Square Foot Garden Progress

Our garden is doing remarkably well since it gets little or no attention from us. OK, that's not entirely true -- Maddie's new job is to water every day and she's been very responsible.

Here's our first few harvests:
The plants are growing tall and taller. Last year our zucchini and cucumbers just withered and died by mid-July. This year they've gone nuts! I'm worried that they're going to choke the tomatoes to the point that we don't get the bounty of red tomatoes I'd hoped for this year.

So, I decided to smoosh the zucchini down a bit in the hopes that the tomatoes could have a chance. Hopefully I haven't killed the plants:

I'm still stuck on what to do with the cucumbers. They're blocking all the sunlight on the right half of the garden.


We planted a few zucchini in normal dirt to see what would happen. So far, they are about 12 inches high and just have a few flowers. I think something has been nibbling on them, but I'm not sure.

Here's some of the hundreds of tomatoes that are just hanging out green and tiny on the vine. I'm hoping they turn red soon...

All Right Garden!!!

It seems like we have really turned a corner in the garden. I've been able to get about 8 pounds worth of tomatoes over a 48 hour time period this week. I attribute it to three things:

• Time
• Not watering -- thanks Wendy!
• Heat - finally we have had a few sunny, hot days in a row

I did a lot of research on how to turn your green tomatoes into red ones. One of the basic tips was to only water every 2-3 days. I've been watering every single day. I didn't know they only needed water every 2-3 days, even in the heat of summer. So, I stopped watering this week. I haven't given them any water since Saturday, and we seem to be doing much better now. I'll probably throw on a little water today, but not too much.

If you're struggling like I am -- I live in fear of all those 200 tomatoes dying in the soon-to-come frost, there are additional ways to turn your tomatoes if that frost is headed your way. I've gathered a few from the Internet here. Now, I haven't tried these yet myself, but if we get closer to the first frost and I still have bunches on the vine, you can bet I'll start trying different things to save them!

• The ol' brown paper bag trick -- apparently this works on tomatoes as well as peaches
• Place them a box, in the dark, with an apple. The apple apparently provides the necessary chemicals in the air to turn them red. Who knew?
• Pick them and just let them sit on your counter out of direct sunlight until turning red.

Planting my garden

I'm still building my garden's framework, though it's almost finished. I'm hoping to have seeds in the ground before next weekend. We just have to figure out how to move the frame from the garage to the great outdoors.

This week I've been deciding what to plant in my 28 squares of my square foot garden. I have two rows of 14 squares each. In my research into different varieties and types of each plant, I've selected a small sampling. This is mostly so that I can learn what will grow in our garden. Secondary to that is to learn which varieties we prefer. I'm particularly interested in the tomatoes. My favorite tomato is the campari type. I can eat an entire plate full with just a little salt. I'd eat them at every meal -- even breakfast. Unfortunately, I can't find the plants available for purchase anywhere, and I'm not talented enough yet to grow them from the seeds leftover from dinner. Because my entire family feels the way I do about a tasty tomato, I've chosen to go with all indeterminate(means produces until the frost) varieties. We'll see how that pans out as the season goes along.

My garden has taken quite a bit of thought, and of course an Excel spreadsheet. I've copied and pasted things around in Excel for weeks trying to come up with the perfect combination. Because so much of what I want to plant will need to grow vertically, the entire back row will be trellised. All of the plants requiring trellis subsequently have to be placed on that back row. Good thing we went for a long garden!

Here are the intricate details:

The Back Row:

• Square #1 -- Cucumber(Marketmore 76) from seeds


• Square #2 -- Jet Star Tomato


• Square #3 -- String Beans -- Bush, Blue Lake 274 Beans from seed and Tendergreen Improved, Bush, Beans from seed
  
  
• Square #4 -- Early Girl Tomato


• Square #5 -- String Beans -- Pole Burpee's Stringless Green Pod and Kentucky Wonder, Rust Resistant Pole Beans


• Square #6 -- Better Boy Tomato


• Square #7 -- Peas -- Alaska Wilt Resistant Peas


• Square #8 -- Grape Tomato


• Square #9 -- Cucumber from transplant, also a marketmore


• Square #10 -- Beefy Boy Tomato


• Square #11 --Peas -- Little Marvel (dwarf) peas


• Square #12 -- Brandywine Tomato


• Square #13 & 14-- Zucchini

The Front Row:

• Square #1 -- Cucumber(Marketmore 76) from seeds


• Square #2 -- Lettuce -- Romaine(Parris Island Cos Lettuce) -- I'll be rotating the planting in this square. The first planting will be a transplant from the store. I'll also plant seeds at 10-14 day intervals after that for good crop rotation. I'm a bit worried about when the lettuce will go to seed because of heat. But, since I don't know when that will happen, I'm going to try to grow as much as possible until then.


• Square #3 -- Lettuce -- Salad Bowl Lettuce -- again, I'll purchase one then plant the others from seed.


• Square #4 -- Lettuce -- Great Lakes Lettuce -- again, I'll purchase one then plant the others from seed.


• Square #5 -- Lettuce -- Bibb Lettuce-- again, I'll purchase one then plant the others from seed.


• Square #6 -- Green peppers


• Square #7 -- Herbs -- small patches of cilantro, parsley & chives


• Square #8 -- Red peppers


• Square #9 -- Spinach -- Teton Hybrid Spinach from seeds


• Square #10 -- Jalapeno peppers


• Square #11 -- Spinach -- transplant from the store


• Square #12 -- Yellow peppers


• Square #13 -- Onion -- Spanish sweet and red onion


• Square #14-- Sweet 100 Cherry tomato