. Its specifically how to construct a low tunnel only. You can learn more about the class here.

In 148 square feet?

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TWE-getting it ready for winter3We’ve had 3 or 4 significant frosts already.  I’m getting ready to cover this structure with greenhouse plastic.  I’ll only then be using a weighted floating row cover to put over the crops.  As we head into winter, this is what’s growing in just 148 square feet of garden space: 20 pounds of potatoes, 108 heads of lettuce, 8 arugula plants, 320 carrots, 117 spinach plants, 36 mizuna plants, 45 claytonia plants, 4 minutina, 24 komatsuna, 27 mache, 80 radishes, 36 beets, 48 turnips, 44 Swissl chard, 9 onions, 36 chives, 16 radicchio, 63 leeks, 2 kale plants, 20 poc choi, 2 parsley plants, 1 rosemary plant, 45 tatsoi, 36 kohlrabi, and 4 plants of cilantro.  We’re ready.

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The seasons first SFG workshop

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sfg workshop prep 330It’s always a little tricky to see how early you can be ready to pull off one of these square foot garden workshops. Today was perfect-about 60 degrees, even warmer as we finished, and sunny. To fit one in by the end of March is pretty good for us. I spend 3 hours on this workshop and by the time we’re done, people leave with a small gift, and they know everything to have a great square foot garden. All the advanced techniques are discussed and shown, along with a few “tasty” treats along the way. I was lucky enough to have 3 suckers from a tomato plant that I’m growing. I simply cut it out and rooted it in one of my potmaker cups and gave them away. This was a Sun Gold cherry tomato plant-one of the sweetest tomatoes you’ll ever taste. I think they all got to taste arugula, mizuna, tatsoi, and minutina. Some of them were pleasantly surprised by the flavor of these lesser known salad greens. We also had someone who wasn’t ready for the arugula pepper taste-when you grow it in cooler weather it tastes strikingly different that those varieties that have been grown in warmer soil. If you’re interested in learning more about these workshops, feel free to contact me. All participants have already attended a 90-120 minute introductory class so we don’t have to waste a lot of time answering questions about content that they’ve already learned. I was able to have an unbelievably great garden last year. I think this year it will be even better-you never stop learning how to do things.

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