>>>>no garden this year-too old-can buy what we use cheaper<<<<
I keep thinking that, but when I go through the grocery store and see turnips for $1.49 a pound, Tomatoes $1.59, Potatoes $2.79 for a 5# bag, Nope can’t buy it cheaper... Besides, if I am going to kick the bucket, I would prefer to do it doing something I really enjoy - Growin it, cannin it or eatin it.
>>>>but green beans and especially sweet corn are my two favorite veggies and it’s real hard to plant these two in flower beds.<<<<
I am going to try some sort of square foot gardening - more like beds. I do that with turnips, kale, even lettuce and spinach it is more like a broadcast seeding in a 4 X 20’ area. Seems to work pretty well. I think I will try planting some green beans that way. I see where they say that you can plant sweet corn in the square foot garden, I think I will try it in a bed but instead of the 4 per sq. ft. they say you can plant, I will keep it to 3.
The ground cover really worked well for me - I have one 10 X 100’ and another 15 X 100’ I planted tomatoes and peppers there last year and it worked great... NO WEEDING!
I have enough of it to make two more 15 X 100’ strips and will probably try it with cukes, summer squash, winter squash, cantaloupe, watermelon and maybe a few other things. The 10’ one has been down for 4 years and still looks real good. Will probably last a couple more years at least. Without all those things to weed or cultivate, I should be able to concentrate on a few beds like the lasagna method which I think they mixed whatever you had - raw manure leaves, grass, compost and will probably mix in some peat moss as I have about 5 or 6 bales of it. I have quite a bit of chicken manure, and have access to horse manure (which works great in a cold frame... a deep bed of horse manure will go a long way in keeping it warm, then straw and compost over that. I made one this year from bales of straw. I put down two rows of bales on edge for the front and back and one bale between those on each end. I then filled it about a third of the way up with manure and compost - then I used some 4’ poly roll sheeting and wrapped that around the outside of the bales and anchored it to the bales with ground staples. I made a frame top from 2X4’s with poly sheeting wrapped so it covered both sides - giving me a double layer of poly. We had temps down to 8 degrees this winter and I haven’t lost anything in it yet. The straw seems to make it to where it is not as heat sensitive too. Have only had to open top to ventilate a few times when it got over 50 degrees)
I am pretty dense for someone who has gardened for 70 years and loved it even as a child. Can you describe your 10X100 foot bed? How many rows-material-built up how much? Think it would work for beans and corn. Do you make furrows to place the seeds in? My Mrs. John Deere and a garden cart can be used to haul compost and manure. My soil is full of clay-hard to work up so this sounds good. The advantage of clay is that my garden doesn’t require as much watering as sandy soil would.
I have several hugh piles of loam from a building project a couple years ago. Should I add some of this or would it just encourage weeds?