Planning a Square Foot Garden - Step 2

The Daily Gardener

March 30, 2011

Did you make your list of what salad veggies you buy every week?  Don’t worry I made one so we can use it for now but go ahead and make the list and be as specific as you can be.  I have four people in my family and I want to grow salad stuff so that means I should plan to start with four beds, one bed for each person.  If I wanted to grow vegetables for my family then that would be another one bed per person so I am up to 8 beds measuring 4’-0 x 4’-0 to start my new Square Foot Garden.  And if I want to grow to freeze, can or dry produce for storage then that would mean another four beds.  I am up to 12 beds total.  This is a starting point.  But for now we are planning a Salad Garden.

My weekly grocery list goes like this:

3 heads of lettuce every week

Bag of radishes (about 10 in the bag)

A carrot  for every day

Garden Peas when I can get good ones or Sugar Snap Peas

Bunch of scallions (about 8)

Mixed baby greens or mesclun (about a half pound)

Spinach - lots and lots of spinach

Avacado (I guess maybe I will have to buy these!)

Tomato - two or three

Cucumber - three for the week

That is my list for salads.  Obviously things like olives, artichoke hearts, bacon bits and the avocado are off the garden list!  But still I would be very pleased to have this list to harvest every week.  The trick is to have some of each thing coming ready to harvest week after week.  The only way to get this steady harvest is succession planting.  Succession planting is to plant a little bit every week or every two weeks so you don’t have a 25 foot row of lettuce come ripe and ready to harvest all at once; what would you do with 50 heads of lettuce?  For instance with carrots I’ll plant 16 carrots, one square foot, every other week for the whole season until the end of September so I have that one carrot everyday I need for my salad.  If I planted all 12 squares of carrots at my first planting in April I would have too many carrots at one time.  Exactly the same thing applies to radishes, plant a square every week and you’ll have several radishes for your salad every day.

So make that list and be specific.  Next is my vegetable list for four people.

Planning a Square Foot Garden-Step 1

The Daily Gardener

March 28, 2011

To plan a Square Foot Garden there are two questions you have to ask yourself first:

How many PEOPLE are you planning to feed?

What do you want to HARVEST?  Not grow but harvest.

The first question is pretty easy.  But the second has three parts to it, so a few more decisions need to be made. Do you want to harvest salad greens?  Do you want to grow and harvest fresh vegetables and the third question; do you want to grow for storage? Pause a minute before you answer this quickly and say “Oh, I’ll do it all, greens, veggies and stuff to store” thinking that your SUPPOSED to grow lots of things in a garden.  The only thing you are supposed to do with a garden is grow what you want to use and enjoy doing it. 

Remember you can only harvest over a period of time. Lettuces will bolt, Tomatoes take a while before you can harvest and will last about eight to ten weeks.  Potatoes are cheap to buy, even organic one, so maybe you don’t want to grow veggies for storage.  The seed catalogs are like a siren song with beautiful pictures of plump ripe veggies, luring you to buy and grow things you never use.  Do you buy a bunch of Swiss Chard every week?  No?  Then why grow it?  So start with your grocery list and look at what things you buy every week.  We like big salads so I get at least three heads of Romaine, one head of Iceberg and some mesclun mix if it is on sale every week.  I use carrots in every salad.  I buy a bag of radishes every week, top this all off with cukes, tomatoes and fresh green peas and this is a yummy salad to me.  That was easy, that is my garden list.  My wife does not like fresh green peppers or onions in a salad, but she does like the mild flavor of scallions or chives.  For both of us you can not have enough spinach.  Have this conversation with everyone in the house and only grow what you use.  That’s the way to start to plan your Square Foot Garden.  Make the list and check back for the next step.

Garden Faithful

The Daily Gardener

March 27, 2011

Gardening is an exercise in faith. My first Square Foot Gardening Class starts next Thursday at the Hunger Mountain Coop in Montpelier, VT at 6:00 PM and there isn’t much outdoors to encourage us to believe that we will be gardening any time soon.  Still planning a garden is gardening just the same and we will be studying the basics of Square Foot Gardening at the workshop.

As an act of gardener’s faith my wife and I planted garlic last Fall and I hope to see the first green sprouts emerging soon.  Garlic has been a reliable crop for many years, it is the first to appear in early Spring.  We also planted spinach, carrots and few experimental heads of cabbage last Fall too.  Fall planted spinach has grown well in previous years but we are experimenting with hoop houses and overwintering carrots and cabbages as we try to find ways to extend the outdoor garden season.  Keep you fingers crossed!  Oh, a hoop house you ask, it is a cross between a cold frame and greenhouse and the subject of a future post.

Almost Spring

The Daily Gardener

March 26, 2011

Spring is in the air even here in frozen Vermont.  I'll be in the garden soon, but not quite yet.  With nearly two feet of snow still on my garden I rely on my Indoor Garden to provide all the fresh green we need for salads.  If you have never had soil grown sprouts and shoots, you are in for a treat.  In my last class at City Market in Burlington, VT a young lady looked at me at towards the end of the class and said, “This changes everything” and I knew exactly what she meant.  For the last four years I have been able to grow all of the fresh greens for my family for the entire winter with nothing more than a kitchen cupboard and a windowsill. Check class schedule on thedailygardener.com for current listing.  But in her case she planned to grow greens all year because she lived in an apartment.  This really changed things for both winter and summer with fresh home grown greens.  Spring is in the air and greens are on the windowsill, life is good.