Welcome! I lived in MN when I was little. My mom gave me a pack of watermelon seeds to plant and then it snowed the next day! I must have been traumatized because I never tried gardening again until almost 30 years later LOL. :)

Hope someone can help with what is good in your zone and when. :) I'm sure the sfg part will work, just don't know what your time for planting is.

Welcome Jodi! I'm sure you'll love afg and I'm guessing there will be folks near you doing this, too.

Hello Jodi! and welcome to our happy, but dysfunctional family! Ok....just kidding. Some of us like to have a little fun....ok, alot of fun. Anyway, we are very serious about sfg, and will be glad to help you all we can. In my opinion, this is the best forum on here, and you will learn alot. The key is to participate, as well as sharing your personal gardening successes and failures. Sorry I can't help you with your zone....

EG

Hi Jodi,

I live in Colorado in a 3/4 zone because of the altitude and grow a wide variety of vegetables in my beds.

The limiting factors are cool night temperatures and a short growing season. Everything takes about half again as long to mature as what is listed on the seed packets. If you are careful and pick varieties that mature quickly, you can grow almost anything.

Anything with a maturity date greater than 75 to 80 days or that needs hot days and warm nights such as melons, sweet potatoes and winter squash pretty much laugh at us for even trying to grow them.

Gail

Thanks for the warm welcome! I really appreciate it. I would really like to plant enough for my husband and self. We both love homegrown veggies. I did not plant a garden this year due to the cold and wet spring. It never warmed up until mid June. Now its in the 90's and we haven't had much rain. Last year didn't work either due to the early hot temps that stayed hot until august when it finally rained and rained and rained. So, I am looking to get something closer to my house, in reach of water and where my husband won't be constantly tilling our big sandy garden and it goes on and on. I guess my biggest concern is that my growing season is from June to August, and maybe I can squeeze in late May and early Sept. Its very intriguing and I am going to keep reading other posts to get a feel for this whole new idea (to me anyway). So, thanks again, and I am sure I will be back with questions. I can feel a few brewing as I type.
Jodi :-)

Yay! A fellow Minnesotan! Can't help you out too much because I won't be starting my sfg until next spring-but my mother converted to sfg this year and her 4x4 boxes produced such abundant crops that you can hardly get to the middle boxes to pick! So it looks hopeful! Maybe more of us will come out of the woodwork to share info on MN sfg!

Absolutely! I sure hope so! The SFG book by Mel talks a lot about extending the season. You can do it be starting early seedlings indoors or covering crops outside before the season starts and for keeping them late as well. Gail will be a big help and her advice is really great, like being sure to get varieties that mature as quickly as possible. You might also consider hoop covers made from PVC that really are pretty simple to help you extend your season.

I think you should start by checking with your local extension office, studying the SFG book, and turning to the forums as often as needed. Welcome to the forums here and SFG!

~Angela

Just a follow up: I got started a little late with planting, but my SFG seems to be growing quite well! I've picked cherry tomatoes, pea-pods and lettuce. Still waiting on the corn, beans, carrots, onions, cabbage and peppers. So there's proof that you can SFG successfully in zone three! Also my mothers SFJ is phenomenal! She is also in zone three. Good luck! I hope you give it a try!

So glad you wrote . mn sq. ft. gardener here. I to just started a square foot garden. allso had a late start. that being said I am not new to gardening and so far I just love my raised beds. I have two of them. One is 4x8 6 inch deep. the other is 3x8 6 inch deep .We have about 120 days of frost free and can grow most crops most years.Don"t forget we have very long days of summer sun .Oh and check Mel's home page. He just made a trip to MN .I think It was Chaska. hope I was of some help.

Last summer we were in Fairbanks, Alaska about August 15. Their summer was somewhat cool and rainy, but you wouldn't believe the size of the cabbages. They were as tall as your knees. I also saw corn, squashes and other things growing. I think it must be the amount of daylight they get more than the temperature. In MN you should get a goodly amount of sunlight and that will most likely influence what you can grow. This is my first year of SFG and I am enjoying it, but having somewhat limited success. I have added some high nitrogen fertilizer to compensate for possibly unfinished compost bought at the store this year.
garden addict

Hi! I'm a MN square foot gardener, this is my second year - and it's been great!

I live just southeast of the Twin cities just a few miles from the Mississippi river. Our soil is very sandy, needed alot of amending, and since I'm not wild about battling a tiller every year, we decided permanent raised beds were the way to go. We made Mel's mix last year, and the results were just okay, nothing spectacular. This year we added 4 cubic yards of composted manure to the boxes and the garden has really taken off.

I began planting in mid-April and there were a few nights I had to cover things up. So far this year, I have harvested English peas, sugar snap peas, snow peas, beets, yellow squash, patty pan squash, cabbages, broccoli and cauliflower. I have 6 4'x4' beds, 2 4'x10 (about 9" deep) that I rotate vegetables in. We are growing tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, carrots, beets, pole beans, cucumbers, lettuce, radishes, squash (summer and winter), brussel sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage, peas and onions.

We added permanent raised bed boxes, in addition to the above, for asparagus, strawberries, blueberries and raspberries this year. We also built a fence around this part of our yard, to keep out the deer, and deter the rabbits.

In the three years we have been in Minnesota the weather has been a little different every year. That's probably been the biggest challenge. This year we had an early spring in our area, so I was really able to get a head start. Last year was very, cool and wet and kind of a late spring, but I was still harvesting veggies in early October.

I wouldn't vegetable garden any other way - go for it, you will love it! If I could figure out how to post a pic I would - LOL!