Season Extension - Caterpillar High Tunnel

We previously looked at the construction of the caterpillar hoops for our soil beds.  In order to complete the caterpillar tunnel, we need to cover it with plastic.  The end product should look like this:

Our previously completed rib structure looks like this:

You can see from this photo that our soil bed is already filled with our growth medium mix, Mel's mix.  We have also filled in the cinder block holes with the soil mix as we'll be using these little spaces to grow the companion herbs, spices and flowers that attract good bugs and repel bad bugs.

You can see that the little cinder block holes are perfect for this.

We have our 55 gallon plastic water barrels in place to produce passive solar heating for the soil bed.  During the day, rays from the sun heat the water in the barrels.  At night, the water cools and as it cools, it radiates the built up heat back into the enclosed soil bed and heats the air.  This provides frost protection and allows us to extend the growing season.

Our first step is to ensure that the hoops are about the same height.  They don't have to be perfect, but it should be about the same height to prevent a camel tunnel.

Our next step is to get our plastic out.  You could use any construction plastic, provided it's clear.  You could also use specialized green house plastic, but that's expensive so we opted to go with construction plastic.  In theory you could use plastic thinner then 4 mil, but I wouldn't recommend it as it wouldn't provide much protection against radiation at night.  We decided to go with 6 mil plastic because it is heavy duty and should last a long time.  Remember you'll be installing the plastic and removing it again, twice per season so we want it to last.  I got the 20' x 100' roll as 20' was going to be wide enough to cover my hoops.  I had previously calculated we'll need about 26' wide, but slight tweaks to the hoops and spacing closer to the bed and the barrels allowed the 20' wide roll to work perfectly.

As you can see, 6 mil plastic is thick... very thick.  It allows only 60% light through and appears white, but it'll work.

Begin by rolling the plastic out next to the soil bed.  Be sure to keep it folded up as it comes off the roll.  This allows us to work with the plastic more easily.

IMPORTANT!!!  Remember to roll off more than enough plastic along the length of the bed.  The plastic is going to cover the bed and then slope down to the ground so some extra is needed.  It's better to have too much than too little.

Now pull the plastic over the hoop so as to position it in the center of the hoops.  Keep it folded as it came off the roll.  From this position, it allows us to straighten and tighten the plastic to the EMT ribs.

When properly positioned, there'll be a little sag between the ribs, but that's OK.

Now we need to secure our plastic to the EMT hoops.  There's many ways to do this, I'm sure, but the easiest and most efficient way to do it, is to buy these 1/2" EMT plastic clips from Johnny's.

They are well designed with an edge that tapers away from the plastic to minimize piercing of the plastic around the fasteners.  Additionally, they have a ribbed inside surface which prevents the plastic from slipping or pulling loose.  Though not cheap, these little babies are a major time saver so I recommend getting these.

Now go ahead and clip the plastic to the EMT ribs just to the side of the joint between the two pipes.

Once you have the center clipped, begin unrolling one side of the plastic down the ribs.

Attach a second set of clips half way between the first and the ground.

Repeat for all ribs and then unroll the plastic all the way to the ground.

Finally, another set of clips attach just about the ground level.

There should be some excess plastic at the ground level.  This can be cut away later.

Now repeat the process for the other side of the hoop.  Once the plastic is attached to the hoops, pull the openings on either end together in a V shape and stake it into the ground.

Here's the completed result:

It is important to note that practicality plays a larger role than theory.  This is a good example of that.  The reason I designed the tapered V was to break the wind and allow stronger resistance for the tunnel in high wind conditions.  In practice however, 6 mil plastic is thick and cumbersome to work with so pulling the tapered V together was not easy.  Additionally, when it rains, water collects in the tapered V creating a mess.  Access to the tunnel is also not as easy and the stake just doesn't quite seem to hold up so well when you are entering and leaving the tunnel on a daily basis.

This is where you'd have to weigh the risk of your tunnel getting blown away against the ease of use of the tunnel.  Creating a flat edge is easier to work with but risk high wind issues.  The choice is ultimately yours...

Soil Bed Preparation - Bottom

This post is way overdue, but with the flurry of spring activity, I haven't had time to sit down and write it.  Nonetheless, I found time so here we go...
We had completed the construction of our raised beds previously.  The design has two layers of cinder block for a total height of 16".  We constructed the cinder block beds right over the top of what used to be grass lawn.  There are two problems we want to address with the beds, before we fill them with our soil mix.

