Last year I had access to a farm field and was allowed to plant a section of a 1/2 acre ! Well now its time to figure some new tactics! I bought 4 -10 by 25 - 4 mill black plastic rolls! I cut the weeds and grass down to a lawn type setting! How to anchor the plastic to stretch it out so i can dig the holes! To make it easy I thought I would roll the 25 feet out and cut a emicircle in the folds of the plastic. I made them about 8 inches in diameter about every 18 nches and cut into two of the folds. The came out nice and were all the same distance apart and in lin! Tha was the easy way to cut the holes! I needed something to make the plasic tight till I dug the dirt from the holes! I bought me a pack of 100 -3-1/4 inch golf tees for $3 and to stop them from slipping through the plastic I bought metal washers and they worked great. I placed them two foot appart and pressed them into the grounf through the edges of the plastic but doubled the edge to make it stronger as I stretched the plastic. The plastic was stretched out perfect!
+++ My next step was to dig the holes but a regular shoved was too wide. I bought a 45 degree angled pinted blade 6 inch wide shovel at the tractor supply and it worked great giving me a hole about 7inches and 10 inches deep! I am now ready to plant my tomatoes and peppers and seeds!
+++ I get a 1/2 yard shoved of mushroom manure with a 1/2 yard of strained top soil on top of it in my pick up for $23 and head back to the farm. I also have a 20 gallon barrel of water with some weak fertilizr mixed in! I will use Osmocote this coming year!
+++ I dig all the holes with two scoops of dirt with the special shoves one scoop oposite from the other and have a wedged hole angling down to about 10 inches deep and the grass rooted soil I get from the holes is put on the perimiter of the plasic to hold it down better! It works great and reinforces the temporary golf tee holders! I think there was about 40 holes in the 10 by 25 area! I could have made them a little closer but it worked fine! No animals bothered the plants because of the plastic I guess! I put the plants in the holes and covered them with the mushroom and top soil and watered them! I did half of the holes with just the soil mix and planted seeds zuccs and sunflowers. All the plants turned out great with only small amounts of weeds in the holes. I planted 4 sections of 10 by 25 and will do it again this year with only a few changes! I put this in inlate summer like july and still had a nice crop!What I like about gardening is there is no rule of thumb for planting just let you imagination do the planting!