The 20' x 20' plot I have is at a community garden; there is the native soil, which is horrible for gardening (w/out amendment); I know, I tried growing stuff in the ground there (@ the community garden plot) just using the native soil and the plants didn't do well at all. The soil has been amended with container gardening soil mix that I just dumped into the plot (some of the containers were too heavy too move because of how big they were, so the soil was just dumped into the plot to amend it) The container gardening mix consisted of top soil, pine bark mulch, Osmocote (a fertilizer), compost, vermiculite, and sphagnum peat moss. However if I was SFG layout in the ground, I am concerned that because there is no row spacing, the plants would end up overcrowded; so if I were to use the SFG layout in the ground, since the layout will be in the ground, will I have to do row spacing? If so, could I reduce the row spacing of the traditional row spacing measurements that I posted above? As I said I want to stretch my space out, but I don't want to overcrowd stuff.

Hello! I wish i thought about About a community garden when I lived in a apartment... Great idea! Dimensions/measurements would help.. In general, MINiMUM spacing goes as follows: Tomato 2 sq ft Peppers/eggplant 1st ft Also Instead of having the tomatoes in full sun, inwould out th peppers in full sun.. I can see your aware of sunlight.. Take note of the sun at different hours, make sure your larger plants(tomatos,etc) are not shading out your smaller plants(kale,lettuce,etc).. Generally, the tallest plants go innthe north, gradually working you way up to smallest in the south. Leafy greens do well in shade.. Question1(marigolds): who knows realy how much beneift they bring.. I wouldnt count on that to be your insect repellent.. You could plant them anywhere you like.. Even in shepards hooks for nice hanging baskets, whatever floats your boat. Marigold flowers are edible, and healthy for you. So the diamonds are walk paths,stepping stones or what? I dont see how you aren't going to trample them everytime you walk.. Especially for a community garden, not all people are careful.. You're right teamwork does wonders.. That's whatnthis forum is al about! Good luck, Joe Question

Hey Anna! This forum is awfully slow. But I had similar questions myself. We just got our plot, (a friend of mine and I are sharing it) paid for it, and are waiting for the 'go ahead'. Where I am. (Ontario) My plot is 20x20, and I 'sort of' had a choice of location. There are 21 gardens in my city. A lot of them were booked full with waiting lists. But a few - luckily one close to my home - had open spots. You have your choice of plot location if there's more than one to choose from. We got a nice sunny patch right at the front, so we're quite happy with that. For our garden, there's a couple of huge rain barrels. And you're only allowed to garden organically. So no chemicals. I think the neighbours sort of depend on where you get the plot. The volunteer I talked to was telling me about the 'reputations' of some of the locations. Might be worth looking into, if you can find someone willing to be candid about it. My friend and I are gardening for fun. And he warned me of one location where they were very much 'activists'. Not that they were bad or anything.. just that they had a lot of opinions. *Grins* Suggestions? If you're doing vegetables. Look up some information on 'companion planting'. As we're growing organically, there's lots of great information about plants that help each other out. I'm new to this myself, so that's pretty much all I've got. I have no idea how we're going to fill that huge bed. But it's going to be fun to try! So what are you growing? I'm curious to hear Community Garden Plans. Didz

I can think of 2 ( more ) things to consider. Will you have any plots south of your's ( shading some of your area ? ) or visa versa, will your tall growing or trellised crops be shading other plots north of you ? I would also make sure that this is a revolving Plot, in other words, will you get to use this same area in future seasons AND that they will NOT be plowing the whole Community Garden area both in spring and in fall ( before you have finished your harvests, for instance ) I know some people that had planted rasberries, horseradish, walking onions etc ... and added amendments only to find that coordinators had rented 'their' plot to another gardener the following year.