Know Your Mulch

It has been an unusually busy spring, with multiple last minute trips to Seattle, above average rain fall, and above average weeds.

We mulched our garlic with oat straw to keep the weeds down, and it worked really well.  We hardly have any weeds growing in our garlic field.  We do however have tons of oats growing in our garlic field.  In some places the oats are so thick you can hardly see the garlic.  It's sickening to look at.  Lesson learned, buy cleaner straw mulch.  Actually, I'm thinking we may go with leaf mulch next time or if we continue growing garlic and get a new bedder, getting a plastic mulch attachment.  I know I've been against laying down plastic to keep weeds out, but this season might just put me over the edge.

We got our new garden beds built and planted.  It took 51 landscaping ties per bed.  The long sides are easy, three 8 footers with every other row starting with 4 footers to offset the seams.  The short sides however took pieces that were 52 inches long in order to get the 4 feet of space in the middle.  The corners overlap and I drilled through with a 2 foot long 1/2 inch arbor bit, then drove a 2 foot piece of rebar through the corner to hold them together.

There are 3 cross pieces you can see in the picture below to hold the sides from bowing out.  I also drilled through this part and drove a piece of rebar to hold them together.  With 192 cubic feet of soil inside these beds, the cross members are necessary to keep them from falling over with the pressure.

The spacing between the boxes is 5 feet, enough to fit our lawn mower.  The beds are 2 feet high and weeding is SO much easier now.  I think we actually weed more because we don't have to kneel and bend over to do it.

We wound up with extra space this year because of the lack of hot peppers that sprouted, not planting onions, and not planting corn.  So we decided to put in 2x the number of carrots, 32 sq ft or 512 plants.  And we decided to try something new, growing watermelon.  I'm excited to eat our own watermelon, and judging by how well our past crops have all done, we will likely have enough to make some watermelon wine.

We didn't plant the 1/2 acre of corn like we talked about and we didn't put in a pumpkin patch.  We really just ran out of time.  Between me traveling, remodeling our house, and raining 4 out of 5 days, we barely got our garden in.  But therein lies the beauty of doing things yourself, no corn but we have a new bathroom; no pumpkin patch, but we have new raised beds.  And those ideas of corn, corn mazes, pumpkins, fall pig roasts, etc. can all be put up for the next season.

Evening looking across our field

Starting Seeds

Last year we bought a Burpee XL Ultimate Growing System and it worked very well.
http://www.burpee.com/seed-starting/grow-kits/xl-ultimate-growing-system-prod002628.html

However, it used those expanding peat moss biscuits that were enclosed in a mesh, which I didn't care for.  The watering system though was fabulous.  We could go up to 7 days without watering and we had excellent plants; by far my best seedlings ever.  The cover doesn't exactly fit the tray and is fragile.  I cracked it trying to get it down on the one corner, but it still works well.

This year I decided to use the peat pots with the self watering mat and tray.  We are also trying Jiffy Natural & Organic Seed Starting Mix.  In the past I have used my own compost, but this year it's under 2 feet of snow and frozen solid.

Our seed starting setup

We've grown our vegetables from seed for years now with several different setups but all basically the same.  Hanging above the bench is a $20 shop light from Home Depot with daylight T-8 bulbs.  Then it's one or two flats of cells and a little plastic dome that goes over them (the dome seems to be very important until the plants get pretty big).  Under the trays is a heating pad.  The cells I like to use are the larger ones where you get 36 cells per tray.  With these Jiffy Strips, we get 50 cells per tray.

I will review the starting mix and the Jiffy Strips in the upcoming weeks.

New Garden Design

After gardening with a square foot garden made of 2x6 for several years, and complaining about things each year, I've decided to try use a different approach going forward.

I want to keep with the intensive planting that Square Foot Gardening introduced me to, but improve upon a couple of things.  First is to build my beds about knee high, so roughly 2 feet high.  The hope is to save our backs a little, make mowing easier, and provide more nutrient rich soil to the vegetables. 

