My space has been just right for several years...of course I added raised beds in front of my greenhouse where I grow just flowers, so I can get my "flower fix' that way. anyhthing that was stricly for blossoms has been wonderful this year.

However, this year has been one of the worse weather-wise ever for vegetable gardening.
Planted in mud in desparation first week of June.
Consequently my vegetables have done poorly, either barely germinating, weeds worse than usual, bugs...a real scourge of a summer here. If lucky, we'll get some tomatoes.

Guess Ill work at tidying it up so it's extra fertile next year !

Although I still have one section of one bed vacant, about 3 ft. x 2 ft., the others are spilling over, especially the squash. Next year I may move the squash to next to the wire fence so they can climb a bit.

For more growing space and as a deer repellent, I plan to dig a long perimeter bed outside the potager fence, for alliums: garlic, Egyptian onions, chives and regular onions. And herbs.

And I forgot to allow space in the potager for a sitting area! So that may also go outside, on the grass, but with a couple of dwarf fruit trees about 12 ft. away, to give the area a sense of enclosure.

I'm also thinking about a temporary hooplike small greenhouse I can set up over one of the potager beds for the winter, for that extra solar help in overwintering some winter vegs. Anyone done that?

Carol

Well, I guess my potager has to be the right size since there's really not any more room to expand it. I did take over another area for pumpkins, cantaloupe and butternuts. Next year, I may try trellising them to get more in that space.

Carol -- I like the idea of planting the onion family outside the fence. I've been thinking that I need a little something along the sides. I did test some herbs outside my fence in the front border. Sage, chives, bee balm and lavender have been left alone. But, the poor rosemary plant was actually pulled right out of the ground!

I also have thought about a hoop house over one of the beds. I have all the supplies, just need to actually do it for this fall.

lily51 -- bugs have been a nightmare too. I'm in round two with the darn cucumber beetles and I'm trying not to think about the squash vine borer. grrr.

Ali-b, let me know how the hoop greenhouse works out: how big, whether you will heavily mulch those vegs. too, etc. And as for the bugs: As I look at this log-like stack of bat-size zucchinis on my kitchen counter (I'll stuff & bake them, then freeze in serving sizes), I think there comes a time every summer when we zucchini growers actually welcome those squash borers!

Carol (blanching & freezing a great deal of Tuscan kale, making 3 lbs. dilly beans, contemplating cucumber-and-radish salad with yogurt and mint - LOTS of mint)

I tripled my space this year - but having trouble getting any harvest out of most of it. Will have to wait until next year to assess adequacy of size....

ali-b, I used my tomato cages last year as hoop houses. I opened them up and arched them over my potager beds, then covered them with floating row cover. I had greens, lettuce, carrots, and onions all winter long. Our lowest temps were eleven degrees. The greens stood through that without any protection at all. I was delighted and amazed. For your climate, you would want a heavier cover, but the tomato cages worked great as the "skeleton" and the openings were large enough to reach in for harvest.

As to size, my potager is just about right for the three of us (DH, mother-in-law, and me). We eat fresh food from it very nearly twelve months a year, and when I have excess, which I have had this year, I give them to a poor family in our church. They are so grateful since their landlord won't allow them to garden and fresh produce is so expensive at the grocery.

I have 9 raised beds that are approximately 8'x3.5'. At the west and south corners I have dwarf apple trees. In other areas of the yard I have six blueberry bushes, a fig tree, and two plum trees (these are an experiment). I grow strawberries in two large tubs on my deck.

I gardened in a traditional row garden for ten years or more. I hated it. I could never control the weeds and it was ugly (to me). I finally gave up and only went back to growing veggies last year. I stumbled upon this forum by accident and went straight to Amazon to buy books. I just love these little beds. It takes about an hour to clean one out, amend and turn it, replant, and remulch. Because it's so easy, I keep them in pristine condition and continually productive.

donnabaskets - Thanks for the info on your row covers. I just took Eliot Coleman's Winter Harvest Handbook out of the library again. I also have a copy of, I think it's called, Gardening 12-months of the Year. Both have great ideas. I need to start simple though.

I agree about the potager layout. I am not going to rearrange the beds at all for next year. The past two years, I created so much work for myself -- expanding, moving raised beds and paths. It was overwhelming. I love the contained beds with paths. It makes the garden a landscape feature instead of something to hide.

I would like to enlarge my garden by half - because it's pretty narrow. I'd love for it to be as wide as it is long, so that I could widen the paths to 3' wide and have a couple more beds to work with too. The square shaped gardens I have seen look nice. Also, I planted a bit too much for the space I have and have been fighting that problem all summer.

If it doesn't work out to add half again the space on one side I will just move things as needed to make the space a square for planting, and widen the paths. I guess I could use more vertical planting (and plant squash and pumpkins elsewhere) and containers. I'll make it work! Maybe even this fall when all has been harvested and it's nice out.

The hard part about vegetables is that some of them get so big. They grow right out of the pretty little spaces I've set aside for them :)

Next year, I'm going to try having some smaller beds, just for carrots, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, peas and beans...things that stay a managable size. The larger vegetables are going into another area. I do want to add some asparagus in one bed and maybe some grapes. My kitchen garden is turning into a fruit/flower/herb garden, with a few vegetables.

I still plan to put flowers and a few herbs in the vegetable garden, but the vegetables have a lot more room to sprawl! LOL

Today I drove the 75 mi. to my potager (at our weekend cottage) and saw signs of deer nibbling: outside the fence, the acorn squash leaves at a 3 ft. height had all been eaten off, leaving short stems sticking through the fence. What other animal could eat leaves at a 3 ft. height? So my idea of growing the squash outside the potager next year, won't work. Unless I just dig a separate bed and fence it in a more casual manner than the potager.
I re-read parts of Square Foot Gardening and decided to start succession crops for the summer's end and the Fall. So mesclun and radishes are sown anew, and next week the chard, pea and kale seeds go in. The tomatoes are finally ripe and look to produce about 4-6 weeks more. Basil being cut and made into pesto.
The most important part of my potager management in September will be to get my baby Old Garden Roses into larger pots, plastic ones (they are presently in terra cotta which evaporates much water) and then bury the pots in the ground and heap up composted horse manure higher than the stem and cane bottoms. I've been advised to not plant these youngsters in the ground until next Spring.
Once the various alliums which are now scattered in the flower beds are gathered into the new outside-the-potager border bed, it will be truly Fall and time to plant garlic, which also goes in that border.
I've learned a lot from this first year of the potager and a lot of what I've learned is from you GW potager posters. Thanks!

Carol

The deer do like to nibble. I have a few that love to eat the new growth on my John Cabot roses. I was going to move them, but they seem to be recovering...so I'll leave them for now.

Your potager sounds very nice. Are the roses in the potager? Do you have any pictures?

I finally figured out how to post pictures, yesterday. My flower gardens are looking pretty good (have to keep the roses from being covered with weeds) but the kitchen garden is a bit of a mess. Maybe after weeding this weekend, I'll try to post some pictures :)