Cassie's Stuff

Wow! The winter is passing quickly. It doesn’t seem like it when I look out the window and see a good 12 inches of now on the ground – very unusual for this part of Ohio! It got down to -7 overnight. Brrrr!!! But Square Foot Gardening classes are starting this week. Friday I’m speaking for the Newark Garden Club and next week I’ll be at the Spring Hill’s Homeschooler’s Sessions of Sharing, and Upper Arlington.

Mel Bartholomew told me that Paul Nagy, a certified teacher in Middletown, has hooked Mel up with an Amish builder here in Ohio who is developing SFG boxes that need no tools to assemble! I’m hoping they’ll be available soon.

Mel also has OFFICIAL Mel’s Mix in bags that will be available this coming gardening season. The problem is that the minimum order is 1 pallet, which is 50 bags! Paul and I are working together to get orders to fill a truckload – 20 pallets. Between garden centers and personal orders, I think we can do it! The bags are 2 cu.ft. and I think retail for around $16. Let me know if you’d like to be included.

More classes and events in March. I’ll get my calendar updated soon. If you would like me to come speak to your organization or group of friends, drop me an email at Cassie@CassiesStuff.com.

Started a new blog. It is not very far along yet, but I have recently started working with Dr. Kanodia at the OSU Center for Integrative Medicine. I’ve lost 9 pounds in the last 4 weeks, and 20 pounds since my top weight. Check out my progress at www.CassiesWeightLossStuff.com.

It is also almost gardening season! Yay! I have several speaking engagements already set up. Would you like me to come speak to your group about Square Foot Gardening? Give me a call!

Cassie

This is a test post to see how my AWeber is working.

We finally got the sunroom cleaned out (it was still storing my 16-year-old son’s junk) so I could start my winter garden. I’m experimenting with microgreens. I’ve been fascinated with them since I first learned about it about a year ago. Microgreens are somewhere between sprouts and baby greens. You harvest at about 6 to 8 inches, depending on the seed. It has all the nutrients of a sprout, from the energy in the seed, plus nutrients pulled out of the soil, so they are actually at the most nutritious stage of the plant. Microgreens can be tossed into a salad, eaten alone or lightly sauteed. I bought the book, Microgreens: A Guide To Growing Nutrient Packed Greens and was fascinated with it. Seems pretty easy. I’m looking forward to trying them soon!

I also planted cucumbers because cucumbers are self pollinating. I have a memory of my mother growing cucumbers in the winter, but when I asked her about it, she said that one year she tried to start bedding plants, but started them too soon and they got out of hand. The plants, however, did set fruit inside. So I’m thinking this could be good. After all, commercial growers grow cucumbers in greenhouses, so why not in my sunroom? I’ll be posting photos soon.

The other things I plan on trying are beets, radishes, Chinese greens, herbs, lettuces, and whatever else tickles my fancy when I start going through my seed stock.

Instead of using my regular Square Foot Gardening (what’s this?) boxes, which are all too big for the space that I have, I bought aluminum baking pans from Gordon Food Service (GFS) for $1.50 ea. I also bought the lids to serve as liners under the pans to catch any dripping water.

Ooh! I also transplanted a couple of basil plants that my mother gave me at the beginning of the summer and I never got repotted. So I put both plants in one big pot and cut off the tops and stuck them in the ground, too. I don’t know if they’ll root, but it is worth the experiment. Mom kept these in over last winter and the plants got huge! It was about 4 or 5 feet high. But this variety has teeny-tiny leaves and very aromatic. Nice taste, too.

I used the Square Foot Gardening soil mix ’cause Mel says this makes a fine container mix, too. Plus I already had some left over from the summer!

I’ll keep you posted!

Wow! It is amazing how quickly my Spring calendar is filling up with Square Foot Gardening classes. Already I’m scheduled to speak in Delaware and Wooster, as well as Newark. I’m also talking with Upper Arlington’s Life Long Learning program and will be there again, probably in February. See my calendar page for a complete listing of events and where I’ll be speaking.

