Easiest to prep in the fall. Do you want a raised bed so you can plant earlier or do you want to direct sow? Any chemicals thrown out under the shed? Are you going to trellis the cucumbers? Do you have a good turning fork or garden fork. They are the easiest for me to work with. Soil - Do you have access to horse manure (needs to hit 130F for three straight days to get rid of harmful bacteria), rabbit manure ready right from the get go, leaves - we have lots I run the lawn mower over them to mulch them up, breaks down easier. I have learned of a 40 horse barn that I'm accessing here in the South. I let the manure cook, add fall leaves and this year will be adding straw from my small area of straw bale garden. If you have no compost yet, straw bale gardening is a quick way to get lots of it by summers end. Worse thing about the horse manure - my dog thinks it's her personal playground and took livestock fencing out to get to it:) Do you want to put some type of row covering over it so you can get earlier veggies? PVC or electrical conduit works fine. Have you started composting?

Bon, With regard to your specific questions: I am assuming that when you use the term squash you mean winter squash since it is vining and most summer squash plants are more bush-like. Corn and beans perform best when planted early enough in spring that heat doesn't negatively impact pollination. I try to have all my corn harvested before the end of July, and I generally don't plant a succession crop of sweet corn for fall because of the heat. When I do plant fall corn, it is planted in a new area. Three Sisters gardens do not lend themselves well to succession planting once they are growing because you have to disturb the roots of the existing plants in order to plant a succession crop. You may or may not find that the Three Sisters garden remains standing in high winds. In my experience, without a windbreak (and sometimes even with a windbreak), the corn is more likely to be brought down by the wind, not less likely, because the weight of the bean vines tend to bring down corn stalks even in the absence of wind unless you plant a really, really sturdy corn variety that has huge, strong stalks and gets really tall. If the wind blows the corn plants over onto the top of the squash plants, it is almost impossible to straighten up the tangled mess of bean vine-covered corn plants, and your squash plants will be damaged by the corn and beans being blown down on top of them. Often it breaks the leaves. You also likely will walk on and break your squash vines while attempting to straighten up your corn plants. If okra is to be planted in your Three Sisters Garden as a fourth sister, it needs to be planted far away enough from everything else and especially the winter squash plants that you can harvest okra every day or every other day without trampling any of your three or four sisters. The marigolds likely will be shaded out by the squash plants which always get huge and run everywhere, including into places where you don't want winter squash. I have had winter squash and pumpkin plants (pumpkins, for the record, are winter squash) run from one side of the garden to another, burying every other plant in their path. I try to plant them near the garden fence and mostly train them to grow outside into the pasture beyond the fence instead of into other areas where I don't want them. I have a love-hate relationship with marigolds. I love way they look, but in my garden they are spider mite magnets so I use them as a trap crop, letting them grow until they have a heavy infestation of spider mites, and then I pull up the plants, put them in a trash bag, tie it closed and put it into a trash can with a lid. I don't want any of those spider mites escaping before the trash is hauled away. I generally get better results planting short cosmos like Cosmic Orange or Cosmic Yellow instead of marigolds. They attract the beneficial insects and are not as prone to get spider mites. I have grown some form of a Three Sisters Garden almost every year (this is my 14th spring garden here, or 15 if you count the little one I planted before we even broke ground for the house) although often it is a 4 or 5 Sisters garden, and I've almost never done it the same way twice because I haven't been entirely happy with its performance in one way or another. As George said, most pole beans will bring down most kinds of sweet corn because of their rampant growth. I have had some luck with Texas Honey June, an heirloom sweet corn from Texas that gets pretty large and tall, but even it will bend under the load of heavy bean plants. Mexican Black corn does better, and some of the field corns in the link George provided would be better than Mexican Black. Seneca Red Stalker and Mixed Colors Broom Corn (grown for ornamental seed heads) have worked well for me in a Three or Four Sisters garden. I like the Three Sisters garden for many reasons. Growing squash amongst the corn plants seems to help keep raccoons out of the corn to a certain extent, though it doesn't work every year---only most years or only to some degree. However, the beans are the problem area. I now plant them only on the northernmost row of the corn because it is just too hard to harvest the beans otherwise without trampling the squash plants, and it can complicate harvesting the ears of corn because the vines will wrap themselves around the ears. Instead of planting pole beans on all 4 sides of the corn, I put the pole beans on a woven wire fence and let them form the wind break that will protect everything else. One of my favorite Three Sisters gardens contained Early Sunglow and Dwarf Blue Jade corn because I could harvest them fast, and I planted bush beans and half runners, and for squash I planted small sugar pie pumpkin. The corn was planted in late March and harvested in latest May or early June. The beans were planted in April after the corn was a foot or two tall and they were harvested in June and July. The small sugar pie pumpkins were planted in May and harvested beginning in August. So, each of them grew into one another's space up to a point, but it wasn't a big tangled mess at corn harvest time. When I plant, I don't plant in little mounds or hills like you're describing. My corn is in a big block in the center of the planting area. I divide the corn planting area in half, leaving a big wide path down the middle of it. Into that path I plant two winter squash plants, usually Seminole because it is squash vine borer resistant. I usually plant 4 more Seminole plants, one on each side of the Three Sistsers garden, and I plant them 4 to 6 feet away from the corn. Eventually they'll infiltrate the corn bed anyway, but by then the corn is pretty tall and well-established and, sometimes, already being harvested. Timing of the elements of the Three Sisters garden is very important. I usually plant corn the earliest for several reasons. First, it tolerates cool soil better than beans and squash do. Secondly, it needs to get some good height to it before the beans sprout or the beans can outgrow it. Third, I want the corn roots very well-established before the bean roots start competing with them for nutrients. I plant the beans secondly, and don't plant them until the corn is 1 to 2 feet tall. They sprout fast in the warmer soil and grow rapidly so the corn needs that head start so they don't overwhelm it. I prefer using half-runner beans or southern peas that are "supposed to be" semi-vining types. I use pink eye purple hull a lot. While they will stay shorter if there's nothing to climb, PEPH peas will climb pretty tall when they have something to climb so they do well on corn stalks. If I want to plant a tall pole bean in the Three Sisters Garden, I either plant the pole beans on the garden fence, or I plant a row of tall sunflowers between the Three Sisters garden and plant the beans to climb the sunflowers. That works only "ok". Many sunflowers are somewhat alleopathic and that can work against the beans. I also stake each tall sunflower either to the fence or to 8' tall dark green t-posts to keep the wind from knocking them down, and to enable them to support heavy pole bean plants. The Winter Squash seeds need warm soil to sprout and they go into the ground last. Despite that, the squash vines are rampant growers and will overwhelm everything else at some point. I'm not saying don't plant a Three Sisters garden. I love my Three Sisters plantings because they allow me to grow three or more veggies in a place where many people only grow one. However, they are hard to work with. You have to weed the garden a LOT until the squash plants are large enough to shade the ground, although heavy mulching helps reduce the weeding task to some degree. Sunflowers are often my fourth sister because you can plant them and forget about them other than staking them as they grow taller. My fifth sister usually is nasturtiums or buckwheat or both. They attract beneficial insects that help with pest control. I plant them around the 4 edges of the blocks of corn. With your other goals of saving seeds, note that George told you how many plants are required to save seeds and most people don't have space for that many corn plants. Unless you have a large deep freeze or intend to can corn, you don't want to plant 300 corn plants because that has the potential to give you as many as 600 ears of corn and a family cannot eat that much fresh corn fast enough. You could plant that many corn plants if you want to produce your own corn meal, but that requires a machine that will grind the meal. If you want to grow in the most efficient and effective manner, read John Jeavons' book "How To Grow More Vegetables...." which I have linked below. If you follow his recommendations closely and carefully, which includes a focus on double digging and soil amendment and growing your own compost crops, you'll be stunned by the large yields your garden will give you. However, you won't get those huge yields the first year. What will happen is that as the soil gets better and better and you hone your skills as a gardener, the yield will get better every year. I had trouble in the beginning adapting to his recommended planting patterns and spacing because I had just tried Square Foot Gardening for 2 or 3 years and had all of that method's spacing memorized. John Jeavons planting patterns are more complicated. You basically have to picture each plant's space needs as a circle, and you plant each veggie or herb far enough away from the next closest one so that their 'circles' just touch one another's edges once they are full-sized. That allows the plants to shade the ground completely, helping keep it cool and moist and reducing weeds due to a lack of sunlight. You do have to amend your soil well, though, or there's not enough nutrients in the soil to supply the biointensive plantings with what they need. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: How To Grow More Vegetables......

