Got my All new Square Foot Gardening book

Heretofore (since January), I've been using a 1981 edition of Square Foot Gardening, but with the New SFG, I'm even more energized! See where I could have better done what I've already done, and decided on what I'm a'gonna do next better. (Not sure that makes sense.) Will expand the salad garden close to the kitchen, and make dedicated beds to produce vegetables especially for canning and freezing (we use lots of tomato sauces--various varieties. Will build and dedicate 4x4 beds just for garlic, selecting varieties to extend our harvest and provide a "flush" for spicy pickled garlic. Need a new 2 x 14 bed running along the fenceline for various beans and peas for both fresh and canning use, which will become the tomato bed next year, etc. Only things I've not decided on: how best to plant the three sisters (corn, beans, squash)...do I really need to make a 4 x 10 foot bed for this purpose? Whadda y'all think?

I hope boffer can jump in about your corn. Corn just doesn't like my little part of the coast, and the two years I tried it, absolutely nothing I did have nice corn shocks to display over Halloween and Thanksgiving though.

So glad you got the new book. The ANSFG method is so much easier than the old. No digging or double digging to mix amendments into your native soil.

Nonna.PapaVino wrote: Only things I've not decided on: how best to plant the three sisters (corn, beans, squash)...do I really need to make a 4 x 10 foot bed for this purpose? Whadda y'all think?

I don't think there are any benefits to growing corn in a box of MM when you start talking about more than a 4x4. For one thing, it would take forever to break even on your startup investment.

That being said, I grow my corn in the same 5 way compost that I make for my MM. And I usually stick a few squashes at one end of the corn patch, just because they're out of the way. Since part of the benefit of the three sisters is that the beans help fertilize the corn, it would be interesting to divide your patch in half to compare a 5way compost mix to, I dunno, something less nutritional?!

Let us know how it goes. There's always lots of talk by folks who are going to do it; there's seldom any feedback from folks who have done it.

Boffer, you've now got me thinking about taking some of those old hay bales down in the barn, putting them in a rectangle and filling the center with Mel's Mix, where I will plant the corn. Then, perhaps dig out some holes in the bales, fill with compost mix and plant the squash. Beans, of course, will be interplanted with the corn. It would be easy to sink four stock fence posts at the corners of the "box" and string cord around the perimeter of the thing to help support the corn (considering the loosness of the MM, shallowness of corn roots, and vulnerability to wind being much taller than usual). Except for the new MM, no expense, which is a very good price.

Nonna.PapaVino wrote:Boffer, you've now got me thinking about taking some of those old hay bales down in the barn, putting them in a rectangle and filling the center with Mel's Mix, where I will plant the corn. Then, perhaps dig out some holes in the bales, fill with compost mix and plant the squash. Beans, of course, will be interplanted with the corn. It would be easy to sink four stock fence posts at the corners of the "box" and string cord around the perimeter of the thing to help support the corn (considering the loosness of the MM, shallowness of corn roots, and vulnerability to wind being much taller than usual). Except for the new MM, no expense, which is a very good price.