1.  Digging vermin like moles.
2.  The pre-existing grass and weeds.

Before we get into the way we chose to address these, allow me to share a quick tip.  See this photo:

The cinder block was set with the second layer overlapping the first and mortared into place.  We then used Quickcrete to pour concrete into the two corner adjacent holes to hold the corners in place and add strength to the beds.  Given that the foundation of the beds is just soil, some shifting is to be expected, but the walls of the bed doesn't have to do anything except contain the soil, so we believe this will work just fine.  Now let's deal with the moles.

In order to prevent moles from tunneling up from below the soil bed and wreck havoc in our garden, we are going to lay out chicken wire on the base of the bed.  In my scurry to get everything done in a compressed time frame after the freaking snow from the Winter from Hell finally melted, I built the beds before laying out the chicken wire.  The better way would have been to get 5' wide chicken wire and lay it out where the bed walls would be and then construct the walls over the top of the wire so as to hold the wire in place properly.  Failing to do that, we went with 4' wide chicken wire instead that fits snugly inside our 12' x 4' beds.  The soil mix will be heavy enough to keep the wire in place, but we do have a weakness on the edges though.  That, unfortunately, is a risk we're going to have to take.
Now let's look at the installation.  We begin with our roll of chicken wire.

The easiest way is to place the chicken wire roll on one of the 12' side walls of the bed and then simply roll it out to the end of the wall.

Be careful not to roll off the edge as it could pull the chicken wire crooked and mess with your alignment.

As you roll this out, you will either need another person to hold down the starting point of the wire or you'll need to anchor it somehow.  As I was working by myself on this, I staked down the wire in the starting corner with a piece of off cut EMT.

Now get your trusty tin snips and cut the wire.  Be careful not to cut too short.  You'd rather have some overlap which you can fold over than have the wire end up being too short.

Once done, the wire should be resting over the side wall like this.

Now simply remove the anchor and flip the chicken wire over into the bed.  Stomp it down into the ground and fold over any overlap you may have.

That takes care of the moles.  Now we need to take care of the existing grass and weeds that are at the bottom of the raised bed.  In order to do that, we're going to cover the bottom with weed cloth.  The reason for using weed cloth is to allow water to still drain out the bottom of the bed.  We do not want to inhibit drainage in any way.  Proper drainage is after all one of the main reasons we built a raised bed and filled it with our special soil mix in the first place.  The layout of our planting plan and the design of our row caterpillars resulted in our soil beds having just slightly more than 4' between them.  This allows us to roll out the 4' wide weed cloth perfectly between the beds.  Start by placing the weed cloth roll on one 4' end of the target soil bed and unrolling it to the other 4' end.

Now use your trusty box cutter to cut the weed cloth.  Be careful as they're sharp!!!  ALWAYS CUT AWAY FROM YOUR BODY AND FINGERS!!!

Lastly, simply flop the weed cloth over into the raised bed bottom and fold over any overlap.

Congratulations!  Your raised bed is now ready to be filled with our special soil mix.

Join us again tomorrow when we'll look at the construction of the half hoops for the caterpillar tunnels we'll be using for season extension.

Potato Companion Planting Plan

We previously completed our Corn Companion Planting Plan, our Tomato Companion Planting Plan, our Broccoli Companion Planting Plan and our Lettuce Companion Planting Plan.  That accounts for 6 of our 7 soil beds.  Now we need to complete our Planting Plan for our potatoes.  As always, we'll reference the Purdue University Agricultural Extension Service's Indiana Vegetable Planting Calendar for determining our dates.  Potatoes are supposed to be planted at 12" intervals.  This is perfect in our SFG layout as it gives us one plant per square.  Since we expect the potatoes to fill out the soil as they grow, we're going to take a different approach to intensive gardening with this soil bed.  The allies for potatoes are beans, cabbage, corn, eggplant and peas.  

We're going to employ a different take on the vertical growth approach with our potatoes.  Since we're already going to be employing "hilling", we're going to take that a step further.  Hilling is when soil keeps being added around the potato plant to bury it deeper.  It forces the plant to grow a long underground stem from which more tubers form.  It's been reported to produce some good yields this way.  Our variety comes with a recommendation to hill 4" upon reaching 8" of exposed plant and to continue to do this until the hill is 12" tall.  Besides the irrigation complexity that such an uneven soil bed can bring, I wondered why not raise the entire bed level?  We'll be pushing the hilling boundary to see how much yield we can squeeze out of our potatoes.  As such, we won't interplant anything with them, but we'll employ a few border herbs for protection.  More on that later.  There really isn't a planting plan other than one seed tuber per square foot and hilling up 24" as they grow.  Using this plan we should get the following yield from our garden:

Our chosen potato variety is a mid season which means 80 days to maturity, row planted at 12" intervals with 1/2 lbs seed tubers, should yield (at 6:1) about 300 lbs / 100' row.  Thus:

1 crops X 1 plants per square ft X 3 lbs/ft X 48 square feet = 144 lbs of potatoes.

Our seed tubers ship late March to early April.  Let's assume we get them in the ground by the end of April, at a 80 DTM, that would put our harvest somewhere around the end of July.  If we were to replant at that point, we could potentially have another harvest by the end of October.  Given that potatoes are considered to be very cold hardy and our October 18th first Fall frost date, it's possible we may be able to double the potato yield by growing that second crop.  Since we can't get seed potatoes in July, we'll need to re-use some of our first crop potatoes for the second crop seeding.

Seeds required for this bed:
Potato - 48 X 1 X 1 X 0.5 lbs = 24 lbs @ 25 lbs/pack = 1 packs X $19.50 = $19.50

Now we need to determine the planting dates for these.  The earliest we can plant our potatoes March 20th however, the planting range stretches to May 10th and we are at the mercy of the seed company because these don't ship till late March.  We'll just have to sow these as soon as we get them.  Unlike our other crops, we'll probably sow this one with the entire bed at once.

Lettuce Companion Planting Plan

We previously completed our Corn Companion Planting Plan, our Tomato Companion Planting Plan and our Broccoli Companion Planting Plan.  That accounts for 5 of our 7 soil beds.  Now we need to complete our Planting Plan for our lettuce.  As always, we'll reference the Purdue University Agricultural Extension Service's Indiana Vegetable Planting Calendar for determining our dates.  Lettuce is supposed to be planted at 10" intervals.  Our intent is going to be to simply pick the outer leaves of the heads as they mature, thus keeping the overcrowding down.  The allies for lettuce are beet, cabbage, carrots, onion, radish and strawberry.  We don't eat beets, cabbage or radishes so per our Golden Rules, we won't be planting those.  That leaves carrots and strawberries.  Since strawberries are perennial, they'll be having a patch of their own and won't be in our annual beds.  Looks like it will be lettuce and carrots in this soil bed.  That led to the following Planting Plan for our lettuce squares: 

The green circles represent lettuce while the orange triangles represent carrots.  Each little square in the background grid represents 1/2".  Using this plan we should get the following yield from our garden:

Lettuce, Romaine, 57 days to maturity, row planted at 10" intervals, yield 50 lbs / 100' row.  With our layout above and the intended continuous harvest, there would be 6 plants per square foot.  The 57 DTM on our chosen variety provides us the ability to yield three crops in the 180 day season.  Lettuce doesn't like to grow in hot weather so we'll plan on allowing the second crop some extra time, bumping the first and last crops out to the extremes of our planting dates.  Thus:

3 crops X 6 plants per square ft X 0.5 lbs/ft X 24 square feet = 216 lbs of lettuce.

Since my wife loves Boston Butterhead lettuce, we'll split 50/50 in this bed for that variety as well.

Lettuce, Butterball, 52 days to maturity, row planted at 10" intervals, yield 50 lbs / 100' row.  With our layout above and the intended continuous harvest, there would be 6 plants per square foot.  The 52 DTM on our chosen variety provides us the ability to yield three crops in the 180 day season.  Lettuce doesn't like to grow in hot weather so we'll plan on allowing the second crop some extra time, bumping the first and last crops out to the extremes of our planting dates.  Thus:

3 crops X 6 plants per square ft X 0.5 lbs/ft X 24 square feet = 216 lbs of lettuce.

Carrots, 56 days to maturity.  Unlike the corn, we'll produce 3 crops for the season.  Considering a 2.5 ounce average weight for the carrots, yield would be thus:

3 crops X 10 plants per square ft X 2.5 ounces (0.15625 lbs) X 48 square feet = 225 lbs of carrots.

Seeds required for the two beds:
Lettuce - 24 X 6 X 3 = 432 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $4.95 = $9.90
Lettuce (Butterball) - 24 X 6 X 3 = 432 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $4.95 = $9.90
Carrots - 48 X 10 X 3 = 1440 @ 250 seeds/pack = 6 packs X $3.95 = $23.70

Now we need to determine the planting dates for these.  The earliest we can plant our lettuce is April 1st.  This is some two weeks before the last spring frost, but lettuce is super hardy so it's OK to plan at this time.  Given the the 57 DTM we'll have our first harvest on May 28th.

The carrots has an earliest sowing date of April 10th.  With their 56 DTM we'll have first harvest on June 5th.

Broccoli Companion Planting Plan

We previously completed our Corn Companion Planting Plan and our Tomato Companion Planting Plan.  That accounts for 4 of our 7 soil beds.  Now we need to complete our Planting Plan for our broccoli.  As always, we'll reference the Purdue University Agricultural Extension Service's Indiana Vegetable Planting Calendar for determining our dates.  Given that broccoli needs some room to grow, recommended spacing being 7", there isn't a whole lot of crops we can plant with the broccoli for an intensive growing plot.  The allies for broccoli are beet, celery, chard, cucumber, lettuce, onion, potato and spinach.  We don't eat beets so per our Golden Rules, we won't be planting those.  The kids absolutely love celery sticks, so we'll be planting those with the broccoli.  We have a soil bed dedicated to lettuce, so we won't plant any here.  We already have onions growing with the tomatoes and you can only use so much onion so we won't be planting more here.  Potato is the same as lettuce, having it's own dedicated soil bed and spinach, while not having a dedicated soil bed, is grown plenty with the tomatoes.  So it looks like it will be broccoli and celery in this soil bed.  That led to the following Planting Plan for our broccoli squares: 

The dark upside down pentagons represent broccoli while the light green pentagons represent celery.  Each little square in the background grid represents 1/2".  Leveraging the staggered approach, we are able to maintain proper distance between the broccoli while the celery fills in the gaps.  Using this plan we should get the following yield from our garden:

Broccoli, 66 days to maturity, row planted at 7" intervals, yield 100 lbs / 100' row.  At 7" intervals, there would be about 2 plants per feet of row.  Since we are using intensive gardening techniques and in this case staggered planting, we actually have 3 plants.  Because broccoli doesn't like to grow in the heat, and given it's 66 DTM, we'll plan on a spring and fall crop.  Our chosen variety is also reputed to produce side shoots once you harvest the main head so we'll keep the plants in the ground harvesting any side shoots until it's time to plant the fall crops.  Thus:

2 crops X 1.5 rows per square ft X 1 lbs/ft X 48 square feet = 144 lbs of broccoli.

Celery, 80 days to maturity, row planted at 8" intervals, yield 1 lbs (8 stalks at 2 ounces each).  Thus:

2 crops X 3 plants per square ft X 1 lbs each X 48 square feet = 288 lbs of celery.

Seeds required for the bed:
Broccoli - 48 X 3 X 2 = 288 @ 100 seeds/pack = 3 packs X $3.95 = $11.85
Celery - 48 X 3 X 2 = 288 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $3.95 = $7.90

Now we need to determine the planting dates for these.  The earliest we can plant our broccoli is April 1st.  This is some two weeks before the last spring frost, but broccoli is super hardy so it's OK to plan at this time.  Given the the 66 DTM we'll have our first harvest on June 6th.  If we restart planting again on July 1st, we'll have our last harvest on September 16th.  I'm thinking with season extension we may be able to have a later harvest, but we'll need to do some experimentation on that.  For now, we'll keep to this schedule.

The celery has an earliest sowing date of April 15th.  Given a 80 DTM, that will give us a first harvest on July 4th.  Assuming an immediate reseed, our last harvest will be on October 3rd.

Both broccoli and celery are good for staring seedlings indoors.  If you have season extension equipment in place that can help protect the seedlings from frost after you plant them out, then the growing can be started indoors some 8-12 weeks earlier.  With effective season extension on the back end of the 180 day growing season, it should be possible to squeeze a third crop of celery into a season.  We'll experiment with that next year, but for this year, I think 288 lbs of celery is probably going to be enough.