With a bed this high, we are planning on using landscaping timbers stacked up and connected with long nails.  We'll see how that goes.  Otherwise we'll connect them with 1/2 in bores and rebar.  But with beds this high and using landscaping ties, we are also planning on making our beds 20 feet long.  This will actually make the foot print of our garden smaller.  Right now we have 4 feet between each box on each side.  So with this set up, we will only need 2 long beds to get the same space as our 9 beds AND our four 1x4 beds!!

Another advantage that going from 13 beds to 2 beds is that an automated irrigation system becomes a lot more manageable and cheaper.  Even without an automated system, watering will definitely be easier.  Our final improvement with the beds is to put hardware netting on the bottom of them to keep the moles out of the beds.  We've lost too many crops to moles/voles over the years.

Our spacing between our beds will allow us to mow in-between the beds.  So maintenance between the beds will now consist of one pass with the lawn mower.

We will continue planting in our intensive, "square foot" way, but will have to think more carefully about where we plant things.  We will also have to get a lot more soil into the beds.

So as I get my seeds started this weekend, I'll be spending plenty of time thinking about the logistics of where things will be planted, how much space they take, etc.

Best Onions So Far

We picked our onions yesterday and were pleasantly surprised.  I usually end up with about 50% being rather small, around 1 - 2 inches, however this year I only had about a dozen or so that small.  Besides having a lot of nice onions, we had several that were the size of a baseball or bigger.

A couple of our large onions

If we can continue growing onions of this size year over year, I will have to change the spacing in my square foot garden from 9 onions per sq.ft. to 5 per sq.ft.  I'm going to have to give credit to the weather for our harvest this year.  We have received steady rain and temperatures have been rather pleasant.  We are excited to see how the holland onions turn out.

Changing of the Seasons

Fall is here!!!  The temperatures are dropping into the 30's tonight, the oil furnace is kicking on, and the baby has an electric heater in her room.  10 days ago it was 90 degrees and tomorrow it will be in the high 70s.  Fall brings about many changes, changes in the weather, the leaves change color, the winds change direction.  This year it brought about an unexpected change for us, my contract was pulled at Microsoft.  Fortunately I have found a full time position with a decent commute and will start my new job in 2 weeks.

Tonight we had a frost advisory.  Since this wasn't the best season for peppers anyway, I decided to pick all of our ripe sweet peppers and all of the super hots.  Even though the super hots are still green instead of their usual orange or red, they are still very hot.  However, they are not as hot as they should be.  With this batch of peppers, I will combine the super hots with the habaneros.  The pungency is about the same between the ripe habaneros and the immature reapers & scorpions.

Processing our peppers is a labor of love.  I start by slicing the stem off and cutting the peppers in half.  For this step I wear 2 pair of nitrile gloves to keep the capsaicin off of my hands, ESPECIALLY with the super hots (ghost, reapers, and scorpions).  Once sliced, I place them on the dehydrator trays.  For a dehydrator, we have a simple unit that takes up to 10 round trays.  It will dehydrate 10 trays of super hots in 10-12 hours.

Finished tray of hot peppers

Once they are dried, I crush them with a marble mortar and pestle.  Before I begin crushing, I will put on a pair of nitrile gloves and a respirator mask.  Once the peppers are crushed, I put them in a pint sized mason jar for long term storage.

Mortar and Pestle

Dried peppers ready to be crushed

Finished product

Long term storage

Dealing With The Weather

We had rain almost every day for month or more, which has led to a near total loss for our tomatoes.  The roma tomatoes are still hanging in there and producing, but all others were rotting almost as soon as they were formed.  I cut the plants down to about 8 inches tall.  I figure there is 2 months of growing left, lets see what will happen, after all, we have nothing to lose at this point.  Talking with the neighboring growers, they have all experienced the same thing.

Our peppers are growing, but not like previous years.  Again, I blame the cool, wet weather.  With days in the 60s and nights in the 40s in the middle of July & August, it's just not the optimal conditions to grow peppers.  My super hots do have lots of peppers on them and look healthier than my sweet peppers, so hopefully we'll be able to sell some.

The cool, wet weather has given us an abundance of pole beans.  We always have a lot of beans, but this year it is going to a whole new level.  I put in less plants than normal, about 50% less, but they have produced 100% more beans so far with 2 more months to go.

