Square Foot Gardening Thread- Update 7/23/12 - Page 30

Wait, you can eat lambs quarters? We've been weedeating it down and mowing it all summer long.

It is a close reletive to quinoa or amarynth (can't remember which) and yes, the small new leaves taste best.  If you save seed for whichever of those two it is related to you should keep weeding it b/c it can cross pollinate and ruin the seeds for replanting (not eating though)

6 in St Charles, I'm so jealous of all the green!!!  We are in the middle of a record breaking heatwave / drought, our whole summer has been brown and crunchy.  I am just the oposite though my veggies and garden come first then if I get around to it the flowers.  I would like to do more "pretty scape" but I want it to be useful not just pretty either edible for me or provide food or shelter for beneficials and be close to self sufficiant.       I know I just want it ALL!   

I have managed to eek out a veggie garden this year though, but so far no tomatoes, I'm crossing my fingers     for some fall tomatoes.

I pull mallow like weeds here (SoCal)  Okay, they are weeds.


If you want seeds, let me know and I will save some.


And much to my moms chagrin, I pull lambs quarter to feed the chickens every time I find it in a real flower bed/planter area.  Guess I still have not gotten past having it served boiled as a kid...gag

Hubby's grandmother was 1/4 Cherokee Indian and was raised by her grandmother...full blood Cherokee and who taught her all about healthy wild foods and medicinal ones as well.  They learned to find wild greens, turnips, wild strawberries, wild onions, lambsquarters, tender blackberry shoots, wild grapes, etc.  She taught Roger's mother many of those same skills.  Some of those old recipes are really tasty.

We are getting back to those foods for the trace minerals and away from those processed foods in tin cans and plastic bottles....a more healthy existance.

http://www.mypetchicken.com/catalog/chickens/Chicken-Salad-Seed-Mix-p928.aspx

I received a seed packet (see above) as a gift yesterday, now I'm all about building a winter forage hoop garden for my birdies.  It will be like a square foot garden, with a covered hoop over it to grow this stuff for them to hang out in.  I'll have to build them a nice little birdie coop door, and build an attached hoop run which I can cover.  I have a few weeks to get it done, the seed packet says to plant 4 weeks before last frost.

Anybody here with potatoes?  Here in Chicagoland, I planted these and now I'm ancy to dig them and see if any potatoes happened !  Is it too early?


I only got knee hi with my little box of potatoes.  The ones from my kitchen drawer that sprouted all got bacterial wilt and died, but hey, the others were GREAT til a cold rain today and now they
're laying down.  I wonder if I have any taters to dig?

I have my potatoes planted in "Potato Bags" that I made.  Basically, it is a 18' diameter bag of landscape fabric that I put into a cylinder of machine fabric to keep the gophers out.

One bag got planted at the beginning of June, the plants in that bag are turning yellow and dropping leaves.  I am going to dump it tomarrow night to see if I got any potatoes.  The other two bags were planted at the beginning of July, they are still green and growing.  They get to stay for another couple of weeks, until the cold gets them.

I believe you should wait until the plants start to die back to get the most growth of potatoes.

However, you can dig at any time and as long as you don't disturb the roots, they will continue to grow. 

In WI, I would carefully dig around the plants to pick the small reds during the late summer and fall.  Then, when the plants died back, I would do the "big dig" and harvest any that were left.  Here in WY, our soil is so bad that I had to resort to mixing my own soil with bagged stuff from Lowes and planting in bags.  I actually like this better.  I add soil to the bag as the plants grow, I started with 6" of soil and now have over a foot.

Glad to find this thread! DH and I do SFG, and we started some Lima's this fall- only to find out after soil testing that we are nitrogen deficient
Has anyone had any experience with this, and is that what this problem looks like??? Poor leaves are just yellowing out and crisping older leaves first- which I guess is characteristic of nitrogen deficiency?

I could be wrong, but I think chicken poop is nitrogen rich.  People often say it is, something like, "but you have to compost it before you use it, its too hot, too high nitrogen"......

Come to think of it, I have had leaves like that, but it was sooooo loooong agoooooo
(before chickens happened to my yard )