The heat, mixed with a few days of rain this week, sent the various plants in my two square foot garden boxes (to avoid confusion that’s two 4′x4′ squares) to growin’ up a storm. This weekend I spent a whole lot of time staking, harvesting and replanting and thought I’d give you all an update. I’ll start with one box (the one furthest south of the two) and will give you a report on the other later this week.

The southern most box is where I’ve got my tomatoes and pole beans, it was also the box that housed my first few rounds of lettuce which have now officially been harvested and replanted. Specifically here’s what things look like at this time of year:

Square Foot Gardening Box 1

  • In the top most row (the one facing north) I’ve got three tomato plants and eight pole beans. The square foot method says you can get two tomatoes per square and train them up, I ended up with only three due to not finding the particular varieties I wanted at the Farmer’s Market and then, well things just kind of got away from me. That said, I am a bit flumoxed as to how four plants would have fit in there. The three I have are threatening to take over the whole box (in part due to my lack of vigilance around staking for a week there) and I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if I can tell which stalk belongs to which base at this point. Ditto for my beans, which are planted four per square and then each two plants shares a string to climb. I’ve got a different variety of purple bean in each square: Cherokee Trail of Tears in one and Purple Peacock in the other. The Cherokee plants are right next to the tomatoes and frankly, I’m not convinced that I can actually find the base of the two plants that are closest to the tomatoes, they may have been sacrificed to the Great Tomato Overlords (as I’m now calling them). There is definitely fruit on the Early Girl tomatoes, which were true to their name and bore fruit first, and I think that my yellow cherries are also producing fruit now but can’t be sure that’s where it’s coming from. I remember reading in the square foot book that this sort of total chaos on staking would erupt and thinking to myself “wow, people are just so disorganized.” Once again nature humbles me.

    Early Girl Tomatoes

  • Moving right along to the next row of goodness, we have a square of radishes that after my partner’s daughter goes at them today will likely be ready for reharvesting. Then I’ve got some scallions, half a square of which I’ve let grow into little pearl like onions which are excellent in potato salads or salad dressings for some extra bite. Yum. The next two squares are occupied by lettuces, one square of green one of red oak. Oh and I should also mention that I now have a large bamboo pole sticking up out of the scallions to help support the tomato bounty, aka: Great Tomato Overlord.

    Overgrown Scallions

  • Down a row we have another square of radishes, this one a week or two away from eating. I replant radishes at least every two weeks if not more often for a near continuous harvest as they’re very popular with our household 9 year old. And anything that makes eating vegetables easy and fun is a winner in my book. Next to those radishes is a square of a new radish variety I picked up seeds for on the weekend: icicle radishes. They look like what I’ve also known as a French Breakfast radish, basically long and skinny instead of globe like and slightly milder tasting. I love those ones jullienned in a salad, so figured we’d give them a whirl. Following that I’ve got a square of kind of lanky yellow bush beans that are about 4 inches high right now. And then: an empty square! I wasn’t able to decide what to put in here this weekend, though I’m increasingly thinking I should have used the space for some extra bush beans, but I’ll give it a day or two to make up my mind.
  • The final row is a mix of various salad greens. As I say, I harvested the last of my early lettuces from the here this weekend, as well as some beets, and so turned the soil all over, added a bit of extra soil and some compost and then replanted. Last week I harvested all of my arugula, which I had lacked a free square to replant earlier in the season so I put in a full square of that. Mmmmm arugula. I also split a square between some more red oak lettuce and some sorrel, and one square had some sorrel in it that was planted a few weeks ago and is just starting to sprout now. That leaves me with one more square which I’ll fill next weekend with some basil plants from the Farmer’s Market so that I can have a square of basil for harvesting/preserving rather than the plants I have now just for cooking with over the summer.

So there we go, there’s the box one round up. If you’d like to see this all mapped out you can check out this photo on Flickr which has notes. Overall, I’m still very pleased with the square foot approach, but am definitely going to need a third square next year. I may also need to move the tomatoes out of the boxes as they really are taking over, which I hate complaining about because I so love garden tomatoes. The SFG book recommends building an entire tomato “trench” that is four feet long by one foot wide, and that seems like potentially quite a good idea. That may be my plan for next year.