Extending The Harvest Of Leafy Greens

I'll keep this post really short and to the point.  A simple technique does not require a complicated blog post.

Actually this is two techniques. They each work great by themselves. Combined, these two techniques will make the most of the space you dedicate in your garden to leafy green vegetables.

• Succession Planting - Sow small batches of a crop on a regular schedule.  When square foot gardening for instance, four heads of lettuce fit in one 12" square.  Only plant the number of squares that your family can eat in two to three weeks. Wait a couple weeks and plant that small quantity again. You'll be harvesting at the same rate that you planted.
• Harvest by Trimming - One of the best ways that I've learned to extend the harvest of leafy green vegetables is to trim one large mature leaf from the outside of a plant rather than killing the entire plant at harvest time. Always use the sharpest pair of scissors that your mom will let you have, and trim an inch or two above the dirt line.  Only take one leaf from a plant, and don't trim from the same plant two days in a row. 

Taking this just a step further, consider growing a variety of different leafy greens so you can enjoy a variety of raw salad options.

Beet tops, radish tops, and carrot tops add even more variety to salads, soups, and stews.

If you are still faced with a large harvest, or if a crop is just about past it's prime and ready to bolt, dehydrating is a great way to preserve leafy greens.

Did you find this helpful?  Do you have another suggestion to share? Let us know below.

How Much To Plant?

"How much food should I plant?" I hear this question all the time.

If you are new to square foot gardening, or new to vegetable gardening in general, you won't have a good sense yet of how much food to plant. Without any guidance, most people will tend to put in too big of a garden and produce too much food.

You don't want to waste precious yard space, time, energy, or money.  All of these resources are expensive. You should keep the garden as small as possible, yet be sufficient in size to feed your family.  A good goal, therefore, should be to grow just enough that you can use everything that the garden produces without needlessly wasting space, time, energy, and money.

From The Other Angle
Rather than focusing on how much to plant, I want you to consider the other end of  the crop's life cycle.  How much will you harvest during a two to three week window of time?  That is the amount you should consider planting in one sitting. Then wait two weeks and plant that much again.  Wait two more weeks.  Plant again.  Rinse and repeat.

The fancy term for this type of planting schedule is SUCCESSION PLANTING.  It is a strategy that helps produce a steady supply of food to harvest, yet helps you not be overwhelmed with too much work and food at any one time.  If you are accustomed to traditional gardening, you'll want to fill the entire garden rather than initially see all that empty space.  Patience is a virtue.

Still difficult to visualize how much food to plant, I admit.  So let me give you a simple formula.

Start with the correct size garden.
For your first square foot garden, plan on a raised 4'x4' box for each adult in your household. Add an additional 1/2 box for every child under the age of 10 or 12, you know, the age before they eat you out of house and home. When a child reaches that hungry teenage point, plan your garden space as if they are another adult in your household.

The garden does not have to be exactly shaped as a 4'x4' box, but 16 squares per adult is small and manageable yet plenty big enough for this intense use of space.  Since most lumber is readily available in 8' sections, creating 4'x4' boxes requires a minimum number of cuts and virtually no waste. This is an easy and inexpensive Saturday morning DIY project.

Then follow a simple sowing strategy.
Now that you have an appropriately sized garden for your family, develop a planting calendar.  By sowing 1/6th of your garden every 2 weeks, you will be harvesting at roughly the same rate when these crops mature. Plan on sowing a wide variety of vegetables and just one or two squares per crop each time you sow.

Your county extension office should have a guide to help you choose seasonally appropriate vegetables for your area, broken down by month. Simply refer to their calendar every time you sow to improve your success rate and add even more variety to your garden.  If you are in Phoenix Arizona, use Maricopa County's vegetable guide found here:
http://extension.arizona.edu/sites/extension.arizona.edu/files/pubs/az1005.pdf

Following this strategy, you will fill your garden in twelve weeks.  You will have a variety of crops at various stages of maturity.  Some of the older crops will have already matured so you should have already enjoyed fruits of your labor. Literally.

Before the twelve weeks is over, you will have most likely already harvested some of your earliest squares.  As you empty a square, you simply

• amend the soil in that 12" square with a trowel full of compost 
• sow a different crop than the one you just harvested from that square, giving you an automatic crop rotation within each 12" square.

A sample average family

If your family has the average 1.8 children, let's see how to apply this garden sizing and sowing schedule:

• You and your spouse each need a 4'x4' box
• Your two children each need a 2'x4' box
• That's a total of 3 4'x4' boxes (16 squares each) for a total of 48 squares. 
• Divide the 48 squares by 6 plantings (over a 12 week period) and the result is 8.
• That means you will plant 8 squares now, 8 more squares two weeks from now, etc.

Does eight small squares (2'x4' section) seem too small?  Compared to traditional gardening you would be correct.  But let's take a look at how much food you can put in a 2'x4' area using the square foot gardening method:

• 4 heads of lettuce
• 9 spinach plants
• 9 beets
• 16 carrots
• 16 radishes
• 1 pepper plant
• 1 tomato plant
• 16 scallions

Not a fan of beets and radishes? I encourage you to still grow these crops for their greens. 

Two weeks from now, you may decide that 16 scallions and 9 beets are enough for a month, and you have a second variety of lettuce that you want to try.  So your next 2'x4' section in the garden might look like this:

• 8 heads of lettuce (4 each of 2 varieties)
• 2 kale
• 16 carrots
• 16 radishes
• 1 broccoli
• 1 pepper (a different variety from your last planting) 

Another 2 weeks out, you will plant yet another 8 squares.  At this point, you may be enjoying a radish or two from the first planting, and maybe a few tender leaves carefully trimmed from the lettuce. 

