I love this thread. :) Well, it's August, so right now I pretty much hate everything in the garden. It all looks ratty this time of year. One exception: the "fall garden" is in full glory right now! If you don't have a dedicated fall garden, it is something I highly recommend! When everything else is spent and starting to get crispy, fall bloomers are just getting started. Mine has Early Amethyst Beautyberry, Limelight Hydrangea, a few tall purple Zinnias, Mexican Bush Sage, Autumn Joy and Matrona Sedum, Homestead Purple Verbena, Karley Rose Pennisetum, Fothergilla Major Mt. Airy...and this year I tried some Blackie Sweet Potato vine around the edges. It is SO NICE to have something to look at right now that doesn't look like death eating a cracker! Anyway, to the original question: I have decided I have way too many daylilies (only 25 or so, but still too many for me). I am so sick of pulling out dead foilage, and it started this year before they had even bloomed. I'm going to reduce them by about half in the fall, keeping only my very favorites. I've also discovered they are a bad thing to have at the front of a border for the dead foilage reason, so several will have to be moved.

Trudi, The green beans are for my husband too :-) So when he mows the lawn, he can pull off some beans and crunch on them. I could be wrong, but I think Lettuce Leaf has the flavor I'm looking for as a good "all-purpose" basil (use fresh or in cooking). I made Chicken Primavera with it instead of pesto. That basil tasted great in it. Donn, I didn't have good germination on lettuce either. I wound up direct sowing it and covering the rows with Sterlite containers to keep the cats and dogs out of them. One type that did sprout and live was "Buttercrunch". I don't know why they sprouted rather than the others, but they were newer seeds. Linda

Diane, I grew potatoes because I have a desire to learn to grow edible crops. I don't know that I will ever have the need to live on only what I can grow, but I have a desire to be able to do that. I hope to interest my children and grandchildren in being able to do the same thing. I have read and listened to a lot of people talk about growing potatoes and wondered what book they read it out of, because it didn't always seem like they had real knowledge and experience. All over the net there are people growing in containers and grow boxes that they build themselves and claiming that the plant will form potatoes as much as 16 inches up the plant. I would like to know what variety they have found that does this, because I am not seeing that happen. In some cases, I got as many, or more, potatoes from one plant than I used to plant the entire bed, but they didn't come very far up the stalk. My stalks were well mulched, so there was room for them to come up the stem, but they didn't. My plants were way over 3 feet high, so the problem was not in growth. The plants are pretty up until the time they bloom, but after that they start a slow decline. After a while, you have a pile of straw or dirt with ugly, yellowed plants. Then the leaves fall off, eventually everything dries up so you can dig them up. I am only telling you this so you understand why I am changing my method of planting. I am going to kill out the grass in a new un-used area of my property (not the fenced garden). This is going to be my new compost pile for a few months. Next spring it is going to be my potato garden. The taste thing -- good, but IMO desn't come close to the difference in a cardboard tomato and a homegrown one. Given use of the same amount of space, I can think of a lot of things I would rather grow in the space, still I think they are worth growing. I don't plan to use my valuable fenced in garden for this crop in the future. Now, if when I dig the last little patch, I find 200 pounds, I might change my mind. LOL

I could be dead wrong on this, but here goes anyway.... Based upon what people have said the general consensus is this. The book on square foot gardening recommends that you plant 9 bush green plants per every 1' x 1' square. People from past experience have said that you plant that many plants in one 1' x 1' square it's going to overcrowd the plants; for various reasons overcrowding any kind of plant isn't good for it and it's going to be more liable to die as a result. People have recommended that you plant 4 bush green beans per 1' x 1' square. Also I do have other questions regarding Mel's recommendations with how many of each type of vegetable you can plant per square. For small plants (which is what I plan to grow mostly) you can grow this many of each type of vegetable per square according to the recommendations outlined in his book: This is the quote regarding how many of each type of plant you can plant per 1' x 1' square: "Here are some charts to help you plan a garden for one, two, or four people. You can mix and match crops as you choose. Each 1' x 1' square will hold any of the following crops: Small plants: 16 radishes 16 carrots 16 onions 9 spinach 9 beets 4 swiss chard 4 lettuce 4 parsley 4 marigolds Large Plants: 1 cabbage 1 broccoli 1 cauliflower 1 pepper 1 eggplant Vertical plants: 1 tomato 2 cucumbers 8 pole beans Now based upon his recommendations are these reasonable recommendations, or do you think these recommendations are overkill and/or not feasible. If it's not feasible to plant that much stuff with any of the vegetables recommended for a 1' x 1' square, then can somebody please give more realistic recommendations for how much of each type of the above veggies to plant in a 1' x 1' square. My biggest concern is I'll follow the guidelines, the plants will become overcrowded, and then they'll die. I'm on a limited budget and although it's feasible for me to do one square foot box, I really can't afford to have failed experiments. It would be a waste of my money, which I have a very limited amount of, and on top of this, as stated previously I'm on a very tight budget.