The good points - and bad points - of Square Inch Gardening.

Yes, folks.  You heard it here first.  I am practicing Square Inch Gardening.  I told you I had a competitive streak!  So, how is it faring in this challenging gardening year?  Let's take a look, shall we?

First, the 'Good Points'.

It's a jungle in there!

The dense, jungle-like mass of vegetation provides cover and keeps in moisture.  It also limits the amount of weeds that crop up.

When you do have to water - you can water quite a lot with a few small buckets.  And it's all in one place.  So you can be pretty lazy about it - even if you DO winge and whine and carry on because it's hot and humid and there are bugs.

Your entire salad is in a 4 x 8 foot area.  Basil, cukes, peppers, tomatoes.  One-stop dinner gathering.

It's SO dense that the plants provide support for each other - there's no place else to go!

Now, the "Bad Points".

It's a dense, jungle-like mass of vegetation.

There are scary spiders in it that bite you if you just poke your hands in, trying desperately to find a cucumber that hasn't grown to zeppelin size.

There ARE zeppelin sized cucumbers.

I swear that cucumber in the middle was only
two inches long yesterday - honest!

Your peppers don't stand a chance.

Seriously, it has worked out pretty well, although I will NOT plant four cucumber plants around a tiny-but-decorative-trellis.  I will try mightily to keep to two plants - one regular and one of the Japanese variety.  My pumpkin/summer/winter squash bed has taken off and the plants are making a wild attempt to break the barriers of their tiny bed (5x8).  I finally gave in and fenced in the bed that I didn't fill in.  I'm trying to get everyone to grow in that direction.  So far, it's like herding cats.

Pumpkins, making a break for it...

My horseradish is flourishing in its hillbilly planter.  I have tons of potatoes, although my experiment in
'hilling' with straw did not work.  There are a lot of spuds in the dirt layer - but nary a one (so far as I can tell) in the straw layer.

My horseradish is all 'perky'.

New type of tomato this year - it's almost black when it's ripe.
Doubt that would be a great market variety, but I think it's cool!

I have tons of tomatoes - all green.  Why, I ask you, is it that your tomatoes do not ripen when your zucchini does?  How the heck am I supposed to make ratatouille?   Hmmmm?  And I don't want to hear from those of you who planted everything at its proper time and have synchronized ripening going on.