Summary
Can you see how this strategy:

• gives you the perfect size garden for your needs?  
• creates a sustainable garden through soil amending and crop rotation?
• will not overwhelm you with a large harvest through succession planting?
• doesn't waste your family's precious resources?
• can easily be adjusted as your family's needs change?

What Fits In A 12" Square?

The Square Foot Gardening method, developed by Mel Bartholomew and initially published in his 1981 book, calls for dividing your garden into 12" squares, then sowing individual seeds in a pattern within each square based on the amount of room that each plant will require when it's mature and ready for harvest.

• Small plants can be sown 3" apart. If planned properly, you can sow 16 of these seeds in a square foot. These include radishes, green onions, carrots.
• Medium plants are sown 4" apart. If planned properly, you can sow 9 of these seeds in a square foot. Medium size crops include spinach, onions, beets.
• Large plants need to be spaced 6" apart. If planned properly, you can sow 4 of these seeds in a square foot. These crops are lettuce, swiss chard.
• Extra large plants require an entire 12" square all to themselves. Give this much room to peppers, broccoli and cabbage, kale, tomatoes

x

x     x     x     x

x   x   x x   x   x x   x   x

x   x   x   x  x   x   x   x  x   x   x   x  x   x   x   x

What is Square Foot Gardening?

The Square Foot Gardening method is a way to grow vegetables in a very small space.

Guiding Principles
There are several guiding principles that you follow when using the SFG method:

• Rather than planting seeds in traditional rows, you organize a raised garden bed in 12" squares. 
• You only sow as many seeds as you plan to harvest, and you plant in small batches every couple of weeks. You won't be overwhelmed with too much food at one time, and succession planting and crop rotation happen almost automatically.
• By sytematically amending the soil with compost, and routinely feeding your vegetables with a homemade compost "tea", your garden remains organic.  Pest and weed management is done naturally, no chemicals if at all possible.
• Think of plants as being small, medium, large, and extra large. The size of a mature crop at harvest time is what determines the amount of space you allow when sowing seeds.  1, 4, 9, or 16 seeds are sown per 12" square accordingly. This in turn maximizes how many plants of each crop are grown in a 12" square.  
• Because of this tight sowing pattern, there is virtually no room for weeds, and no wasted water.
• You only plant one seed per hole. That avoids a dilema that many gardeners face, unable to bring themselves to "thin" the seedlings and kill those innocent young lives, wishfully thinking that all those plants can avoid choking each other out.  

How much room do you need for all this?

The original square foot gardening book written back in 1981 suggested that one 4'x4' box (16 squares of 12" each) is enough garden space for one adult to enjoy a small dinner salad most evenings throughout a growing season.  And there is a planned method for increasing the number of 4'x4' boxes that you can expand into if needed.  You can always add more garden later, better to start small and learn the system before taking on too much.

The second edition of the book, published in 2005, had some major improvements to the system, including the suggestion to build raised garden beds.  Many people, including myself, had already been doing this for years.  The days of back breaking labor are over! The only garden tool you will ever use again is a 6" hand trowel if you construct the garden boxes to be reached from all accessible sides.  And speaking of accessibility, these garden boxes can be made into table top gardens with room for a wheelchair underneath. 

Where is this blog heading?

Here is a "map" that shows my initial thoughts of how I will organize my blog entries. I know that is a lot to chew on.  So think of today's blog post sort of like a table of contents.  Future blog entries will explain each of these facets in more detail, and we will cover many more topics as well. 

Please Comment Below

Are you a gardener?  Are you here in the desert Southwest? Do you currently use the SFG method?   Successess, failures?  Bring it.

Welcome To Desert Square Foot Gardening (desertSFG)

Welcome to the Desert Square Foot Gardening (desertSFG) blog!

My name is Tom Argiro, and I'm a square foot gardenaholic. (all: 'welcome, Tom.')

I have been addicted to square foot gardening since 1988. I remember when I first tried square foot gardening and how quickly it consumed me.  During a cold and snowy winter in Ohio, I made a routine trip to the local library.  I returned home with a stack of gardening books that would teach me how to get started.  One book in particular led me down a path of self-seeking pleasure and gratification like I never imagined possible.

If you haven't guessed it by now, that book was "Square Foot Gardening: A New Way to Garden in Less Space With Less Work" written by Mel Bartholomew and first published in 1981.

After learning the square foot gardening (SFG) technique and using it for a few years in Ohio, we moved to Phoenix Arizona.  Vegetable gardening in the desert Southwest was a real challenge for me initially. Then a neighbor and fellow Ohio transplant told me to think upside down about it. He said "Whatever you would normally be planting in April and May back home, plant in September and October out here."  That worked.

So let me wrap up this first blog post with something you can really use.  I rely heavily on the Maricopa County's Exention office and the research they've done on the subject of vegetable gardening in Phoenix. Before we get into the square foot gardening technique, take the time now to bookmark the following link, then visit that page and study it.
http://extension.arizona.edu/sites/extension.arizona.edu/files/pubs/az1005.pdf

In the next blog post we will talk about how to use the extension office's planting calendar along with your square foot garden.

Now that I'm done tending to this blog post, I can continue my Fall planting.