Tomato Companion Planting Plan

We previously completed our Corn Companion Planting Plan.  That accounts for 2 of our 7 soil beds.  Now we need to complete our Planting Plan for our tomatoes.  Almost every home garden sports tomatoes.  It's the most common vegetable people grow.  One of the nice things about tomatoes is that they vine and as such we can leverage trellising to take advantage of vertical growth in order to maximize yield.  Research has indicated that asparagus, carrots, celery, cucumbers, onions, parsley and peppers are all good companions to tomatoes.  Since asparagus is a perennial crop (it doesn't have to be replanted every year), it would be relatively fixed in location.  As such, it's not a target for our crop rotation beds so we'll scratch it off the list.  Remember I mentioned carrots go well with most crops.  We'll include carrots with the tomatoes.  The kids love their celery sticks, but I have a plan for celery with the broccoli bed so we'll skip celery with the tomatoes.  Given that cucumbers tend to vine as well, we'll skip them so we only have to deal with the tomato vines in these beds.  Onions is always welcome so we'll include them in the tomato plans.  Garlic repels spider mites from tomatoes so we'll plan on planting some of those around our tomato beds as well.  These choices led to the following Planting Plan for our tomato squares: 

The red circle is of course the tomato plant.  Orange triangles at NE, SE, SW and NW are carrots.  White triangles on the west and east are onions while the green pentagon clusters at the north and south are spinach.  Each little square in the background grid represents 1/2".  We decided to go with cherry tomatoes since they make wonderful snacks in their small size.Using this plan we should get the following yield from our garden.

Tomatoes (cherry), 55 days to maturity, row planted at 18" intervals, yield 600 lbs / 100' row.  At 12" intervals, there would be 1 plant per feet of row.  Since we are using intensive gardening techniques, we actually have 1 plant per square foot rather than 2 per 3 feet.  Our chosen variety of tomato is different from something like corn that ripens and then must be replanted.  Sakura is reputed to keep producing all season long.  That being the case, we'll just plan a single crop.  We will see how this works out.  If the plants do not continue to produce, depending on time, we can always pull them up and replant new ones.  Thus:

1 crop X 1 rows per square ft X 6 lbs/ft X 96 square feet = 576 lbs of tomatoes.

Onions, 110 days to maturity, row planted at 4" intervals, yield 10 ounce bulbs.  Thus:

1 crops X 2 plants per square ft X 96 square feet = 120 lbs of onions.

Spinach, 39 days to maturity.  I don't actually have crop yield numbers so we'll just capture those number this year as we go.  Suffice it to say, spinach is excellent in fresh salads.  With such a short DTM we'll just keep on replanting spinach as we harvest and employ some season extension techniques at the end of the growing season to help bring the fifth and final harvest to maturity.  Thus:

5 crops X 18 plants per square ft X 96 square feet = 8640 plants.

Carrots, 56 days to maturity.  Unlike the corn, we'll produce 3 crops for the season.  Considering a 2.5 ounce average weight for the carrots, yield would be thus:

3 crops X 4 plants per square ft X 2.5 ounces (0.15625 lbs) X 96 square feet = 180 lbs of carrots.

Seeds required for the two beds:
Tomato - 96 X 1 X 1 = 96 @ 100 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $27.80 = $27.80
Onion - 96 X 2 X 1 = 192 @ 1000 seeds/pack = 1 packs X $5.60 = $5.60
Spinach - 96 X 18 X 3 = 8640 @ 1000 seeds/pack = 9 packs X $3.95 = $35.55
Carrots - 96 X 4 X 3 = 1152 @ 250 seeds/pack = 5 packs X $3.95 = $19.75

