Showing posts with label Square Foot Gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Square Foot Gardening. Show all posts

Tuesday 25 April 2017

Square inch gardening with Charles Dowding.

- Square inch gardening with Charles Dowding | Sarah Raven:
Charles Dowding achieves this high level of productivity by choosing varieties that can be cropped, not just once (as with brassicas such as cabbages and cauliflowers and roots such as parsnips and celeriac), but more like 10 or 20 times.
Their roots can be left in the ground to produce a long, light, drip-drip of delicious harvest.

His number-one recommendation – for a plot of any size – are pea sprouts.
Charles recommends growing the pea tips as a separate crop to allow a substantial harvest once a week.
He uses any quick-growing, vigorous, tall variety such as Pea 'Alderman’ or any mangetout or sugar-snap pea forms.
These produce tips quickly, or you could sow the special pea tip variety Pea 'Serge’.
Three seeds are sown into one medium-sized module or small pot – into any old potting compost – and left on a bed in the greenhouse for two weeks.
Once they’re up about an inch/2.54cm, Charles plants them 8-10in/25cm apart in the garden.
They are left to grow on for about three weeks until they reach a foot/30cm and are well established, and then the top one or two inches/2.5-5cm of every tip is harvested from the clump.
After the first pick, he advises leaving them for two weeks to stabilise.
Shoots then break from the base and the leaf axils like sweet peas, and you can start to crop once a week.
Charles says you don’t have to have a garden to grow pea tips, but can plant them in a deep pot, spacing them slightly closer and they’ll still produce well.
You’ll get six to eight weeks of weekly pickings from one sowing.
Resow every six to eight weeks to ensure a regular harvest, rather than feast or famine.

Charles also grows beetroot and spring onions in much the same way, packing lots of plants very efficiently into a small space.
He sows three to five seeds in a clump (straight into the ground or into their own individual module).
His favourite spring onion for sowing now is Spring Onion 'White Lisbon’, the fat-bottomed, bulging form.
His favourite purple beetroot for now is Beetroot 'Boltardy’, which has excellent flavour and is much less likely to bolt if we suddenly get some cold nights than most beetroot forms.
He also loves the golden varieties, such as Beetroot 'Burpees Golden’ and the stripy pink and white Beetroot 'Chioggia’, now often named 'Candystripe’.
Both the beetroot and spring onion clumps are planted about 12in/30cm apart.
The key to their long, steady production is the method of harvest.
Rather than hoicking out the bunch altogether, Charles carefully twists one plant out from the rest, the first at the size of a golf ball, leaving the others to grow on.
You don’t need to thin as you have given the remaining plants more space and can go back and take the next in a couple of weeks, then the next later and so on.
This gives you beetroot right through the summer and autumn, when you can dig up the odd plant, pot it up, bring it under cover and harvest its light cropping of delicious beetroot leaves until the following spring.

The second early potato 'Charlotte’ - tasty, very heavy-cropping and reliable.
It stores well, too.
They do not bother to chit 'Charlotte’ but plant them straight into the ground at 15 - 18in/45cm spacings (two rows in a 4ft/500cm bed) in a raised bed with plenty of compost added.
Charles earths them up with friable compost (Friable soil is soil that has the crumbly texture ideal for the underground activity that is the foundation of success with most plants), six weeks after planting.
Then he can easily harvest the top tubers by just rummaging around with his hands, with no spade or strenuous digging needed.
He lifts them in early August, when the haulms are just beginning to yellow but with luck before blight strikes.

'Sweet Genovese’ basil, the citrusy lemon basils and one of the spicier, cinnamon forms.
The basil is all sown in the greenhouse – or on a sunny window ledge – one seed to a module full of freely drained compost, such as John Innes No 1.
They are then planted in a sunny spot, or in a polytunnel and kept well-watered, always watering the soil and keeping the leaves as dry as possible.
They need a good squirt of water every day.
Flat-leafed parsley, 'Giant of Napoli’ is better for cooler areas.
Sow this in the same way, but plant it outside anywhere — in sun or part shade.

Lettuces: For a bright green, crinkly leafed, repeat cropping form he loves 'Fristina’ and then two reds with different leaf shapes, 'Rosemore’, a red cos, and 'Rubane’, with frilly edges.
He also loves the cos lettuce 'Freckles’ for its long, slow cropping pattern and elegant crimson splodged leaves.
These four will all give you a few leaves harvestable from every plant every week from about a month after sowing for an eight to 10-week season.
The lettuces are all individually sown into their own cells in the greenhouse or in a cosy corner outside for planting out within a month, 9in/22cm apart.
How they are harvested is crucial to how much you’ll get from your row.
Charles never cuts the whole plant to within an inch or two of the ground — as is traditional with these Continental loose leaf forms — but picks only a few leaves from the outside of every plant.
He can then go back and do the same only a few days later.

Take Charles’s advice and get sowing.
'via Blog this'

Monday 17 September 2012

Square Foot Gardening at Orbit Irrigation

Square Foot Gardening at Orbit Irrigation: "What is Square Foot Gardening?
Square foot gardening is an innovative approach to traditional single-row gardening.  At its basic level, square foot gardening consists of a 4′ x 4″ raised planter with 16 units. 
Each square foot unit is used to plant a different crop. 
This system takes less work, is easy to maintain, wastes less water and materials (such as seeds), and yields plenty of crops.
For tips on how to set up your own square foot garden, click here."

Friday 7 September 2012

Square Foot Gardening.

Square Foot Gardening: A New Way to Garden in Less Space with Less Work: Amazon.co.uk: Mel Bartholomew: Books. Beginner’s Guide - Mel Bartholomew: