Where's my #@$%#$ Lettuce?

By now you've seen a few snaps of the current layout, and know my goal is trying to get as much out of my space as I can - while working within a 'pay for itself' budget. So seeing blank squares, or squares that aren't filled out at least 80% really starts to chap my ass after a while.

Sometimes it's where you don't expect them to pop up. Consider lettuce. Over the last 3 to 4 years I've grown probably 5 different varieties (mainly due to my seeing LETTUCE on the seed packet and grabbing it without reading it) in just about every way I can imagine growing it. In old cans, milk jugs, long window sized containers, in rows, in square foot squares.

I put it out the same times of the year, and it pops on up and grows - I can always count on it.

So where is it? It's supposed to be on that line right below the beans. Where there should be 16 nice little lettuce popped up, there's 5... maybe six.
This is on the new bed I just installed - and everything else has popped up just fine. I plant all my stuff from seed - although I do propagate in containers for some things - including lettuce - but usually this time of the year it's fine to plant right into the ground.

Worse still, the other 8 nestled between the turnip greens at the top, and the carrots and radishes below, haven't even put forward one peep of green.
I grew spinach here over the Autumn and Winter - but that was mulched with worm castings and afterwards dug over and amended with the same.
The same treatment the other squares (which held lettuce and and other things over the winter).

I'm now up to 3 replantings and nada.  Admittedly we've had some crazy weather swings between hot and cold, some very heavy rains - but it remains that by now I should be seeing something..
2 different places in the garden - 2 mixes of soils - same results. My guess is the weather and temps. 

Raised beds are able to get soil to warm temps faster than straight ground digging - but planter boxes do it even faster. 
Usually I plant a window container with them as both a backup, and also (due to limited bed space) to transplant as the garden squares are harvested.  Letting them get big and cutting my replant time.

This year though - everything is full up - once I put in the new 4 x 4 I expected that to go gangbusters and used my pots and containers to expand herbs and other things that require larger spaces in the beds.
I also keep 2 containers as 'overflow' - When I plant seeds I pop in 3-4 seeds per plant and thin back.  As I thin if I pull up a plant with intact roots, I'll pop it in an 'overflow' container. The plant will stay small because it can get rather cramped, and if I need to transplant to fill up a square - I can use it.  Also, as with lettuce, it can give a jump start on replanting.  I like to keep the garden beds as close to full and working as I can.

So what to do?  Putting in another 4x4 is out of the question  as the first hasn't paid for itself (this harvest will cover those costs) - besides, the next 4x4 is planned over Autumn and Winter - it's going to be an experiment in bringing the things I use closer together (self watering containers, square foot gardening, and vermicomposting into one unit).  It will be rather more expensive than a regular 4x4 as well.

More containers? Well they aren't THAT expensive - I've been phasing out my old weathered cheap pots for self watering pots as they wear out, but I'm running out of space to put them on - the hopes of expanding the garden wasn't to increase patio clutter but decrease it eventually.

Luckily I do have the old beds surrounding the house (my first beds were made by fixing those up). 
A rummage through the workshop and my list of 'to do' projects (there are so many I have to write them in a notebook or I forget them all) gave me a solution.  I've wanted a herb bed by the back doorstep - but this was going to be a Summer project, after the blueberry harvest.
The old bed that was there had been washed away down to some half broken down weed cloth - when I moved in I weeded them out quickly and covered them with pinestraw as mulch till I got around to them.

Peeling back the pinestraw and cutting the weed cloth showed some nice black soil - riddled with roots of bygone plants and other rubbish.
I blocked it out with some 2x4 scrap I had in the workshop and after some work with the shovel, hoe, and soil rake got rid of most of the crap and got to inspect the soil - it was a bit dense, so 3 blocks of coconut coir were hydrated (see the bucket off to one side) and mixed in.  I would have liked to use more, but my stash of coir is now running a bit low. I'm down to 3 bricks and I'll save that for my worm needs till I get more.

 Add 2 40lb bags of composted manure at 1.50 each, and some lattice from the workshop and we're good to go.
The lattice I use on the gardens to grid them off I get at Lowes for 7 bucks - you get 10 strips at around 8 foot per strip.

 

 The back strip is reserved for Garlic. People ask me 'where do you get your Garlic seeds from? ". Well I don't. I buy a bulb at the supermarket - break it up and put it into the ground (pointy end up) - and up shoots more garlic... it's that simple








The rest is planted out with Basil and Sage. I did a single plant per square at the back and 4 in a square one forward - I've planted them close in containers before - so this will give me a good test to see what works best in a square foot. One forward from those I've planted them again as seed.
To the side we have Parsley and Thyme. The front squares were planted with Dill, Cinantro, and Rosemary. If I were able to get Rosemary started earlier I'd have rearranged the order and called the bed 'Scarborough Fair' - ah well the the best laid plans, and all that.

So - herb garden sorted I now have a few pots and containers at the ready to plant out and try and get that @#$%!ing Lettuce sorted out!