Technically if you wanted to make the textbook 511 and you already have 1 qt of fines per 5 gallons of bark, you only need 3 more quarts of fine stuff for the 5:1 ratio. That's kind of splitting hairs though because if you count the mulch fines, you lessen the 5 gallon volume by 1 quart. So IMO, it's nice you have some fines in the mulch, but I'd just add the 1 gallon of peat. You are correct with the 7, but it's Tablespoons. Not sure if you meant tablespoons, but it looked like you said teaspoons with your tsp abbreviation.

Awesome to hear about your growing collection Apg4. All the research I've done says 'no'. to your question. -1 plant with no offspring will produce, say, 100 fingers of fruit, each fruit maybe 6 inches long. -1 plant with 5 pups will produce, possibly, a few fewer fingers and the fruit might not be quite as large. What you sacrifice in fruit size is made up for by higher overall yield between multiple plants from a single corm. Instead of 1 p-stem fruiting, you could potentially have 3 or more flowering at once. Additionally, having pups already growing in place means you've got replacements rearing to go when it's time to put down the mother stem. As far as pups vs old stems, old stems will generally win. They're keyed in to the master suite of the corm and will nearly always take priority over a pup. Pups stand an equal chance of eventually fruiting, but rarely over the mother stem. When the mother stem is dead and you have, say, 4 pups of equal age, anything is possible. Mike

Hello again Villian189! I am glad that you are rethinking the size of your beds. There are many knowledgeable people on this forum and I am sure you will receive some great advice. I am happy to share what works for me. I have six 4x4 SFGs with paths wide enough to allow me to run a mower in between the gardens and kneel down at the edges of the garden and reach in to every square. I have a trellis at the north edge of most of these beds made out of 2x3s with nylon trellising for vertical plants. I have found that planting 3 vining tomatoes along the 4-foot wide trellis works best. As gblack mentioned, you will get more production from each plant if they are given the room to thrive. I do prune the tomatoes a little and weave them into the nylon trellis as they grow and also wrap them with twine to the trellis supports. The tomatoes do crowd the row of squares immediately in front of them by mid-growing season. So I plant spring greens in these squares (lettuces, arugula, spinach, etc.) before the tomatoes are planted out. If you keep the lower branches of the tomato plants trimmed, they will provide a nice shade canopy for the greens as the summer heats up. Ok, according to Mel BartholomewâÂÂs The All-new Square Foot Gardening book, suggested plant spacing for the varieties you wish to grow are as follows: Tomato plants, vine type = 1/square along a trellis Summer squash, bush type= 1 in a 9 squares (3x3 area) Winter squash, vining type = 1 in a 2 squares (1x2 area) Basil = 4/square Oregano = 1/square Cilantro = 1/square Parsley = 1/square Peppers = 1/square Eggplant = 1/square Pole beans = 8/square along a trellis Lettuce = 4/square So, if I understood your latest post correctly, you plan on building two 3x4 SFG. This will give you 24 squares to work with. In this following suggestion, I have assumed you will have a trellis along the north side of each garden along the 4-foot side. SFG 1: Back squares: 3 vining tomato plants can be planted along the north side along a trellis. Middle squares: 3 squares of greens and/or lettuces. 1 square herb. Front squares: Peppers and eggplant, they will shade out your lettuce, but it may help keep the lettuce from bolting when the weather gets warm. SFG2: Back squares: Pole beans - plant these towards the back of the bed right along the trellis and they will only take up inches of your garden space and grow vertically. Middle and Front two squares, plus extra room from the partial bean squares: 1 bush type squash (such as zucchini or yellow summer squash) Remaining squares: herbs or a pepper. This should get you started. Let me know what you think. Rachel GrafixMuse's Garden Spot Blog

Ha! One of my own made up words showing up. Pretty funny. As far as when I do them, it depends on the plant. If it's a kind of boring NOID, I would probably just cut the smaller, less developed crown off the plant, doing as little damage as poss to the main stem, basically scrapping the offending piece. (You could try to save it if you just really need a challenge.) If it was a nice plant that I cared about and once the secondary crown had already taken root, I would probably leave it grow a bit longer just to make dividing the plant up later, a bit easier. Hopefully, at some point, leaving me with two viable plants. I have had really good success at just taking out the trusty exacto knife and literally cutting the plant in two. If possible, try to have some roots attached to each part, not necessary but helpful. Pot them up in appropriate sized cups. Good luck and enjoy! No help really but it is what I do.