Looks great! I wish I had that kind of space. Instead I have to do alot of my gardeniggn in containers. I have 3 25 gallon ones and I'm going to try to do companion planting in them.

Looks real good, Macheske. I'd go for wider beds with smaller plants but you don't really have smaller plants - no lettuce, carrots, onions, etc. You should be able to fit them in here and there at least early in the season.

You may want to double the rows of bush beans in those beds but you'd probably need to do some simple fencing to keep them out of the paths then. I would appreciate your 2' paths, I think lots of people narrow down the paths to where they can't hardly turn around or even get into the garden during the peak of the season.

Does that red line beside the cuke and pole bean beds represent a fence? You'd need something to keep the cucumbers from running into the melons. And, you may want to shorten your bush bean bed a little so that you can get a wheel barrow turned around in front of the gate. Another advantage of the 2' paths, you should be able to get in there with a wheel barrow thru much of the season.

It just looks real good.

Steve

Thanks for the responses so far. I've designed the garden to minimize the amount of work that I need to do to maintain it hopefully. I had a terrible problem with weeds last year (actually grass mostly) so I went ahead and decided to use drip and heavy black plastic. The reason I don't have lettuce, carrots, onions, etc is that I couldn't find a good way to put them in with the plastic mulch. The double row of beans sounds like a good idea. I think I'll put that on my list for the year after depending on how it goes on this one. There is a fence for the pole beans and cukes to climb. It's where my old garden ended so I decided to leave it for climbers. I think you're right with the bush beans. I'll shorten the row. If I can keep the weeds under control this coming year maybe I'll double the garden size again next year :) Since I have more space than I do time I've tried to design it so that I can use my tractor to till in compost, etc. (the south end of the fence is easily removed), use the drip system to water and fertilize if needed, and the plastic to keep the weeds down. At the end of the season the drip system is easily removable for starting the process over.
Rick

I garden very similarly to this plan, but my garden is about 30' x 40'. Maybe I can make a few suggestions about planting those carrots, onions, and lettuce. As you plan to do, first I set up my irrigation system, then I put down black gardening fabric as you have (I do use fabric, not plastic, so any rain can soak in - the fabric is impervious to weeds, at least for a couple of seasons). I cover the whole garden with it, using garden staples as I go. Then I cut holes in it to plant seeds or plants.

Last year I had terrible weeds in the onions, because I didn't put them through the fabric as I did the rest of my garden. This year I cut slits in the fabric for each onion area (short rows about 2' - I let the width of the fabric dictate some row lengths, because it's easier than cutting across 2 pieces and dealing with so many corners; I cut many rows about 8" apart per length of garden fabric), and the onions and leeks grew to good size, with almost no weeds among them. For garlic, I cut little X's in the fabric, and planted the bulbs there in the fall. They all came up in the spring, and were pretty good sized when harvest time came around - again, with few weeds. I interspersed lettuce, cabbage, bok choi, and broccoli plants (maybe 6-8 of each) in the onion rows (I read a book on companion planting and found that cabbages and onions, and lettuce and onions are friends), and I harvested some of each - I'm still getting broccoli and cabbage. I might leave a little more room between those and the onions next year because a few onion plants ended up shaded out. I also need to be a bit more unfriendly to the cabbage moths and slugs. ;) I try to stay away from chemicals.

Rather than leaving bare dirt rows, I cut X's in the fabric for tomato plants, peppers, eggplants, bush summer squash, and bush beans and they have done quite well. I lay the X's out in rows, so they're grouped together. There is an irrigation line along each row I plant. I built a trellis for the tomatoes using 6 and 7 foot bamboo stakes (zip tied together) and 4" netting, plus tomato clips (from Johnny's Seeds, very handy) to clip them to the netting, and they stay very neat. A row might look like this:

X XÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â XÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â XÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â X - 5 plants

