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.

So I must have done something right so far, because I have some wee little sprouts of various flora.  The lettuce looks nice and healthy, and the chard is very pretty with its ruby red stems.  Very nice.

lettuce

swiss chard

spinach

On a related note, I decided to start composting, which is another activity that I used to think was impossible for any without a farm to do.  Turns all you really need is a garbage can with a bunch of holes drilled in it.  And you can even get them on the cheap if you’re a NYC resident.

I’ve always wanted a garden, but my lack of usable land kind of gets in the way.  I stumbled on the Square Foot Gardening technique a few months back, and that’s when I got excited.  I waited until a more manageable season to start, which, ironically, is the winter here in PHX.

The gist of the technique is to divide a small area into individual square foot sections, and within each “square,” you grow one crop.  Depending on the size of the crop, you can fit 1, 4, 9, or even 16 plants per square.  This allows you to squeeze an abnormal amount of plants in a very tight space.  It also lends itself very well to succession planting, which is much more useful for a normal person (unless you like the idea of 8 heads of lettuce maturing at the same time).

In the upper left square, I’ve planted some swiss chard.  It’s a 4 per square plant, so I’ve elected to hold off on some and only planted 2 so far.  Lower left will be some lettuce (4 per square, same deal as the chard), and upper right will be spinach (9 per square).  I’m saving the lower right for more lettuce, which I’ll plant in about 4 weeks.

I’m excited about some fresh lettuce, so hopefully it’ll go well, and I’ve got some pretty ambitious plans for spring/summer (corn and sunflowers!).

I’ll keep y’all updated.