How Does Your Garden Grow?

The Boy thought I was kidding when I told him I wanted a vegetable garden for my birthday this year. "We can plant a vegetable garden," he said.. "Now what do you want for your birthday?" Even after we had it all built, and planted.. he was adamant. But for real this is what I wanted and I love it. I read about the idea of Square Foot Gardening on Rachel's blog, and went for it. I figure even if it doesn't work out so well this year, it will be a great jumping off point for nex year. This sunny spot did fabulous in my "will it get enough sun?" test last summer (note that I took this photo late yesterday around 5:30 pm) and so we put in two 4'x4' boxes.


I planted this box after the other one, but it's on the left side so we'll start here. The marigold's are in the corners and middle edges to aid with bug repellent. I'm not a huge fan of marigold's because I don't care for their smell, but the bugs stay away and the butterfly's like them so it works. Planted from left to right are: furthest 6 squares in the left half (2 in back, 2 in back middle, 2 in front middle) are sugar baby watermelons. The front 4 in the left half are 2 tomatoes. One group of 2 squares has Patio tomatoes and the other group has beefsteak(I think). The back 4 squares on the right side are baby pumpkins. The middle 3 "empty" squares are green beans and birdhouse gourds. I don't remember, but I think I planted 2 squares of gourds.

This box I'm a little more worried about. The back 2 squares on the left have green peppers. The front two squares have zucchini's. 3 plants per box, and I know that's crowding them and I will rectify the situation as soon as it stops raining and take 2 out. Or maybe I won't. Like I said, this year is an experiment. The far back 3 squares that are "empty" contain green beans, green onions and sugar peas. In that order. The next two boxes in the back middle are Roma tomatoes. The two boxes in the front middle are red peppers. Then some other type of tomatoes in the front. Small Cherry tomatoes I think. The middle to boxes on the far right house eggplant (the skinny long kind) and the front box has cukes.

I have to do some creative staking and trellising in order to make this work. Some of those plants will do better growing up, and it will leave more room for the rest. I also read about pruning tomatoes and I plan to do some of that as well. But at the moment, this is what my garden looks like.