1/2 bushel of beans

So far, the pole bean experiment is working well and we will continue to grow pole beans in the future.

• They are easier to pick;
• Don't require as much back pain to get to them;
• Require less seed per pound of beans;
• And produce extremely well

 In the future though, I may have to figure out a way to support more of the vine.  An 8 foot high support would be great, but would also require a ladder to harvest the beans.  I'm going to experiment next year with an arch and see how that works.

This season has left me with the conclusion that there is no point in complaining or worrying about the weather, but just accept what you get.  When the weather is poor for one type of vegetable, others will thrive.

Processing Carrots

After taking care of the rabbit that was getting into the carrots, I found a young groundhog eating the tops of them.  So, I figured it was time to pick them.  The carrots weren't as big as I was hoping, but anymore time in the ground wasn't going to help them.  There was one that had split open, but all others were fine.

Knowing how much Debbie hates me bringing dirty food into the house to process it, I decided to be a little smarter with my carrots this year.  With 2 wooden crates, a rotating stool, and a bucket of water, I had a very comfortable carrot set up.  The crates we came across at Home Depot on clearance for $4 each (I couldn't make them that cheap); the stool is for a drummer and can be found at any music shop.

Carrot set up

Spring carrot harvest

Our baby enjoyed teething on one of the carrots and we couldn't help but to get some pictures of her

Curing Onions

I picked all of our onions last week.  About 60% - 70% were fallen over and we had a small window of dry, sunny weather.  The onions were much bigger this year than last, owing to better growing conditions in the spring.  We had about a dozen or so red onions that bolted, likely due to the late frost we had, so we've been using those ones first.  They are now curing and drying in the barn on a drying rack I built last year out of chicken wire an 1x2.  We'll keep them in with the fan blowing until the necks dry shut, which takes anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks, depending on the size of the neck and how long they were in the ground after falling over.

Onions drying

Now we just need some dry weather to harvest our garlic.  It has rained every day for the last 10 days.  Today I had a little help in the garden picking the beets that were ready, some carrots for our salad, and a few peppers for an evening snack (our new favorite snack is crackers with cream cheese and a slice of jalapeno).

Our corn is approximately 6 feet high and is starting to form tassels.  This is my first year growing corn in the square foot garden and so far I am pleased.

Blooming Onion

My wife had never seen an onion flower, so when this one bolted, I decided to let it go. It's not too often that we get to see our root plants reproduce.  To this day I've never seen a radish, beet, or carrot bloom and harvest their seeds for a new crop.  I'm thinking about setting aside a section of the garden next year for seed harvest, onion, radish, beet, turnips, and carrots (carrots take two years, so I would save some of my fall carrots for this project).

Onion Bloom

First Field Plowed

We have been busy the last month.  Unfortunately, our crops took a beating (at least some of the peppers and the radishes).  We had temps in the high 80s the week before Memorial Day, followed by 3 nights of frost over Memorial Day weekend.  The past week has been in the high 80s again.  The radishes did not do well with such extremes, so I harvest all of the 128 that were in the ground for 4 weeks.  We wound up with approximately 50 that were edible. All of the crops look great right now with onions waist high and everything up and ready to grow.

I finished building the cages for the rabbits and almost went and got them before I realized, all I had was the cages.  I still needed the feeders, I had to hang the cages and put in the manure system.  I received the feeders last week and will be finishing everything up this week so that we can hopefully pick up our New Zealand breeders at the end of the week.


I went to purchase a 2 bottom plow up the road, however the guy informed me that he sold them all, but he had a couple 1 bottoms and several 3 bottoms.  I decided on a 3 bottom plow, figuring I could remove on of them and have a whole set of spare parts.  Unfortunately neither of us had realized that it was a category 2 plow, not a category 1.  So I returned it and picked out a 1 bottom plow with a coulter.  Sitting right beside it was a 3pt bedder with a double set of discs on each side.  I exchanged the 3 bottom plow for the 1 bottom and the bedder.

