Tag Archives: mizuna

Salad in a glass

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salad in a glassAnybody ever seen one of these before? We’ve had it for a few years because our daughter refused to eat the garbage being served in high school. She wanted something fresh and nutritious. She came home one day with one of these gadgets. It’s a plastic glass that holds the salad greens and then the dressing is stored in the top of the cap. I was on my way to one of my SFG classes last week and didn’t want to stop anywhere for fast food. I went and found this and put it to use. All I needed to do now was go out into my square foot garden, pick some tasty salad greens and head off. I snipped some mizuna, spinach, some tatsoi, arugula, and 1 radish. I cleaned it all off, cut it up and put it all in this nifty little cup. I filled the top of the cap with poppy seed dressing, topped the whole thing off with a small amount of mozzarella cheese and croutons, and off I went. About 30 minutes up the street I pushed the top cap which releases all the dressing into the container, shook it a bit, and then went to eating. Clean, healthy, fresh, and some of the best tasting salad greens you’ll ever have-right at your fingertips. Who cares if I was eating it while driving?

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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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Mizuna in the square foot garden

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mizunaHere’s a little something for you-an Asian green called mizuna. If you’ve never grown it in a SFG-and I don’t know anybody that has around my neck of the woods, it’s a wonderfully lemon tasting green to add with all your other salad greens. You’ll taste something different but won’t be able to put your finger on it. I planted this successfully, from seed, in the coldest winter we’ve had in over 5 decades. We’ve actually been picking at it a little bit already. Based on how’s it’s grown I think the best spacing would be what you see here-9 per square. These will get larger so I think the 16 plants per square would be too close. I just can’t believe it’s grown this well-proving the point that if you plant the right kind of crops and match it to the right season you can probably grow all year long. Here in zone 6 that takes a little extra work, but I can tell you, it’s well worth it. Nothing like going out to the garden, uncovering a layer, and snipping off some freshly harvested salad greens. We’ve had some remarkable salads almost all winter long.

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Revving up your square foot gardens

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space 0313We had our 2nd day over 60 today and my garden is really starting to grow. I got home from work today and inspected my gardens. It was dry-even though it got a good watering this morning. This happened because of the wind-which really dries your soil out. I’ve come to learn just by looking at the color of the soil if it needs more watering. I think I’ll take a video of this so that I can show you what I mean. So I re-watered and planted a few things. Here’s a list of the items I’ve got growing at this time: 6 different kinds of lettuce, radicchio, arugula, spinach, swiss chard, radishes, pac choi, carrots, kale, mache, cilantro, parsley, tomatoes, brussel sprouts, mizuna, kohlrabi, and tatsoi. Everything is looking very good at this point. I’ve tasted the baby leaves of mizuna, arugula, and tatsoi and they are outstanding. It’s a lot different than lettuce, but it adds quite a bit of texture and flavor. You can see how nicely things are starting to fill in by this picture. This is spinach-and everybody discovers what variety is their favorite. “Space” is ours-the taste is excellent and like all spinach, is easy to grow. I’m still amazed at the prices some of these organic stores are charging for produce and veggies. Learn how to do it for yourself and save the big bucks at the checkout stand. You can learn how to grow a great garden with many different methods, but you won’t find one as simple as the square foot garden method.

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Over and under

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over 020213under 020213It was about 38-40 today. With my plastic over the boxes today it was probably mid-60’s to 70 degrees under the cover. This picture is a different SFG box then the previous post shows. In this one, you can see a few things up and growing: win-win bok choy, winter density lettuce, beets, 2 star lettuce, kohlrabi, etc. There’s a few open squares but that will probably change in the next week. It’s about time for me to place an ad in the local newspaper to see if anyone is interested in buying what this box will be producing. Last time I counted I’ve got about 14 different items that will come out of this particular SFG box. This list includes lettuce(4 varieties), greenhouse tomatoes, spinach, kale, bok choy, mizuna, tatsoi, arugula, mache, kohlrabi, radishes, carrots, beets(and greens), and cilantro. While at Sprouts the other day, I noticed the price for a head of loose-leaf organic red lettuce-$1.99. It was really small. I also saw the price of an organic kohlrabi-$2.99 each! Holy smoke. When folks buy from me they get at least 4 heads of lettuce that are bigger and better tasting than what you buy at any store-easily worth $2.50 each. They get a small container of tomatoes, and a combination of at least 5 other things from the list mentioned above. I deliver and it only costs them $20 a week. I think that’s a great deal-what do you think? Some of these Asian greens-man, are they good. Especially for stir-fries.[ois skin=”below post”]