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.

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.

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