I plowed the first field that we will plant in garlic this fall.  The total size is 100x50, giving ten 100 foot rows.  I had planned on using the bedder to make raised beds, 1 foot wide every 5 feet (the width of my tractor), but to my surprise, the bedder is adjustable out to 2 foot wide beds, essentially doubling the amount of garlic I can plant per bed.  I can't wait to start making beds and see that piece of equipment work.  The plowing went surprisingly easy.  I did have to put the tractor in 4wd but I think if I would get the tires filled with calcium, it wouldn't have been an issue.

After a couple of weeks sitting, I was getting anxious to get a set of discs to finish tilling the field so that I could get a crop or two of buckwheat before fall planting.  Before I traveled to a used tractor dealer to buy a set of discs they had listed, I decided to check craigslist.  I don't look there often and have never bought anything through the site.  I just happened to find a 6 foot Dearborn disc and a 2 bottom plow listed for $200 each.  The guy moved into a new house, was cleaning out the garage, and wanted them gone.  I offered him $300, he accepted, and I was more than happy.  I paid less for a good set of discs AND a 2 bottom plow than I had planned on paying for a set of discs.


I finally got to use the discs on the field.  Being the first field that I've ever worked with a plow and discs, my wife and I are extremely happy with the results.  I may buy a drag harrow to break things up even finer and possibly a sub soiler, but we'll see how things go.  My next purchases will likely be a seeder for planting cover crops and a used manure spreader to spread my compost on the fields.

Look for more frequent updates now that things are finally rolling along.

Spring Work

Unfortunately, we've all been sick the last couple of weeks, bronchitis, flu, ear infection, and severe cold.  Needless to say, the work has slacked.  Finally feeling better and with the great weather we've been having (and forecast to have for the next 10 days), spring work has gone into full gear.

I had a 1 bottom plow given to me and bought another one sight unseen for $20.  Unfortunately, they are both 1 point attachments instead of 3 point.  So I decided to try to convert one of them.  Without going into all of the details, I will just say that it was a failure.  I'll be purchasing a plow at one of the dealers or a local farm this week, both have listings in the paper for used plows and discs.

 We put in 2 types of lettuce, spinach, beets, turnips, and radishes this weekend.  We started with 64 radishes and will continue with a 16-32 rotation.  Beets & turnips, we planted 36 of each.  We don't know if we like beets, my dad does and will gladly take them if we don't.  With the warm weather, I'm going to put beans in this week and attempt sweet corn for the first time in my SFG.  The green beans are moving from a 4x4 box to a 1x10 box with a cattle panel.  We are tired of bending over to pick the bush beans, so we are growing pole beans and using the cattle panel for a trellis. 

The peppers are being hardened off this week, in hopes of transplanting this weekend.  The super hots are doing really well.  Hopefully everything works out and we don't loose any as they are our first profitable product from the "farm".

The chickens seem to be happy in their new home.  I'm still amazed at how much grass they eat.  Here are some pictures of the finished coop painted to match the barn, the run, the man door, and the window which I forgot to put in originally.  I bought the 18x24 single hung window at Lowe's for $32.

Coop and run

Happy chickens

Man door into run

Hot Peppers Started

As part of our farming business plan we are going to sell dried, crushed super hot peppers.  The last several years I've grown, dried, and crushed habanero peppers for personal use (although I have enough to last several lifetimes).  I was buying supplies to give out some of the pepper for Christmas gifts (sidenote, we give out baskets filled with stuffed we've canned, dried, frozen from our garden for Christmas) and the woman asked if I was interested in selling it in her store.  That got me thinking about how I wanted to grow super hot peppers, grow food for other people, and eventually make a profit from the farm.  We aren't planning on making a lot of money from the peppers, but if they can at least show a profit on year 1 and we can sell all of our product, then we will expand in future years.  Our whole plan is take it slow and see how it goes.

Anyway, I bought pepper seeds from Pepper Joe's and set out to establish our farm as one of the few suppliers of crushed, dried super hot peppers.  We bought and used leftover seeds from last year of the following:

Carolina Reaper - 1.4 million SHU

Butch T Trinidad Scorpion - 1million SHU

Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Chili) - 900,000 SHU

Habanero - 200,000 SHU

We also have hot, but not super hot:
Giant Jalapeno, Black jalapeno, Pablano, Sporo, Cayenne, Golden Nugget, Firecracker

Most of them have sprouted in the last week and have overgrown their dome.  As you can see by the color of the cells, the dome ends up getting more moisture to the end cells and less to the middle, which had the effect of the end cells sprouting at a much faster and higher rate.

