rise and fall of the cucumbers - part 1

I started seeds a week ago.



15 tomatos (that's a lot) - 5 sugar sweeties (cherry), 5 brandywine, 5 san marzano.
5 cucumbers - marketmore.

The cucumbers sprouted in 5 days to much fanfare and hoopla around the house.
I proceeded to water them and bring them into full sunshine.

Full, 95 degree F sunshine, with the cover on or off, I can't remember.
I killed those cucumbers as soon as they were born.

Layout

So, the planned layout for the boxes is in my mind. Essentially, it will be something along these lines:

1	2	3
6	5	4

I decided to figure this all out now because there were deep footprints next to the tomatoes and in the lettuces. I need a fence. Doesn't have to be perfect right now, but any barricade to keep, what I believe is the neighbors' dogs out of the small patch of earth I have claimed as my own.
I dug up the fence posts that marked off the previous owners leaf, branch, trash pile and used those as my four corners. Also, bought about 50' of 3' high fence to wrap around. With the existing fencing around the old leaf pile, this gave adequate space.

Further identification of what is where in each box I've done is by a row/column naming, so I can track what I planted when and where.

Row D	AD	BD	CD	DD
Row C	AC	BC	CC	DC
Row B	AB	BB	CB	DB
Row A	AA	BA	CA	DA
	Column A	Column B	Column C	Column D

First Planting

With a clear sense of impatience, I went ahead and planted radishes and carrots and tomato plants and lettuces.
In Box 1 (see Layout post), I planted 2 rows of radishes and 3 rows of carrots in Row B. I planted an entire packet of Lettuce Mesclun mix in Row A. And 4 different tomato plants in Row D.

The result, a mix of Wow! green things are growing tempered with Yep, still don't know what I'm doing. I also, planted 6 peppers in Box 2.






I picked up a copy of Square Foot Gardening (my parents used to watch this on PBS when I was a kid) from the Horsham Library. I learned that I planted the radishes and carrots and lettuces all wrong.
I'm waiting the radishes and carrots out to see what I can see, mostly. Actually, I transplanted half the radishes close to the tomato plants. This is probably a mistake. None of my radishes seem to be showing the real roots that make them recognizable as radishes. They might not be getting enough sun.
Also, moved about 16 lettuces to Box B. We'll see how this goes. Box 1 will likely be completely redone in the near future, but that happens regularly anyway... right?

what I don't know...

... could fill many books. Early/mid April I trekked around to the hardware stores with the thought of putting together boxes for a garden. We moved in late January into a house that has space in the backyard. Aside from just having space, it is space we can work with.
From Lowes I picked up 4 8' x 8" cedar boards and had the store cut them in half. With a couple 2 1/2" L brackets, the two boxes were born. I went out back, inexpertly scoped our a place for the two boxes, dug out the layer of sod, and plopped the 4' x 4' boxes on the ground.
I figure dirt needed to be added, so went to the nursery down the street Green Acres and bought some 10 bags. Each box needs more than 5 bags, so I went back to get some more. Hence, it begins...