Starting My Square Foot Garden

After leaving college a little less than a year ago I moved back in with my parents to save a money and pay down my student debt.  In an effort to keep sanity and help with the cravings of wanting a homestead I convinced my parents to give me a little space to grown a few veggies.  I've done a little reading about different forms of growing along with watching YouTube videos of urban gardeners or self sufficient homesteaders and felt that a intensive growing in a square foot garden would work best for a jumping off point. 

For ease and economy I went with two 4x4 ft. raised bed starter kits, they are ceder, hold up well to the weather and safe for growing food.  The idea of intensive square foot gardening is to have maximum productivity in a small space for this you need a good growing base, soil enriched with loads of compost.

 Between the two beds I filled them with several bags of good quality top soil, a bag of composed cow manure each, a bag of mushroom compost each and one bag chicken manure divided between the two. Once this was done I stalked out each foot and made a grid using jute so I would have square foot planting spots.

 In the 32 square feet I have 8 Heirloom Tomatoes plants (Homesteaders, German Queen, and Cherokee Black), 2 Ichiban Japanese Eggplant, 2 White Eggplant, 3 Mammoth Jalapeno plants, 1 Golden Cayenne, 3 Black Beauty Zucchini, and 3 Yellow/Summer Squash Plants.  These have onion and marigolds planted in amongst them as a companion crop and pest deterrent.  I hope to do more research into companion crops and have a larger garden next season.  Biodiversity is the best think for keeping a balanced healthy farm or garden in my opinion.  

Things I've learned so far:

• Weeds are not a problem in such a small space and the squash shades out anything that isn't already established

• I have spread coffee grounds as a natural slow release nitrogen since I've planted such heavy feeders (Plants that take a great deal of nutrients out of the soil as they grown like tomatoes
• Once the marigolds get shaded out you have to cut them at the base of the stem and compost them so as not to let them rot and cause disease
• I planted two squash/zucchini seedlings per square still not sure if I should have thinned to one as they need male and female flowers to fruit only real disadvantage to having both seedlings that I can see is the heavy shading of surrounding plants and if the surrounding plants aren't taller and well established it could cause problems.    
• Plant 2/3 of your tomato starters in leaving 1/3 above ground to get a good stalk and well established roots.
• Keep up on your tomato pruning snipping suckers (the shoots that form between stem and existing leaf stalk) asap. (I'm guilty of not keeping up with this)
• Cage tomatoes sooner rather than later.
• Always keep an eye out for slugs!!