Peppers Sprouting

Now I just need to find a better way to crush the peppers when they finally arrive.  Mortar and pestle just won't cut it for the quantity of peppers that will need to be crushed this year vs previous years.

Carrot Harvest

We picked all of our carrots today.  We had really good germination and growth rates.  Our total harvested weight was 30-40 pounds with the tops. 

Summer carrot harvest

 I surprised Debbie by coming to the house with the entire bunch on my shoulder.  As we were processing them outside, Debbie couldn't resist the urge to make vegetable soup for dinner.  It smells so good in the house right now.  Fresh garlic, onions, zucchini, squash, carrots, green beans, and canned tomatoes from last year.

We also had some more zucchini and squash to pick.  We will cut some of the squash and zucchini up and freeze for the winter.  We also like to shred the zucchini and freeze it that way for making zucchini bread all winter long.

Zucchini and squash harvest

Now I will wait 3 weeks and plant 256 more carrots for a fall harvest.  The fall ones have been a lot sweeter carrot for us. 

Zucchini, Squash, and Beans - Oh My

It has been 1 week since our first bean harvest.  Our first week of harvesting beans has netted us 35 pints of beans.  And that was during a week where the temperature was regularly above 90 and hit 98 several times.  The high temps meant harvesting beans at dusk and once with a headlamp after the sun went down.  The cool thing about beans is that if you continue to harvest them religiously every 2-3 days, you will be rewarded with more beans.

We've been getting 4-5 large zucchinis every 2-3 days as well.  And now that the crooked neck squash is coming in as well, I think we'll be having some veggie only meals.  Our peppers look great and are just coming into harvest with 1 or 2 ready to pick.  Also our cucumbers have produced several fruits.  Too bad there aren't any tomatoes ready yet so Debbie can make a tomato and cucumber salad (for herself).  But I'm not going to cry about the tomatoes not being ready yet because in a few weeks it will be crazy in the garden.

Besides the beans, the onions are all out of the ground now and drying in the barn.  I have a 36" barn fan set on low to keep the dry air moving around them.

The garlic is done drying and ready for storage.  Debbie tasted it raw last night and couldn't believe how much stronger it was than the stuff she was buying at the store.  In order to plant 256 heads in the fall, we will only have about 4-5 heads for eating this year.  But then in 2 years from now, I should have enough to grow 1/2 acre.

Tomorrow I will pick about 75% of the carrots.  The rest aren't quite ready yet.  I've picked 2 test carrots and they were beautiful.  8-9 inches long, 1 inch in diameter, and very sweet.

Garlic Harvest

The garlic was ready to harvest today.  We only planted 36 heads of Purple Italian this year.  We will use about 10 heads to make spaghetti sauce and use for cooking, then I will plant the rest for next year.  That should give me around 250 heads next year.

Garlic harvest and ready to be cured

 I tied them into 6 bundles of 6 heads with a long piece of binders twine.  I put a loop at the end of the twine and hang them from nails in the barn.  They will hang there for 3-4 weeks before they are ready.  To tell if they are ready, you cut the stem off of one and squeeze it to see if there is any liquid in it.  If there is, then they aren't ready yet.

The onions are also getting ready to harvest.  There were 12-18 that were ready today, so I pulled them and set them out to start curing.  Tomorrow I will put them on wire racks and hang them in the barn for about 30 days to cure for storage.  With how fast they grew this year, I'm tempted to plant again since we have 3-4 months of growing season left.

And one final surprise, our first mature pepper is ready.  That was kind of surprising considering that the plants aren't that big yet and they've only been in the ground for a month.  Being on so early, I'll wait until they turn yellow, orange, or red before harvesting.  They are a lot sweeter when they aren't green.

First mature pepper

The Garden is Growing

The garden is in full bloom.  We harvested the first zucchini today, about 7 inches long.  The garlic is almost ready to harvest.  Onions are bulbing up really nice.  Beans have the first flowers coming on.  Peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers all have fruit that should be ready in 2-3 weeks.  Here are some pictures of the garden.

