Square Foot Gardening Thread- Update 7/23/12 - Page 37

Looking through the thread I have a few questions!

HOw close are you planting your corn and sunflowers??? Did they do well? Would like to plant as much as I can in the space we have!!!

Has anyone every planted potatoes in a 55 gallon drum???

I don't have my book handy right now, but I found a site online that has a chart of spacing for squarefoot gardening.

  http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/sqfoot/2003112433023631.html  

According to that chart - you would plant 1 corn plant per square.  Corn needs a spacing of 12" per plant because it is wind pollunated and if you get it too close, the pollunation will not occur or will be sparce.  Without good pollunation you will get ears with alot of missing kernals.

I tried to plant corn closer than that - like 4 per square and it didn't do very well.  After a latenight party by the local coon population - the three ears of corn that I got only had about 1/4 of the kernal developed.

Are you going to cut the barrels in 1/2?  if not, then I think the sides will be too high for the plants to get enough sunlight.  I made some potato bags from landscape fabric and that worked great.  The neat thing about the bags is that you roll the sides down when you plant and then as the plant grows taller, you unroll some of the side and bury the stems.  Potatoes suposedly grow from the stems so this will give you more potatoes.  I like it because it allows me to dump the bag into the wheel barrow for harvest and then the soil goes into a trashcan for the winter to be used the next spring.  The bags also hold just enough water that the plant doesn't get root rot, I would have a hard time keeping the soil moist, but not too wet for potatoes in a closed in barrel.  But that is just me.

This will be my first year trying out SFG!

Finding vermiculite will be my hardest task I think...the rest is easy!   

I already have started off some seeds under lights...and look forward to getting the rest going :)