My Square Foot Garden

The great Squash and Bean Takeover!

As you can see, the summer squash took over and shaded out adjacent squares of the garden. I planted 3 per square, mistaking the seeds for vining-type, when they were in fact bush-type! And boy are they big; they love that compost!

And here is why the very tall conduit-and-nylon string trellis is such a good idea: I thought the Kentucky Wonders would just grow along the fence this year, and next year I could put up the trellises. The Kentucky Wonders grew like Wonders, and instead of climbing laterally to creep along the length of fence, twisted on each other and climbed outward and upward, eventually overtaking the tomato and everything else, and still they refuse to travel horizontally. I guess Mel and other SFGers know what they are about, after all! The moral of the story is, get the trellis in first. That will be a good early-spring project next season.

Finally getting last leg done

Scarlet Runner beans: A Must for Edible Landscaping!

I read they are well appreciated by the English, and you can see why the combination of beauty and practicality is so alluring in small gardens. Plus, they attract hummingbirds!

Next year I plan to implement the full-sized vertical supports made of bent conduit, rebar supports, and nylon cord detailed in Mel Bartholomew's book.
You can see how little yard we have, but SFG let me have the best of both worlds!

The corner was left large for the purpose of a rhubarb patch, which doesn't fit in a square foot, but should fill out the diagonal corner nicely in time. The remaining grids will be up soon.

Note: do not eat rhubarb leaves. They contain a lot of oxalic acid, which some people seem to shrug off, but other people have died from eating just a bit! Not worth it for a mouthful of mediocre greens.

The center broccoli was harvested after this was taken, because it was trying to bloom

Another section of the garden, with succession-planted broccoli, which you can see are still much smaller than the first crop. The younger cabbage shows holes from the cabbage-moths' caterpillars, which I picked off (with a stick, too squeamish for fingers!) I found that with only a few broccoli and cabbage growing at a time, the hand-pick method was the best organic solution, short of row-covers to keep the moths from laying eggs in the first place. I also noticed that after the first cabbage-worm experience this season, yellowjackets were swift to appear, to hunt the juicy prey... and they seem to have kept them under control quite nicely, so I haven't had to hand-pick them off since.