Full Garden in the late afternoon

Peppers in the front two boxes, garlic & onions on the left, onions/lettuce/spinach in the center box

Beans in the front two boxes, carrots in the back, cucumbers and winter squash on the right

Winter squash climbing the trellis. Save space by growing vertically

Two 10x1 foot boxes for the tomatoes, zucchini in the foreground, crooked neck squash in the center

Salad Harvest

Now we are in full salad harvest mode.  Leaf lettuce, spinach salads everyday with radishes thrown in once in a while.  The lettuce has been loving the last week of 60 degree temps and drizzly days.  The taste is so much better than the previous week when it was in the 80s and 90s.  Although we found that by mixing the bitter lettuce leaves with the creamy, mild spinach, that they can balance each other out quite well.  Much better than throwing away baskets of lettuce because it is too bitter.

We seem to get about 4 weeks of quality lettuce from our plants before the seed stalk really takes over.   Once that happens, I pull the plants, add some compost topping and plant some new seeds, except for the heat of summer.

The onions, which I didn't think would make it through all the hard freezes, are the biggest I've ever seen grown in a square foot garden and are bigger than the commercial vegetable farmer's down the road.  His are the same size as my second crop, which I planted in mid-April.  I'm hoping to get some nice baseball sized onions, possibly a few bigger.  The plants are higher than my hip with a couple reaching for my chest.

The beans that made it through the frost really taking off with the healthiest plants being calf high already.  The 7 cucumbers look really good so far.  Hopefully they won't die off in July like the preceding years.  Zucchini and squash are huge already.

Planting is Done

Memorial Day came, which is normally when I would plant the majority of the garden.  Most of it was already in this year, so I just had to plant the tomatoes and peppers.  Unfortunately a  late frost and a long night killed off my pepper and tomato plants that I had started, so I had to buy plants.  We put in 20 tomato plants and 32 pepper plants on Saturday.

It was almost 90 degrees when we put the plants in and we had a wedding to attend in the afternoon, so the rush was on to build boxes for the tomatoes, get them set, fill them with dirt, and finally do some planting.  We got all the plants in the ground in about an hour and gave them a quick drink while we went to the wedding.  Fortunately it would up raining the next day and today, so everything is looking really good.

The garlic went to seed already, which was kind of a surprise for me, as did some of the onions.  My onions, which I didn't think was going to make it through the April freezes, is waist high and looking better than the commercial farmer's onions down the road.  All the plants look exceptionally good this year, especially considering that it isn't even June yet.

There is still a lot of work to do.  I have to get the cattle fencing for the tomatoes cut into 10 foot lengths and put into place.  This year I am putting a fence on both sides of the 1 foot wide box to make sure there is lots of support.  I also need to put the cages around the 32 peppers.  Last year I didn't cage the habaneros but I think they would have benefited from it.  I need to replant about 30% of the carrots that didn't germinate.  That happened last year too, but the replanting worked out great.  Finally I need to finish putting down the walkways between the boxes.  The plastic is down, mainly to control the weeds, I just have to cut the boards and nail/screw them.

It looks like it might be the best year yet for the garden.  Hopefully I can keep learning and maybe one day make some money at it.

Spring Planting

With the abundance of warm weather and rain we've been getting, I decided that last Friday was the perfect time to get everything planted, except the tomatoes and peppers.  So I started cleaning out boxes, pulling weeds and getting everything prepped.  It took five loads of dirt to fill four boxes + two long boxes.  With all the boxes ready, I decided I would start by putting up my trellis for the cucumbers and winter squash.

