If you raise pole beans or peas, they should go toward the north side of planting to keep from shading shorter plants on the south side. Best if using planting boxes to run them east and west. Also - some plants will benefit from high shade - for longer growth, such as lettuces. Tomatoes and peppers in the sunny parts of the garden for better exposure to ripen in summer. One word of advice - if there are burrowing critters, best to nail some hardware cloth (Home Depot) to the bottom of the box, to prevent invasion from "under the neath" too. Mix some peat moss into your compost and planting soil - to help conserve moisture. If using boxes, they drain rapidly - adding cardboard below and peat moss cuts down on watering. Just my 2 c's. Bejay

If you lay the cardboard to smother the grass (mow it as close as you can 1st) & top with enough organic matter you can plant in the layers without digging through the cardboard. If you're going to dig through cardboard you're going to have the grass grow through, so will have to use round up like others suggested. I've made several beds this way never digging down to the hard clay & rocks just building up. Improves drainage & the plants really take off when you give them good soil. Here's one a few months after planting last year (wide leaves of Crocosmia leaning to left) close up 1 year later in July, 2011 - Crocosmia in bloom & some other plants removed as the growth was amazing & the bed overfull by the end of summer last year. About the leaves in the fall - Are you saying that they will fall upon your new gardens? If you keep up with removal every few days of the larger leaves they won't smother the new plants. It is a maintenance job to keep large leaves off of small plants, so if there's a way to prevent it from happening you'll save work.

Oh wow... thanks everyone for all the generous feedbacks and input. I think I came to the right place. I am taking this project slow and plan to spend this Spring gathering knowledge and info ... and you guys are helping a lot. I'll probably start "breaking ground" this summer and hopefully have my first bed built by fall... with my first grow season in Spring of 2016. If I'm lucky enough, plant some cooler season variety before the end of this year. I'm also hoping to grow some seedlings inside later this year in prep for Spring 2016. I want to start small, but I want a "big picture" already drawn out so I can expand in phases and hopefully - if I'm lucky - full realize the full plan. At some point, I want to draw it all out and have an overall plan for this "addition" to the yard... and have it in a way that maintains, or even enhance, aesthetics of the yard. So though I want to start small, I'm gathering as much as I can so I can plan for the rest of the garden. I'll start off in one area and build from there in subsequent years following the plan. Again - thank you for all the responses. Skybird... I get the point of making sure to get all the weeds out of the lawn (where I will place the beds). I'll have to google it a bit to see what's the best way to exterminate weeds, including their roots once I clear the area of grass. I've got an area in the backyard that I think is a good candidate to be carved out for the garden. I haven't measured, but I'm pretty sure it gets at least 6 hours of sun. Mix in some of the topsoil into the subsoil - dully noted! Thanks for that tip! Dan... turfgrass rhizomes. I assume you mean rhizomes shooting under my bed walls and surfacing inside my bed. The plan I have is to have the garden completely sectioned off from the rest of the yard - fence, paths, and all. At the turf edge, I'll like install edging to keep the lawn at bay. My initial recon has gotten me some good ideas on how to install plastic sheeting as to extend my growing season - using PVC pipes as my wall support and hoops placed into the pipes, etc etc. I definitely plan on having plans for that. Maxin... Yes... irrigation will be a big factor in the plans. Based on what I've read and watched, drip systems seems to the the ideal and overhead irrigation is discouraged. I definitely have some specific questions around this topic, but I think I'll save them for another thread. But at this point, I think much of my initial leg work will be setting up the new irrigation lines, but also re-routing/displacing the existing lawn sprinkler heads. Anyway... I'll post my initial plans/layout soon and have you guys critic it. Lastly, I wanted to share a video I found in youtube where I'm getting a bunch of my initial information. It seems to be a video made in the 80's by a gardening author/expert name Jeff Ball - seems to know what he's talking about. 53 minutes long - he take the beginner from start to finish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO2CLU-O6mU

That's how my tomato bed got so overgrown last year. I planted some broken stemmed plants with barely a root left because of damage trying to separate them out of those big pots I started them in, and figured only about half or less would survive. I think I lost one. And then after they survived all that . . . I didn't have the heart to tear them out and kill them. So I sort of gleaned what I could from my wild tomato jungle. This year I hope to do better. I have seeds saved from last year from a whole other set of tomato types, they came in the mail to late to plant in 2020. I'm going to make a new raised bed at least one, for tomatoes. I am not going to plant them in the same spot as last year. I'm collecting a set of little pots for the tomatoes. That's about all I think I will be starting indoors. Maybe some peppers too. Not really needed for much else. The rest of my seeds are stuff like bush beans, beets, carrots, lettuce, etc. Although I am intrigued by the idea of starting peas early. Last couple of years the mild summer weather hasn't lasted long, so I can see some advantage of starting them indoors so that they have more time to reach maturity before the "too hot" weather sets in. I have never grown peas successfully . . . although I've only tried twice.