Now we need to determine the planting dates for these.  According to the Purdue University Agricultural Extension Service's Indiana Vegetable Planting Calendar, the earliest we can plant our tomatoes outside is May 5th, two weeks after last frost.  The reason for such a late planting date is the tenderness of tomato plants.  Frost is a killer for tomatoes so in order to avoid frost, the planting data is pushed back.  If we're going to use the 50% Last Frost Date of April 18th, our plants will need some protection.  This is where season extension comes into play.  There is a lot of information out there about starting tomato seedlings indoors.  The Old Farmer's Almanac recommends starting the tomato seedlings indoors late February to early March and then transplanting them late April to early May.  Given the 55 days to maturity of our variety, either the Johnny's site is wrong or the Old Farmer's Almanac is referencing another variety of tomato.  This is where we're going to have to got with a gut feel.  I no expect a plant to grow more than half it's life inside so I'd say starting seedlings indoors 4 weeks before transplant of this variety, should be the goal.
Using the Purdue date and counting back 4 weeks, we should start our seedlings on April 7th indoors.  In order to stagger the transplanting effort, we'll stagger the seedling starts as well in the same manner we did for the corn.  This will result in our seedlings being planted indoors over a 24 day period.  The seedlings will germinate in 65F soil but would much rather prefer 85F soil temperatures.
After we harvest the tomatoes, we'll keep an eye on them and see how they keep producing.  There may not be a set schedule after the first harvest so it may just be a daily thing of walking through the garden and harvesting any ripe tomatoes we find.

The onions is only going to deliver one crop for the season.  According to Purdue we have a range of March 15th through April 15th to plant the onion seeds.  That's a 32 day range so we'll shave evenly off either side and start seeding on March 19th.  Given the 110 DTM, our first harvest of onions will start on July 7th.

The spinach has an earliest sowing date of March 20th.  With it's short 39 DTM, and a latest sowing date of September 10th, we'll be counting on at least four crops over the course of the season and if we use season extension and protect our plants, we could even get a 5th crop in October/November.

The carrots has an earliest sowing date of April 10th.  Due to our staggering out the planting over 24 days, our third crop of the season won't fully be in the ground by the last planting date of August 1st.  Given that the carrots are in the same beds as the spinach which we'll give some season extension protection, we'll be able to complete the harvest in good time, even before the final spinach harvest.

Corn Companion Planting Plan

At this point, we have a general layout for our garden per our Planting Plan.  Having determined our core crops, we can take a look at Companion Planting techniques in order to bolster yield and health of our crops.

The first core crop we identified, was corn.  Who doesn't love some sweet corn on the cob?!  Even though corn can be hard to grow effectively, we are going to do so in our garden.  Incidentally, Companion Planting dates back thousands of years with the Three Sisters method employed by the Native American tribes, being the most famous example of all.

As I mentioned earlier, we are going to substitute squash in our plan because my family aren't squash eaters and one of our Golden Rules state that we only plant what we eat.  For this reason, we sought an alternative to squash and settled on carrots.  Carrots go well with many crops.  For that reason, we will be employing them throughout our garden as a secondary crop rather than dedicating a soil bed to them as a primary crop.  The recommended minimum separation between corn stalks is stated as 12".  In our SFG type setup, that means that we'll be able to grow 48 corn plants per soil bed.  Considering a growing season of 180 days in Indianapolis, and a Days to Maturity (DTM) value of 75 days for our chosen variety, we should be able to get two crops in a season.  On average, you'll get about 1.3 ears of corn per plant, but for simplicity sake, it's safe to assume one ear per plant.  That's not a great yield for the area employed.  Our chosen variety states that you can sow 2 seeds per foot.  If take a closer look at the Wampanoag Three Sisters Corn and Bean Mound, we also notice that the spread between the 4 seeds is 6".  Keeping that in mind, I designed our plan as follows:

The yellow triangles are corn.  The green circles are pole beans while the orange triangles are carrots.  Each little square in the background grid represents 1/2".  If we place the corn on the north, east, south and west axis with it's 6" separation between north and south as well as east and west, then the pole beans would will out the corners of that square.  Given the little space (2") needed by carrots, we stagger them around the outside of the square foot, offset between the beans and the corn.
As the corn grows, it's roots should fill out the center area while it is kept strong on the outside of the circle by the pole beans as they vine up the corn stalks.  The carrots provide the ground cover with it's greenery shading out weeds.

Using this plan we should get the following yield from our garden.
Pole beans, 65 days to maturity, row planted at 6" intervals, yield 60 lbs / 100' row.  At 6" intervals, there would be 2 plants per feet of row.  Since we are using intensive gardening techniques, we actually have 4 plants per square foot.  We are also calculating two crops for the season in alignment with the corn crops.  Thus:

2 crops X 2 rows per square ft X 0.6 lbs/ft X 96 square feet = 230.4 lbs of beans.

