Tag Archives: tatsoi

The ease of planting in the square foot garden

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One of the greatest things about a square foot garden is you don’t have to do it all at once. I like to do a few little things every day during the growing season. Easy things. As I look to previous garden diary notes, this month and April are the most active months for me as far as active planting. 

Today I planted 2 squares of red onions, 2 squares of red pontiac potatoes, and 3 squares of lettuces. I turned the compost pile and watered anything that look a little dry. My winter sowings look really good and in a few days I’ll begin to separate those up and put them into squares. Cilantro, spinach, and tatsoi are the most ready to go. 

Planting two or three squares every few days means a lot less work. It also means you won’t have an all at once harvest. By the time Labor day rolls around, when most of your neighborhood gardeners are burned out from weeding, watering, and the overall work load of their gardens, you’ll be thinking of ways to extend your season because it was so little work. 

And you enjoyed 100% of the harvest. 

Eat better tasting food without all the pesticides on them. Save money. Take control of your food supply. 

How to have a really early square foot garden

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Or any garden for that matter. This is how I do it. I use many different kinds of containers but this one had 4 blueberry muffins from a local store. Clean it out and then poke holes in the top (6) and bottom (4). I use a screwdriver that’s been heated over a flame on the stove and then push it through the plastic. Make it easy!

I then fill with moistened potting mix. This container isn’t very deep so it will be used for salad greens type of crops. No root crops in this shallow of a container. I then seed fairly heavily so that when they come up I can separate them into individual starts to put into squares.

If it freezes, so what? If it snows, it doesn’t matter? These seeds know when it’s time to grow. As we get into the warmer months of late winter, take a peek every once in a while to make sure it doesn’t dry out. If it looks dry, just run some water over it and then cover again. 

These containers will develop a fair amount of condensation in them. Thats what you want. You’ve got it vented which lets excessive heat escape but it also keeps your soil moist. 

I have chard, radicchio, tatsoi, and endive in this container. 

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!!! 

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″]

Tatsoi-a great winter garden crop

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img_0421This is tatsoi-a very tasty and fairly easy to grow Asian green. I’ve tried very hard to get the timing down so that all my winter crops will be about 75-80% of full size by November 14th. On this date in zone 6 the sunlight hours dip below 10 hours a day and everything stops growing and hibernates until about the first week of February.
This green can be stir-fried but I like to use it as is in a mesclun mix during the winter months. I would describe the taste as firm and a little on the sweet side. One thing for sure-it doesn’t do well in warm weather.
With the holidays just around the corner isn’t it time to start thinking about some great gardening gifts? I’m going to put up an ad for grow-bags.  I used the GardenMate brand shown on the side of my blog.   This is the first year I’ve used them and I was very impressed. With two side handles they can be moved around because they aren’t too heavy. The crops don’t dry out like plastic containers. They can be cleaned at the end of the season(don’t put them in the dryer), and reused the following spring. I’ve used the 15 gallon, the 5 gallon, and the 1 gallon grow bags. Right now I’ve got a very successful brussel sprout plant growing in a 5 gallon grow bag. I’ve got about 25 pounds, maybe more, of red pontiac potatoes being stored in a 15 gallon bag.
Using grow bags saves me a lot of room in my square foot gardens. It opens up needed space to use for crops that are sold during the normal growing season.  Though I’ve normally grown potatoes in my square foot gardens, I now can use grow bags and not tie up squares for 4 months.
Go ahead-give them a look. Buy them for family members who want to garden but simply don’t have the room. They will love these. And you can buy 3 of them packaged together for a ridiculously low price. I’ll be talking more about grow bags during the winter months. It’s been a lot of fun experimenting with them this year.