Not exactly square foot but anything from 2-4 stalks per square or right on top of each other and rows 2 feet apart. This is also a test of how good the compost I gave them is.

I know all the problems that could happen with this approach but I wanted to see if I could get away with it by using more fertilizer/compost. Liken it to the original square foor gardening technique the French intensive method of lots of compost and everything closely spaced in a small area. Okay i'm without variety but the stalks look pretty good considering they were started June 23 or 26th.

Had I lots of land I would never have attempted this. I would have used conventional space. However when gardening space is small you tend to want to cheat just for the hell of it.

This is Stowell's Evergreen btw. The stalks in the foreground did not receive any Espoma slow release fertilizer. They've had fish emulsion since then and have bounced back a bit. Although there is a bit of a washout in the picture because it was sunny when I took it the scale is probably accurate. That is to say the corn in the back is a bit darker in person and darker than the corn in the foreground. Both are peaking at about 4 feet tall now. Both were given a lot of semi rotted compost. Both beds started out inferior though. The one doing best in the back had absolutely no organic matter. I added 4 bales of peat moss and some manure as well but not a lot of manure.

These things take time. I would have preferred a more mature bed with more organic matter but Rome wasn't built in a day. It was a lot of hard work. Beans will be coming to the rescue soon enough to add some much needed nitrogen. Both beds will improve next year when I add some weed barrier. In the mean time I just hope they get some height and I have enough fertilizer to sustain them because they're hungrier than the plant in Little Shop of horrors!