I’m also looking for a venue here in Newark to offer a weekly series of classes. They are not yet developed, but some of my thoughts are to start out with the 10 Basics, of course, but to go into more detail on composting one week, finding ingredients and mixing soil, vertical gardening, fruits in the SFG, protecting the SFG from critters & weather, garden layout & design and lots more. Maybe we’ll even have a cooking class or three to catch the harvest at different points in the season (using the new SFG Cookbook, of course!).

I’m also trying to convince Mel on a weekend SFG conference here in Newark. This would be for any fan of SFG, not just to certify teachers. It would have many of the above subjects and related – such as capturing and storing water and other “green” subjects.

If you’d like to keep informed on what is happening, be sure to sign up for my newsletter at the right of this post.

Well, after dealing with sick kids all week, I must succumb to H1N1. Feel like crap. When I feel better I’ll post what I’ve learned about Swine Flu and why it’s being blown way out of proportion.

Facebook is being screwy and won’t let me post ANYTHING on my wall. I post it, then refresh or go to another page and wham! It’s gone. Grrr.

This is so exciting! When Mel was in Newark in August, he said they were working on the Square Foot Gardening cookbook and now it is available! Watch this vid to learn more:

Get it here:

I’m starting to schedule my Square Foot Gardening classes for the spring. We can start as early as February ’cause we can plant peas and potatoes in March in Ohio, earlier in other states. I’m willing to travel! Especially if it is to someplace warm.

I have the 10 Basics of Square Foot Gardening, a 1 to 2 hour class; Composting 101, about 1 hour; and the Square Foot Gardening hands-on workshop. Not fully developed yet, but I have 6 hours in my mind with a potluck lunch. I can also adapt the classes for specific groups, such as accessibility gardening for seniors or special needs, gardening with children, gardening therapy, etc.

Square Foot Gardening is a method of gardening that uses 20% of the space of a traditional row garden with 100% of the harvest and only 2% of the work! It is an easy method suitable for beginners, seasoned gardeners and all ages and abilities.

To schedule a class (or personal consultation), email me at cassie@cassiesstuff.com

Wow! Global climate change is making a huge impact here in Ohio with a FREEZE warning on the last day of September?!? Not even any frosts first, we’re going right to a freeze. Geeze. We are two weeks early from our October 15 date, the usual “first frost” date for Zone 5/6. Don’t panic! While it is expected to get to 32 degrees tonight, this is not likely to be a hard freeze and many of your summer plants can be covered and protected . Bring in any houseplants and cover summer vegetable plants with blankets. I’m afraid just sheets are not going to be enough. If you have a trellis, drape the blanket over the trellis and anchor it around your garden box. If you don’t have a trellis, try to support the blanket in some way with sticks into the ground. If you can’t, just covering it will be better than not. This is not the end of warm temperatures and our “Indian Summer” will show up soon! If you’re tired of gardening and would just like to salvage what you can, tomatoes can be picked green, wrapped in newspaper and kept in a cool, dry area such as a basement. They will ripen slowly over the next couple of months and you might have home-grown tomatoes at Thanksgiving or Christmas! Be sure to check them periodically to be sure they are not rotting. Pick whatever other vegetables are ripe and then remove plants after they’ve died back from the freeze. If you planted “spring” vegetables in August or September, they will be OK. In fact, kale, brussels sprouts and other cole-family plants LIKE frost and the frost will improve flavor. Cover spinach and lettuce lightly to protect them, but they should do OK.

Anyone interested in a workshop yet this fall? I think I still have enough ingredients left to mix soil and, quite frankly, I need some help getting boxes built and ready in my yard for the spring! We’ll start from measuring and mapping the yard, determining layout, design for most efficient use of space for maximum growth, building boxes, mixing soil and we might even build a couple of low hoop houses for some winter greens. We’ll discuss how to integrate food production within the landscape (although, right now I’m mostly focused on food production in my small yard, but we still want some pretty) and even incorporate some edible landscaping plants!

Sitting at Children’s Hospital in Columbus while my 10yo daughter recovers from her breathing ailments and am trying to work on my blog. This is proving more difficult than I thought, which may explain why I haven’t done it sooner! Even with a pretty good template, I wish I had more technical skill.