I haven’t posted in quite some time about the small garden I planted about a two months ago, so I thought I’d throw up an update.

Things are going pretty well.  My first set of lettuce looks pretty mature, and I’m thinking about harvesting quite a bit of it for some salads tomorrow.  Ditto with the spinach.  I’m not quite sure what to do with the chard, since there’s not really enough to cook, but maybe I’ll throw some into the salad and see how that tastes.

I’ve also started a couple plants for spring/summer inside.  I have a basil plant and a jalapeno plant that are starting very nicely.

Some things I’ve learned:

• I should have planted a whole square at once.  When you’re thinking about how much you’ll have at harvest time, 4 lettuce plants sounds like a lot but it’s really not that much.
• Leafy plants need some extra nitrogen along the way.  I noticed that some of my growth was going a little slow.  Jackie got me a great gardening book for my birthday, and it recommended fish emulsion, which is an organic fertilizer.  My growth has picked up significantly after applying some.
• Loose-leaf lettuce sounds nice, but will never yield as much as head-type lettuce.  I think I will go for some romaine varieties next season.

My compost is also moving along pretty nicely.  The bin is about 2/3 full at this point, and I can actually feel a little bit of heat emanating from the bin when I turn it.  I think sometime around mid-summer I’ll have a full bin of rich black gold.

I’m still pretty excited about my crazy ambition for the summer: corn.  Will it be my bane, or my sweet victory?

We’ll see.

Tags: garden, lettuce, spinach, Square Foot Gardening, swiss chard

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 10:46 pm and is filed under Some Pulp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.