Hits and misses

I planted my garlic this morning and went to the feed store and got a trash bag full of straw for the mulch. As I was scattering the straw I got to thinking what worked and what didn't this summer. One of the best ideas I had was after I pulled the garlic last July and before I recharged the bed I threw a whole bolted plant of cilantro (seeds) all over the 4x4 bed and just smoothed it over and kept watering. By middle to late Aug. I had a carpet of small plants which we have used right up to last week when I got the bed ready for today. We froze lots and no bolting.
 
My first time growing biggest hits this year were kale, golden beets and tomatillos. All five stars except the tomatillos will get their own bed next year, away from all others. I have an experimental bed, trying to grow blueberries in 100% peat with acid fertilizer. We are to dry over the winter even with covering so I let them go. I ripped them out and this will be my new tomatillo box.  My biggest misses this year were broccoli, raab, pole beans and spinach. I will not grow any of those again except the spinach ( which got some kind of leaf fungus or something). The broccoli was not enough and the hassle of covering and uncovering for both the raab and broc. was just not worth the trouble. My wife doesn't like the smell when cooking either(frozen doesn't smell the same I guess). We don't eat the beans enough so the spaces can be used for better items. My biggest mistake was a new 4x8 bed with a trellis on the 8 ft. side. Those spaces in the middle three ft. back from the non-trellis side was to hard to work. This winter I will take half off so only two squares will be difficult.

Could you put the 8 ft trellis across the middle of the 8 ft bed? Then you'd have 2 ft on each side you could reach. I'm doing that in a bed or 2 next year. The shaded side would be good for all kinds of things that don't like the heat so much.

CC

Johnp, nice post. I think there's another one like it from last week; you might want to link yours inside it if you find it. It was a good read.

Capecoddess, I was thinking the same thing. My lettuce this year was bitter, but maybe some shade would have helped it.

Marc, Are you thinking of this one?
https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t16775-first-season-sfg-results-lessons-learned?highlight=what+I+learned

Yeah that's the one! Love that kind of thread. Wish more newbies would contribute.

I saw that thread and was going to but I wasn't a first timer.

As far as putting a trellis in the middle it may work. I shade my lettuce and spinach with 50% shade in the summer anyway. I am looking at a 4 ft. trellis with a 2 ft. ell. This would give me almost what I had before but with more useable space.

I love cilantro and find that the fact that it bolts so quickly frustrating.... HOWEVER there is a great advantage to this, it spreads its seeds everywhere. This is my third year growing it and I no longer need to plant it, as it grows everywhere, I just have to remember where the little volunteers are growing   
My big hit this summer were the pole beans of which I grew several rare heirloom types.   After they had grown up the cattle panel trellis, I zap strapped bamboo to "extend" the trellis


The bamboo was thin and so what happened was eventually they broke and bended down creating a sort of tent, which protected the beans in the cooler weather.
I would do this again.

Been away from my comp. for a few days but read GWN on cilantro this morning. I visited my son last month, they live on the east coast. We normally visit early spring or later in the fall but walking out to their garden (he is also a SFG) there were cilantro plants everywhere. He said he planted some several years ago but has not since.I am going to try the same by spreading the seeds in several locations and see what happens. Good idea.

I intend to do the same thing with marigolds. I've been scattering the seeds randomly out back for some time now, and have a whole bunch more saved up to either plant deliberately or scatter next spring.

For my 4th year

Hits:

Tomato - Sun Gold cherry
Swiss Chard - Rainbow
Amaranth - Molten Fire
Kale - Curly and Russian
Carrot - Little Finger
Cucumber - Pickling and Muncher
Onions - Egyptian walking from Audrey
Eggplant - Japanese Millionaire
Lettuce - 4 Seasons
Pepper - Lilac, plus several hots
Spinach - "New Zealand" not a true spinach

Misses:

Pepper - Poblano (undersized)
Beans - Dragon tongue (grasshoppers and spider mites, only one picking)
Cabbage - (small true heads)
Cantaloupe - (only 2 great fruits from 8 squares, poor pollination?)
Tomatillo - (zero lanterns)
Tomatoes - 16 varieties under-performed, disease and grass hoppers)

Hit and Miss:

Sweet potatoes - 2nd year and getting the hang, some were large enough for baking and freezing
Squash - lots of butternuts but undersized
Garlic - Usable but on small size, harvested too soon?

For my 5th year, 2017.

Hits:

Sun Gold tomato
Black Vernissage tomato
Snow Fairy tomato
Mortgage Lifter tomato
Sweet Potatoes (they split the storage totes!)
Cucumbers - Muncher and Pickling
Eggplant - Millionaire (sweet)
Peppers - all but Canary
New Zealand "spinach"

Misses:
Canary yellow bell pepper
All of the winter squash

2017-2018 Winter crops:
I planted late so I still have to wait to see the final harvest of broccoli, cauliflower.
The toy varieties of bok choy did great.

Bump!

sanderson wrote:For my 4th year

Misses:

...

Tomatillo - (zero lanterns)

@sanderson

Did you try tomatillos again? Tomatillos were one of the few success stories from my conventional garden attempts.  I got about two of the pictured buckets worth this year. (The container another example of a side-cycled item). The tricky part was getting them to grow out of the stage where the earwigs could attack them. I also decimated the earwig hideout - 2nd year chard plant, I think. Which since grew back.

I think tomatillos in a SFG would definitely need staking. Even growing in the cement which passes for dirt in my yard, they tend to topple over.



Chard? Edible on year #2? Or is it #3?

See my hits and misses here - page 11
https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t22034p250-2018-2019-sfg-in-brooks-ga#291777