Trellis

My cucumbers are planted in the top skinny box in the picture, the winter squash are in the closest box.  I have 5 cucumbers in a 1'x10' box and 3 butternut squash in the other 1'x10' box.  As you may know, cucumbers and winter squash grow on vines and will grow to take over a large part of a garden.  A lot of people plant them on hills.  Rather than take up all of that room, I use cattle fencing, which is 16 feet long and 5 feet high as a trellis for the vines to grow on.  You can buy trellis material made for gardening, I just happened to have a lot of this cattle fencing around the property when we moved in and decided it would be perfect (and it has been).  After working with it for a couple of years, I would actually recommend it at this point.  It is easy to work with, just one piece, you can cut the bottom off and use the pieces sticking out to put into the ground, and it is extremely sturdy.  I use 1/2" steel round bar driven into the ground to hold the trellis up.  Again, there was a lot of lying around in a scrap pile on the property when we moved in.  If I didn't have that, I would use metal rebar, approximately 4 feet long with 12 inches driven into the ground.  That will ensure that your trellis doesn't fall down during high wind or heavy weight of the vegetables.

With the cucumbers and winter squash planted, I move on to the summer squash and zucchini.  These you plant 1 per box because they take up a lot of room.  I put 4 seeds in the center of each box.  Once they germinate and poke through, I will keep the two strongest vines.  This is a little different than I have done in past years, keeping just one plant per box, so we'll see how it turns out.

Finally I put the beans in.  I put 9 plants per square foot and plant two full boxes of beans, one yellow wax and one green.  That is a total of 144 plants of each type.  Last year our harvest was around 180 pints of beans, which we froze or ate fresh.  My goal each year is 150 pints.  That allows us to eat beans 3 days per week for an entire year.  I prefer bush beans instead of pole beans for the square foot garden.  And although the packages say that you'll only get so many beans and then they are done with bush beans, I've never seen that to be true.  We will usually start harvesting in July and continue until the frost hits in late October.  I will have to remember next year that I can buy the beans by the ounce at the local hardware store rather than by the package.

After all the planting was done, it was time for weeding and checking the progress of the other plants.  The garlic and onions all look great; we can't wait until we get to harvest them.  I had planted some spinach and lettuce back in March, then we had quite a few hard freezes.  Two of the plants survived, so I predict will be enjoying the first salad by the end of the week.  They love the cool evenings and rainy days we've been getting.  The radishes look awesome and my wife can't wait to harvest the first square.  I plant one square every week, then after 21-25 days of growing, I will harvest the radishes.  Every week after that, I harvest 16 radishes and plant 16 more.  This continues until roughly the middle of July or whenever it gets too hot for the radishes, then I'll start again around the beginning of September.

Radishes planted 2 weeks ago, radishes planted 1 week ago, lettuce, spinach, and some left over onions

 I'll do the same thing with leaf lettuce, spinach and head lettuce, although you don't harvest the entire square, so at some point you end up with an abundance of lettuce & spinach.  With head lettuce, spreading out plantings allows you to not have multiple heads of lettuce ready to harvest at one time.

Now it's time to get the walkways finished before July and we spend every day harvesting and/or canning.

Carrots

The weather went from having a hard freeze to 80 degrees in 2 days.  That put everything into high-gear.  Today I built another 4x4 box to go on top of another, making it 12 inches deep.  This is where my carrots will grow.  Unfortunately I got a late start on it.

I set out around 7:45 PM to build the box and plant the carrots, however upon arriving in the garden, I noticed that not only have the plants really taken of with the warm days and rainy nights, so have the weeds.  So I started by weeding my lettuce, spinach and radishes.  Once that was done I went over to the onions and garlic.  Then I weeded the box where the carrots would go, even though these weeds would soon be covered with 6-7 inches of dirt.

Having all that done, I cut my boards, nailed the box together and got it to the garden, just as the sun was going below the treetops.  I figured I had 30 minutes until it got dark.  With my double box in place, I fired up the tractor and started hauling soil from my compost bins.  One and a half buckets in the loader and the box was full.  With daylight quickly fading, I measured out the square feet, drove some 8 penny nails in the box and ran to get the seeds & twine.  Wrapping the twine around the nails marks off each square foot.

Double high carrot box

I marked out my 16 holes per square foot and I could no longer see to tell if my seeds were hitting the holes.  So I got a flashlight, and planted 256 carrots under the full moon with a flash light.  Had it been beans or corn I was planting, there would have been no need for the flashlight, but with the tiny carrot seeds, I really didn't have a choice.  Other than being eaten by mosquitos, it was a really nice, cool evening to be planting.  And being able to finish under the moonlight was cool.