My Spring into Taters!

I’m not sure if anyone else got outside into a garden on March the 6th, but I did. The temperatures in southern Missouri got up to the mid sixties and that was enough to motivate me to amble into the back yard and begin what has become a ritual every year. Getting the raised beds ready for another season of great veggies.

Now as a gardener, my spatial aspirations are really quite small. I have just three little raised beds that are about four feet by eight feet in size. Last season, however, this sixty four square feet of growing space produced about fifty pounds of edible produce. (I know that's true because I actually weighed every bit and have the results available in a data file should anyone be interested).

On this date, I worked the soil in each bed to loosen it up a bit and then went ahead and planted some leaf lettuce seed I had left over from last year. I also planted a bit of radish seed as a marker and about 6 broccoli seed for the hell of it. I’ve never had much luck growing broccoli from seed. Even when I have gone to transplant, I’ve had poor luck. I think the climate is just not quite right here in southwest Missouri for them. They also take up quite a bit of room and when space is at a premium that can be a problem.

My biggest foray, this season, will be the great potato growing experiment! You see, I have never planted potatoes before and am a little nervous about making mistakes. My usual thing is to make every mistake possible and then some day I'll be an expert...at making mistakes! But, that's never deterred me. So, at the local grocery store, I managed to violate a potato growing principle right off the bat. I purchased ‘non-certified’ seed potatoes that will, in all likelihood, rot or become diseased the first chance they get. Well, maybe not. Anyways, they certainly look the proper part. They've got little shoots growing here and there. They're also pretty dirty.. The crate they were in said they were Kennebec seed potatoes. I’ll assume this is a good potato to grow in Missouri. When I got the checkout counter the young girl asked me if that was the best I could do. I just smiled and told here that last potato crop had evidently failed. I still don't know who was pulling whose leg. You know it’s funny how you can be really old and yet totally naive or young and very world wise.I tend to fall in to the former rather than the latter.

So, tomorrow is Sunday and the weather is supposed to hold tight for one more day before its forecast to get wet for much of the rest of the week. I’ll use this time to finish up with surface preparation and then when it get rainy outside, I plan to make a trip to a local garden center to stock up on seed and additional soil.

Updates to come!

Cold Frame Update - Early January 09

Well. Well. It’s the first week in the New Year and I’ve finally harvested my first morsel of lettuce and spinach for a grand total of nine grams! Yes, I said grams. Not much to show for my efforts at this point. I also had a single radish that was about half and inch wide and weighed in at 5 grams. As I think I have pointed out in another entry, the crop is more or less in suspended animation at this time. Everything looks healthy; it’s just not growing very fast. Had planted the seed back in September instead of late October, I think I would have a lot more to eat at this time.

The radish got consumed first and tasted great! The lettuce and spinach was next. I added a small amount of iceberg lettuce and a short stalk celery, then sprinkled on some oil and vinegar. The result was a very fresh and tasty addition to my lunchtime fare.

My big hope is that as the weather moderates, I will see more and more growth. So that’s it for now. A total of 9+5 grams for a whopping total of 14 grams. My basket runnith over.

Cold Frame #2

Yes, I’m at it again with the building of my second cold frame in less than a month. Does one man need two Cold Frames? Apparently, yes they do. Winter is coming and the price of lettuce at the local market is at an all time high. I love my salads (it’s a diet thing) and with lettuce at almost $2 per head, I now have plenty of incentive to grow my own.

The addition of a second 36 inch by 24 inch frame box will give me another 5.8 square feet of growing space. So, the two combined will allow me to grow about 12 to 14 plants at any one time. If I start 4 seeds every two weeks that will assure me a steady harvest of lettuce though out the wintertime and on into spring.

The construction will be documented in a video call Building a Cold Frame Part 2 and will be published on You Tube, I hope.

I had been concerned about the survival of young lettuce plants when it gets really cold outside. Recently we have seen temperatures that have dropped down to the low thirties and I am happy to report that conditions inside the box have remained in the fifty degree range. I have also installed an electric cord with a light bulb on one end to help warm things up in case it gets really cold outside.

Spring is Here!

It’s now 5 days into the spring of 2008 and you can tell that Mother Nature is beginning to wake up from her winters nap. I’ve noticed that the Bradford pear trees and Forsythia bushes are in bloom with their distinctive white and yellow blooms. Also, the daffodils are making their appearance around the neighborhood. I mention these because, more than anything else, this tells me to get busy in the garden. In addition to all the blooming going on, it is also great to report that the temperatures seem to be now moderating into more tolerable levels. I took a moment during my lunch break to put a tray of Little Caesar Romaine plants out into one of the raised beds. They are still tiny and look defenseless but with some conscientious watering on my part they should do OK. Yes, they have been hardened off over the last week and will be able to withstand the still cold nights we are getting. I hope. Right next to these are a few early broccoli plants I purchased at a local nursery. They have been in place for about a week now, as transplants, and look raring to go. Likewise, my five or so head lettuce starts are perking right along. These guys represent my early test plantings and if they can tolerate the climate for the next week to come, I will be ready to begin planting in earnest.

How Much is Enough?

One of the first questions I’ve been asked when discussing raised beds is the space question. Just how much space do you need to support a family of four anyway? That’s a good question and the answer I always give is, ‘It depends.’ The variables to consider are the nature and type of produce you want to grow and how much of it you will realistically consume. Many garden veggies do not lend themselves to storage (lettuce for instance) and you really want to take a hard look at what you will need week to week. I’ve always used the gallon baggie method for measurement purposes here. I know, for instance that three lettuce plants, after they’ve been cut, washed and drained will fill the average gallon sized plastic baggie. I also know from experience that I generally have at least one salad per day (sometimes two as I’m on a constant diet). That bag will last me about one week as I like to mix a lot of other stuff in each salad. So, going by this method, you will need to grow enough lettuce to fill one to two bags per week per person. A family of four would (assuming everyone loves salads) would need to harvest eight plants per week. Using that rule of thumb, I would plant twelve new starts every week or so starting in early March for this region (zone 6). The Cole crop can be a combination of leaf, romaine, spinach or even chard depending on your tastes. One of the really fun things about growing your own is the natural variety that you have as one plant or another becomes available for harvest. More times than not, I find myself planting way more than I can consume, but that’s OK too as I always have neighbors that will take the excess or be happy to trade what they have too much of. Other vegetable can be treated in much the same way. Over time you will get a good feel as to the amount of plants that will work for you.