Square Foot Garden

Okay, I set off on an adventure this year. I decided to try this Square Foot Garden Book. Since our soil is sandy, being here on the water and very acidic, with all the oak trees. I started to look at container gardening and stumbled on the Square Foot Garden approach in the gardening section of the Library. We didn't follow it exactly but very closely. We used some friends cow manure, some compost, wood ashes, some perlite, some peet moss, and some black top soil. We did this all unscientifically just threw it in said "that looks good" and mixed it up. Fairly complex, huh? Well, the ph measured perfect 6.5-7. So, that is good. And here is some of the results. Our plans are to mulch the leaf pile and put it over the ground between the boxes.

The tomatoes are supposed to climb these fancy cages Todd MDH made out of conduit and tomato fence I ordered on-line. Did you know tomatoes climbed? I didn't. Anyway, you can plant them a lot closer if you have it set up like this. Usually they need 4 ft around them this way you plant one per sq ft. I planted 28 tomato plants, 16 Roma's for canning, 4 cheery for popping in your mouth, and 4beef steak for hamburgers or bean burgers in my case. I have so much planted that I am wondering what I got myself into for canning. Especially after I just stood in the kitchen for 2 days making bread and strawberry jam.