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Planning your square foot garden

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braising greens: red and green mustard, hon sai tai, kale, and tatsBeing deep into the spring months, it’s time to now focus on what and when to plant for your summer garden. Choosing to not worry about wide swings in weather in certain locations leads some people to only have a summer/early fall garden. There’s certainly merit to that thinking. In the next several weeks the weather in our zone will start to really heat up. By then many will be done with all the tradition cool spring crops-spinach, lettuce, varieties of Asian greens, swiss chard, mizuna, etc.<br><br>
What to plant for summer? The first thing you’ll need to think about is the space needed for vertical gardening. In the square foot gardening system all vining crops are grown up on a trellis made out of 1/2″ electrical conduit. It’s virtually indestructible and will last a long time. This means crops like indeterminate tomatoes, squashes, pole beans, and melons will be growing up, not out. This method is highly efficient. By keeping your crops off the ground you minimize the damage by certain garden pests but also give your plants better air-circulation and exposure to the sun.

By knowing the food needs of your household you can plan for the quantities of each crop. Cherry tomato plants can bring 10-12 pounds of fruit throughout the growing season. Can you use that much? Can you use more? If so, how much more? Lets say your family will consume in the area of 35-40 pounds of cherry tomatoes this summer. That means you’ll plant 4 cherry tomatoes using just 4 square feet. And yes, you only need 1 square foot to grow a tomato plant that will be 7-8 feet tall by the end of summer. Just make sure you’re growing indeterminate plants, not determinant and keep those “suckers’ pinched back. You’ll do this for all your vining crops.

Along with these items you’ll need to plan all the other things you want to grow. Beets, carrots, beans, certain types of lettuce, basil, etc. Once you’ve figured that out you’ll arrive at the number of squares needed for this summer. If you’ve planned it out and find that you don’t have enough squares, you need more square foot garden boxes. If you’ve got a lot of squares left over, you’re garden is too big. We like to minimize the size of our gardens in the SFG system. We grow only what we need and what we love to eat. Our goal is to have each family member enjoy a fresh, just harvested salad every night of the growing season and nothing more. This eliminates the all-at-once harvest that’s come to be associated from most home gardens.

I’m beginning to empty out squares that have previously been filled with spring crops. I’ve got transplants of certain things ready to go right now. A typical summer garden for me might include the following: zucchini, bush beans, pole beans, cherry tomatoes, many squares of selected lettuce varieties, basil, peppers, spaghetti squash, green onions, carrots, swiss chard, and cucumbers. That will be the content of a single 4X4′ box. In another box I’ll have lettuce, melons, banana squash, New Zealand spinach, kohlrabi, pole beans, beets, and a transplanted rosemary plant. And what about corn? In my mind corn is a huge nitrogen and space hog. It takes up valuable space for too long and it’s dirt cheap in the summer. For those reasons I’ll let the farmers take care of the corn[ois skin=”1”]

Win a Wealthy Earth ebook

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You can win a free copy of my ebook if you can identify the ninja secret in one of these squares.  The only dis-qualifier is if you’ve attended one of my workshops where we’ve discussed this, along with many other “ninja” secrets of the square foot garden.  You will have to know the system to find it though.  The first one who gets it right will receive my ebook.  I will provide the answer as soon as a winner is named.  It’s a tricky one!  By the way, if you haven’t read my ebook, I think you’re missing out.  You can read more about it on this site, or you can read the review by the inventor of the square foot garden-Mel Bartholomew himself.  You can read it here.  There’s all kinds of nifty things in it that will augment your skills in the SFG system.  It’s also great for instructors because these are the questions you’re going to hear when you’re teaching.  Right now in my garden, I’m making sure there are fewer and fewer empty squares.  You have to time things out a little bit.  Making sure you have lettuce when all those tomatoes are ripe is a trick in itself.  Anybody can grow lettuce in the spring when it’s cool, but it’s more difficult in the hotter weather.  It takes more work, but you’ll be glad you did.  I had a friend of mine who recently told me that  their lettuce grew very well last year, but it ended up tasting bitter.  When I asked a few more question, I think the answer to her dilemma was that she needed to cover her lettuce.  After your seeds have sprouted and then begin to grow, the best thing you can do is to shade your lettuce.  If you don’t it will continue to grow and you may even have a nicely formed head of lettuce-of whatever variety.  But the sun will beat down on that and ruin the taste.  By covering your lettuce, you’ll have some of the tastiest salad greens around.  If you’ve planted spinach in the spring, it’s time to replant those squares with something else.  Carrots, beets, onions, herbs, bush beans, or flowers, etc.  Be sure to amend your newly planted square with several trowels full of compost and your ready to go.  If you’re thinking of flowers, keep nice looking ones in mind that can also be used in salads.  The first flower that comes to mind for that is nasturtium.  Maybe you want a scented flower?  You decide what you like but I’ve got nicotiana and angels trumpet in mine.  The smell of those two are fantastic later in the summer.  You’ll have to buy transplants at this stage though-unless you’re in a climate where you have a much longer season than we have here in the mountain west.[ois skin=”below post”]

Time to get your square foot gardens ready for summer..

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now you should start to really pack your garden. I’ve been planting corn at 5 day intervals. That way you don’t get all your corn at once. And it will still be big enough to cross-pollinate. Corn is planted 4 per square. This year I did a little mix-n-match with the 3 sisters-squash, corn, and pole beans. It’s an old Indian tradition. I’ve got a nice little write-up on the 3 sisters that can be accessed with a bronze membership or above. I didn’t do the full out 3 sisters though. I have my regular pole beans planted-4 squares across(that’s 32 seeds). The next 4 rows will be my spring treat corn. Then I have another 4 squares planted with butternut squash. In theory the pole beans are supposed to climb up the corn stalks. But our corn is not big enough, early enough to keep up with the pole beans. If I wanted to do it right I should have started my corn 2 or 3 weeks earlier. That’s difficult to do in northern Utah. Then you get the pollinators-bees, working on the squash and beans. What I’ve really got is corn that’s sandwiched between pole beans and squash. That’s my square foot version of the 3 sisters. Tomato plants should be in, along with peppers and all your herbs. Make sure you leave squares available for garlic, shallots and onions. These work at keeping pests at bay. Think about where you’re putting your basil and remember that this goes very well next to tomatoes. Plant your melons, cucumbers and squashes-but keep them separated. The last thing you want is your cantaloupe having a strange cucumber taste. Potatoes should be in, along with some carrots. What’s left? Whatever your family eats. For us, that includes beets, carrots, and all sorts of lettuce. Because your gardens are so small, you can protect it from higher temperatures with shade cloth. Lettuce is hard to germinate when it gets into the mid-80’s. But if you cover it and give it some extra water, you’ll be able to have salad greens all summer long-there’s nothing worse than having all those great tasting tomatoes if you don’t have any lettuce to enjoy them with….[ois skin=”below post”]