That’s an easy one-planting! It’s the 3rd week of March and your soil should be loose, prepped from last fall and now ready to plant. Give it a quick turn with your trowel-one of only 3 tools you will need in the SFG system. Right now you should be planting all the cool weather crops. Things such as lettuce, swiss chard, radishes and spinach should be directly planted in the soil. There’s no need to start these items from seed indoors. If you’ve done it right and taken care of your soil you should have things coming up in 7-10 days. That’s if your weather is mild. If you are able to cover and protect your gardens, then you should still have things coming up in 7-10 days. That’s just how it is with us SFGers. Here you can see that I have thinned out my square so that it now holds 16 radishes. Now I just water, sit back and watch it grow. They’ll be ready in about 3 weeks. Just in time for my lettuce and spinach to be ready. When that happens I shouldn’t have to buy any produce or veggies from the store for at least 6, maybe even 7 months. How would you like to save that kind of money? Anybody can do it…join us at the several free lectures in town and then learn all of it at the workshops….
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Would you still want to keep the garden covered with plastic all day or remove during the day and replace at night?
At what point would you not use the plastic covering any longer? Just curious if a night time temperature is the indicator and what that would be.
Thanks for all your info.
Trevor…I’ll always keep an eye out for the weather forecast. If it gets to be 40, I assume they might be off a little bit and it’s going to be colder than that. So, I will cover my gardens at night-every night for now, and will uncover them in the morning. Keep in mind that if the sun comes out it’s going to be at least 30 degrees warmer under the plastic. Say it’s forecast to be 65 degrees. If you keep your gardens covered it will be 95 degrees under there. That’s too warm for what I’m growing right now. As a general rule I stay covered until about May 10-15th. But, I am always watching the weather. I am ready to cover my gardens at any time if I need to…thanks for all your other nifty suggestions about the website as well….
Thanks Jim. I will keep them covered at night for the next month.
I finished The Wealth Earth e-book last night. I really enjoyed it and a lot of the questions I had were answered.