Sweet Corn, 75 days to maturity, row planted at 12" intervals, yield 130 ears / 100' row.  Using the Wampanoag method, we can plant 4 plants per square foot thus:

2 crops X 4 plants per square ft X 1.3 ears/ft X 96 square feet = 998.4 ears of corn.

Though that may sound like a lot, it's the most optimistic outcome.  This is also the entire year's crop total.  Yield may be far less than expected, but if it isn't, we'll have plenty to share with family, friends and neighbors. :-)

Carrots, 56 days to maturity, could potentially yield 3 crops in our 180 growing season, but because we are planting them in support of the corn and beans, we'll only do 2 crops in sync with the other two.  Considering a 2.5 ounce average weight for the carrots, yield would be thus:

2 crops X 12 plants per square ft X 2.5 ounces (0.15625 lbs) X 96 square feet = 360 lbs of carrots.

Seeds required for the two beds:
Corn - 96 X 4 X 2 = 768 @ 150 seeds/pack = 5 packs X $3.95 = $19.75
Beans - 48 X 4 X 2 = 384 @ 50 seeds/pack = 8 packs X $3.95 = $31.60
Soybeans - 48 X 4 X 2 = 384 @ 100 seeds/pack = 4 packs X $3.95 = $15.80
Carrots - 96 X 12 X 2 = 2304 @ 250 seeds/pack = 10 packs X $3.95 = $39.50

Now we need to determine the planting dates for these.  The corn seed needs to be sown when the soil is 65F at 1 1/2".  Carrots can be sown when soil is 56F at 1/2".  Since we're sowing the carrots with the corn, the more shallow soil temperature will be much higher than the minimum.  Soybeans and beans can be sown when the soil is 65F at 1".  Again, when sowing with the corn, the shallower soil will be warmer than the minimum.  Planting dates now have to be determined.  Given that the DTM for our variety of corn is 75 days and considering that we have a 180 day growing season, we can easily fit two full crop cycles into our growing season.  If your growing season is shorter, something like 140 days, you might consider starting the corn seedlings inside.  Seedling starting and transplanting of corn is generally not recommended, but it can be done with a little care.  Since we don't have to worry about seed starting for the corn, we'll simply plan the planting times for the other seeds in our soil bed.

We start by determining the optimal time to plant our corn.  According to the Old Farmer's Almanac Planting Dates by Zip Code page, my best time for planting corn is April 17th through May 1st.  Just enter your zip code on that page and click "Search" to find your dates.  Looking at the calendar, April 17th falls on a Thursday.  At this point you may be tempted to plan on planting all the corn on that Saturday, the 19th.  I would not recommend that.  One of the key components of sustainability is... well... a sustained crop yield over time.  Remember, we're not commercial farmers who want all the corn to ripen at the same time.  On the contrary, we want it to ripen in phases so that we can eat it over time.

Given my growing season, and the corn's DTM, I have 30 days leeway to play with so we'll spread our planting out over 30 days.  Since we have 96 squares to plant, I can do 3 squares per day, however, seeing as the dimensions of the beds are 12' x 4' it makes most sense to just do an entire column (the 4' slice) per day.  That way, we'll have 4 squares ready for harvest each day once they mature.  We'll continue to harvest and immediately replant the square for the second crop, for a period of 24 days.  We can continue to eat corn kept in storage during the 51 days between the final picking of the first crop and the first picking of the second crop.  I have found the best way to plan this kind of activity is simply to add it to my calendar.  Once you've completed the corn schedule, do the same for beans and carrots, adding the difference in DTM to the corn square's plant date to get the plant date for the other two.  For example, since the first row is planted on April 17th, we know that there's a 10 day difference in DTM (75-65) between the corn and the beans.  We add 10 days to the date and we know that we have to plant that row with beans on April 27th.  In the same way, we know there's 9 days difference between the beans and the carrots' DTM so by adding 9 days to April 27th, we know we need to plant the carrots for that row on May 6th.  Fill out the calendar accordingly to complete your planting schedule.

By planning a staggering of the planting dates between the different crops, we have a single harvest date for the entire square.  It also allows the corn some time for a head start before the beans start to vine up the stalks.  I'm not sure if it would be better to stagger the harvest date instead.  It certainly would allow more soil space for the other crops as some are harvested, but we'll try it this way this year and see how it goes.