Michele,
Did you take any pictures?
How many square foots do you garden?
All of your positives for square foot gardening apply to box gardening as well.
In your corn example, I would have the corn, with beans, lettuce, and garlic all mixed in. The lettuce and garlic would have been there first. The beans would go in with the corn.
I have 6 boxes with 80 square feet each. Listing the first planting alone used to be pages long. I had a garden drawing with codes on the boxes because I couldn't fit in the seed names. I needed an accounting system to keep the seeds. It was just too tedious.
Since I was planting small quantities of each seed, I had packets that were 10 years old. Now, I try to use up seed packets as quickly as possible. If it is two years old, it all goes into the soil. When I reach the end of the box, and still have seed left, I just scatter it.
I like inter-planting. Garlic, onions, shallots, beets, and carrots go just about everywhere. So do greens and herbs. I like to go out and plant all the garlic at once. I plant enough that it would be a pain to figure out which foots were getting garlic right now.
Spinach and other early greens fill all the boxes in the spring. When its time to plant other things, like tomatoes and such, in their space, I just pull out a few to make room. What greens don't get picked, go to seed wherever they are. It makes the garden look a little unkept, but the birds love it. And I love the volunteers.
Like Katy, my organicness is propelled by a lazy nature. Although I am an exterminator, I usually don't spray any chemicals in my garden. I did spray some dormant oil on my apples this spring. I add a little compost on top in the fall when I clean up.
I used to dig 18 inches, but this year I just loosened the soil with a pitch fork, as some here recommended. I was surprised last weekend, when I cleaned up, how easy it was to pull out stuff. The soil didn't harden as I thought, even though I didn't turn any soil in the spring.
Weeding is just plain easy in boxes, whether you square foot garden or not. I have learned to recognize which plants are weeds and can usually spot them in the seedling stage. If I miss them on the first pass, I usually find them later. I have a bigger problem with mint. I planted some in a path years ago, and it wants to travel into the adjacent boxes. I punish it yearly.
I have always had difficulty getting enough parsley going because I used to dig each box each year. Last spring the parsley was left in the box from the previous year, and it went to seed. It is now in all the paths, and all the boxes. I love it.
I am interested in your inexpensive frames and cages designs. I think these are useful for any type garden. I use a lot of cattle panel and have adapted them to an arbor, trellises, and cold frame. Uniform boxes make it easy to put them where they are needed each season.
What are you square footing this time of year?