hmm... agree regarding the opening frig door and little space between tall things. I am not liking frig/oven next next to each other because: the nearest landing spot is either a sidestepping 30" or a pivot across traffic to the opposite counter carrying hot and heavy items.. Opening the frig means you are opening it in front of the ovens or vice versa.... If the white is the stove area, then I would definitely suggest shortening the wall behind to allow plenty of room for people walking by you and getting into the frig or other "helping" activities. Or could you switch the sink and the cooktop areas? Just not sure about having cooktop and its grease and steam in narrow passage area.... How about moving the oven down one more section and making larger space in between the frig/oven stacks? The oven would be by the table if you needed extra landing space for cooling multiple racks of cookies ... :)

I have a kitchen that is 11' wide. Trust me - it is NOT big enough for an island! But it is too wide to be a good galley kitchen. So what I did was buy a island cart from Ikea <https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80035920/> It's about 17" deep by 40" long. It's perfect! It gives me a landing zone for unloading groceries, clearing the table during big holiday meals, plus two drawers (that open on both sides!) for oddities, and two shelves. I painted mine black with the exception of the butcher block top. I oiled it many, many times and it looks great. This thing was SO well-built! It took my DGS about 2 hrs to put it together, using nothing more than a rubber mallet. I have no problem with you and your sister trying to problem solve in your kitchen before she consults a KD - I spent many months sitting on a kitchen counter doing the same. When one is doing a kitchen in an existing space and no walls are coming down, it is far more of a challenge as there are limitations. My "elephant in the room" was the refrigerator - I could easily have designed a "perfect" kitchen if only it didn't need a refrigerator! Well, it did need one! I'm very happy with the results of my remodel, but I spent a LOT of time planning it - what cabinets needed to go where, what would go in them, how could multiple people be in the kitchen at the same time. My kitchen is NOT open concept (thank goodness!), so I have three different areas for someone to work. The stove has a 5' counter next to it. It's where the person preps for things cooked on the stove and puts the plates for dishing up from the stove. On the other side of the kitchen are my dish cabinets - all uppers. No, there are not next to the sink as that is not possible. It's not a problem. The lower drawers all contain pans and mixing bowls used when I bake. A small counter next to it (next to the refrigerator) holds the microwave and my KA mixer. The cabinet above that has all my baking supplies - extracts etc. Below, are two drawers for more baking supplies and a drawer for the dog's kibble. When there are multiple cooks in the kitchen, this big countertop is where salads or dessert can easily be assembled. The 3rd wall has my kitchen sink and my DW. Your DW MUST be next to your kitchen sink! It is a small L-shaped area and there is a very shallow custom cabinet on the abutting wall that holds all the everyday glasses, and narrow drawers for silverware and dishtowels etc. The door to the backyard is also on this wall. So three people can work without ever having to invade one another's space and a 4th can be clearing the table in the DR or saving plated food from the kitchen. I cannot tell you how well this works in such a small kitchen! I would strongly suggest that your sister give up the desk for grading papers in her kitchen. There are multiple places in the house where one can do this; there is only one place in the house where food can be prepared and ingredients and dishes/pots/pans can be stored and that's the kitchen. It's very valuable real estate. I would also suggest that she not make that opposite wall all pantry. Make it a baking area as well, and then put another pantry where the desk is now.