My Square Foot Gardening Update for Fall 2012

It’s been a while since I’ve written an update about my square foot gardening adventures. The lasttime was in July when I shared a video. You can view the post and video here. In that post I told about the building of more square foot beds and adding friendly soil bacteria and fungi. That really paid off, too. In spite of the heat and drought, I came out fairly well. Oh, yes, the beds were mulched with hay. And I did water the beds nearly every day. Nonetheless, I don’t think ordinary fertilization would have yielded as much.

I had a good harvest of Candy Hybrid onions in late July. Several were large. And the taste is wonderfully sweet. They were well liked by the owner of a local bed and breakfast who bought a few from me.

If you saw the video I referred to above, you’ve seen the above shot of two Candy Roaster squash plants taking over the 4′ x 8′ bed where they were planted. Before they were done, the vines grew even larger than what you see in the picture. The poor sweet potatoes I planted in the same bed didn’t have a chance. I’d read somewhere not to plant squash and sweet potatoes together, but I thought the sweet potatoes would have been more competetive.

I harvested four giant squashes which were a good 20 inches long and bigger around than my arm. One of them appeared to have been chewed on quite a bit by critters, so it went into the compost. This variety truly is sweet. It reminded me of a musk mellon, only not as sweet.

The picture above is only half of my harvest of Burbank Russet potatoes. It represents what came a few days ago from one of two 4′ x 4′ beds where I grew them.

Most of the russets were medium to large, as you’d expect. The above shot is of one of the largest specimins. This was my first experience growing so many russets. I also grew Red Norland potatoes and Swedish Peanut fingerlings, but I didn’t get photos of either variety when I harvested them. The Red Norlands grew quite large and plentiful. I’m looking forward to growing them next year. Some of the smallest ones went to the bed and breakfast, where they were well liked. Nearly all of the fingerllings went to the bed and breakfast, where they, too, were a hit. I’m sold on square foot gardening, especially after this crazy gardening year. Adding friendly soil microbes and a good layer of mulch gave me an edge I don’t think I’d have hadotherwise. I also grew Red Ripper black-eyed peas in my mini-Hugulkultur bed. While not as many plants came up s I’d hoped, they all did well. How did your survival garden turn out this year? What do you plan to do next season? I’d love to know. Leave a comment below and let me and other readers know.