     X         X         X         X     \- 4 plants That way I can maximize space and fit in as many plants as possible along an irrigation line \- they're about equally far apart on the diagonal and along the row. I attempted planting carrots among the tomatoes I planted this way, but I should have planted the seed sooner, because they got shaded out. For row crops from seed, I cut a slit in the fabric (along the line of the irrigation hose) for rows of crops \- shaped like a long letter "I" (with short 90 degree angle slits on both ends), and I fold in the edges underneath and staple the fabric down. I planted rows of peas, corn, radishes, cippolini onions (from seed), cucumbers, climbing winter squash and pumpkins, and other plants did quite well this year for me with this method. Even if the slits are in a long row, I tend to keep them fairly short, so I don't compromise the integrity of the fabric (plus those garden staples are kind of expensive). For the climbing plants, I use trellises, so that I can maximize garden space. I got a\-frame trellises this year, and put 4" netting on them. The peas, cucumbers, and winter squash, with a little training, climbed right up. I had a bumper crop of peas, because we had a long, wet, cool spring. I planted my radishes and cippolini onions in the middle of the a\-frame, with a double row around the irrigation hose, like this: :\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-: \- pea/cuke row 0                                        0 \- A\-frame feet :\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-: \- radishes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ \- irrigation :\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-: \- cippolinis 0                                        0 \- A\-frame feet :\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-: \- pea/cuke row Again, this is more companion planting \- apparently cucumber beetles don't like radishes, so letting a couple of radishes go to seed helps keep them away. The radishes did very well \- the onions are still growing (yes, in Maine, crazy weather) and I will probably pick them this weekend. My a\-frames are angled so they get quite a bit of sun, and aren't totally shaded by the cucurbits. I planted peas/squash/cukes from seed when the peas started dying back; next year I may start those indoors due to animal issues. (And, if that darned chipmunk hadn't eaten my squash, cuke, and corn seeds twice, I'd be able to give you accurate news about exactly how the trellising worked. As it was, I managed to harvest a mature butternut squash, a mostly mature pie pumpkin, a tiny acorn squash which is mature, and a couple of immature winter squashes, plus some popcorn, from seeds planted mid\-July. The vines did really well and if fall hadn't come along who knows what might have happened.) I'm definitely not an expert, but this method has worked for me. It's a lot of work up front in the spring, but the time savings on weeding all summer is huge. You can go do something fun instead of weeding all weekend! My canning cupboard and freezer are packed with homegrown goodness, with more left to process. It's a bit unconventional to garden this way, but I can say for sure that it's not unsuccessful. This year I'm going to experiment and leave my fabric laid out all winter. I know, it's probably crazy, but I want to get an early start next year. Instead of tilling in a few bags of compost, I'll be very generous with it when I plant my veggies. The irrigation hose has holes in it so it shouldn't freeze. My garden is small, so crop rotation is kind of a non\-issue anyway, unfortunately. We'll see what happens next year! Here are a few pictures, that might help show what I mean. These are from last year, when I left a lot more bare ground in the garden. This picture shows how tomatoes were planted (in X shaped cuts in the fabric) along the trellis. You can also see beans coming up through their X's on the right: {{gwi:114571}} Tomatoes grown up some, weeds galore among the onions (I'd rather be at the beach than weeding, can you tell?): {{gwi:114572}} Squash planted in X\-shaped cuts along irrigation line, cukes in the background on a trellis, with plenty of weeds among them: {{gwi:114573}}

Oh, and in case I didn't babble enough before, if you are interested, my favorite companion planting book is "Carrots Love Tomatoes" by Louise Riotte.

(And last year I used tape for the trellises, not zip ties - I'll try to get this year's pictures posted so you can see better examples, if you're interested). That third picture is just after the onions were finally weeded. :)

Daria,
Your garden looks awesome! That's exactly what I want mine to look like next year. I'd be embarassed to show you pictures of mine with all the weeds. That's why I decided to go with plastic mulch. I've found 20' x 100' 6mil plastic. I've been told it will last for 5 years. I will only have 1 seam in the middle of the garden. I should be able to remove it from year to year but I'll need to keep the holes in the same place every year. I thought about landscape fabric but then I would have a lot of seams. Also, I don't have to worry about clorine in the water or anything else since I have a well feeding the irrigation line. The weeds are exactly why I'm not planning on growing anything that I should plant closer than 8' apart. The beans are the only thing that I'm not going to start insidoors. I'd love to see more pictures! Here's my updated plan based on some recommendations.

{{gwi:114574}}

Awww, thank you! :) I'll try to upload more pictures this weekend, if I can get through my canning. Isn't garden planning fun? I'm almost getting into that mode, now that the tomatoes are pretty much all gone. The "overwhelmed by tomatoes" garden phase almost goes by too fast!

I think that the garden fabric/plastic really helps to prevent me from having to use extra fertilizers. I would stay as organic as possible anyway, but weeds can suck a lot out of the soil (as the tiny onions I harvested last year will attest). I fertilized a couple of times this year with fish emulsion and Terracycle tomato food, plus the tilled in compost, and things grew quite well. (I even had few softball-sized onions this year!)

That's so great that you can irrigate from a well. Someday I'd like to get working gutters on our house (it looks like some genius who put shingles on the roof covered them up at some point before we bought it) and collect rain water. Right now we're using city water. The veggies do OK though, anyway. Oh, and I should have said "freezing won't be an issue, since the irrigation hoses have holes in them". Obviously if there's water in them, it will freeze.

The seams can be a pain. That's half the reason I'm going to try to leave it as-is this winter. The thought of re-rolling and re-stapling is just not pleasant. It was very windy while I was doing that this spring, not much fun at all. I'd rather just plant stuff!

I definitely have some narrow aisles in my garden. Since it's not a gigantic garden, though, it's really not that difficult to get to everything. There are a couple of tricky spots that I have to tiptoe through, but usually it's easy to harvest everything. It is an interesting challenge to squeeze in everything I want to grow into a small space. We're in the 'burbs with 1/3 acre, and the backyard is edged by trees and the house. There's only so much land that gets enough sun for veggies without being in a tree root zone. I think I've done pretty well taming the lawn, though. When we moved in the (feral) garden space was less than half the size it is now. Now DH has less lawn to mow, and we spend less money on produce, so it's all good!

Thanks....sounds like my plan is where it should be mostly, lol.... Always changing the garden plan. I have 10 acres so I could expand this garden to whatever made sense. I have full sun over the whole garden where I placed it so I don't have to worry about that. The main point is that I want to plan it right so that I can minimize my time and maximize my veggies. We try to keep veggies as the majority of our meals rather than meats and starches. I'm not saying that I don't enjoy a nice thick juicy steak. Oh I definitely do. But, I'd rather make that the side dish. Daria, you're input helps!
Thanks,
Rick