I mostly agree with Josie. People don't realize how easy it is to lose control of the weeds (actually you know, given the picture you show). It is important to start so that you have time to develop your garden without the pressure of continuous weeding and watering. So: 1) Cover with wood chips every square foot where you will not direct seed for a few years. In this part of the garden you will plant garlic, onions, potatoes, beans, and anything that is set out as a plant (virtually every summer veggie). One foot is not too much. You may have to adjust the pH with lime, but underneath the hog treated soil should have enough nitrogen for a year. Eventually, you will have to add some N (I prefer to add urea, 46/0/0, after a heavy mulching event). No need to add P and K which are in the chips. Important: wood chips are free. Call a tree company and ask them to dump a load on your property. 1.5) use other mulches where you would like to have soil next year. Leaves will typically give you soil in a year. 2) all that growth has sent roots down two or three feet. That is very very good, given that you have clay. It will be reasonably well drained, and you can not incorporate organic matter that deep with a tiller. There is probably no need to till. 3) Use Roundup, some scratching and some compost in the part of the garden where you will direct seed (carrot, lettuce, radish, etc.). There, you will have to weed and water more due to the lack of mulch. In time, old mulch will form a layer of reasonably weed free soil and you will be able to direct seed everywhere. 4) For the first year, plant only veggies that do really well in Georgia, or rather are really easy to grow. There was a thread here a few months back about the five easiest things to grow at your site, see what Southerners said there. 5) fence, fence, fence. underneath, above, electrical, chemical, treaty-controlled weaponry, whatever. Use the Powell doctrine of fencing, by which you fence with overwhelming force and never encourage them. At my site, growing corn without a fence is simply not possible. 6) long term paths. Say no to mulch in the paths, use gravel over weed block, old carpet upside down, or even pavers. It is not helpful to have weeds right next to the weed-free vegetable beds. Going down the path with a weedeater is even worse, as it will also eat a number of veggies. 7) perennials are good. Lots of produce, not much work. Here it would be asparagus, raspberry, aronia, herbs, but there you may consider figs, persimmon, asparagus, and herbs.

Ok, my experience: Pole beans might run up sunflowers but they won't produce. Nada. Sunflowers draw enough light, moisture, and energy from the soil that you won't really get anything else to grow in the 2' or greater area around them. I'd recommend growing the Sunflowers in intervals and not along the entire back of the bed. I love sunflowers but you'll need to have 3' deep beds for that at least if you want to grow something in front of the sunflowers. I prefer 3' deep beds, it allows room for squashes and its not to deep to reach from the front to the back of the bed. At 2' deep you are ruling out growing squash totally and likely not giving enough room for a mature rhubarb. SFG recommends 12" square for tomato or pepper plants; but in the south most tomatoes need more room than that; more like 2' square. Cukes are fine with 6" x 12" if they are on a trellis. I planted my peppers in an 18" square this year instead of 12" square and I'm happier with the spread and production of the plants.

seraki, The newspaper layer should take care of the grass, but if you are unsure you can put down cardboard (make sure it is *not* waxed cardboard) as your first layer instead. It won't hurt anything and will provide a more dense cover to keep the weeds down while the lasagna layers are aging. You can add a few more layer of newspaper between the other organics as well. I wouldn't put any pre-emergence down if you want to stay on the organic side of things. My mom lives in Phx and it works well on her soil. I grew up in Phx until I finished college and moved around the country for my job, now have came back to AZ . My grandmother lives NW of Phx, I think her soil is a little better naturally, but not much, so getting the organics in is really a help. She has a fabulous winter garden every year. She likes organic too because she has a tortise that comes in her yard that likes to nibble at the plants and prickly pear. Plus you want birds to frequent your yard and eat the bad bugs :) I am not totally organic but am striving to find greener ways of doing things if I can. You can also lay down soaker hoses under some mulch, to water stuff once you get the plants in to further prevent evaporation. Water early in the morning or late in the evening. ~Lenette

Zen, I think radishes are somewhat cold tolerant, so you might be able to plant them sometime in May. They do mature enough to pull in about a month, so you should be able to replace them with a fall planting of something like cucumbers or English peas. To conserve space, I grow everything on our fence that I can, using it as a trellis. Such as pole beans, cucumbers, and climbing sugar snap peas. I like Super Sugar Snaps. Unfortunately, so does a local groundhog. We live in a wooded area, so we have a lot of wildlife, including deer, squirrels, chipmunks, ground squirrels, wild turkeys, groundhogs, and the occasional raccoon. All of them visit our garden from time to time and "sample" the merchandise. I gave up on growing corn. The squirrels, chipmunks, and ground squirrels love it, and leave none for us. You can cope with our shorter growing season by starting a lot of things inside under fluorescent lights. I do that. If you have a Home Depot handy, they have 4-foot shoplights for about $8. They work very well and don't cost a lot. Home Depot also sells a box of 10 4-foot cool white T8 fluorescent bulbs for about $20, which makes the fluorescent tubes cost about $2 each. I use their inexpensive timer switches to turn my lights on and off automatically. I usually set the timers for about 16 hours of daylight and 8 hours of dark. Over the years I have accumulated enough shoplights to do a respectable amount of indoor gardening. You can use fluorescent lights to get an early start on nearly any vegetable. In this area of Maine, near Augusta, our "safe" no-frost date is Memorial Day, so I usually set anything that is tender, like pole beans, out in the first week of June. I plant my veggies in big pots made from the bottom part of 2-liter soft drink bottles, which give them enough root volume to become quite large before setting them out. My potted pole beans are starting to vine when I set them out. As a hobby, I am an amateur zinnia breeder, and I have a few cuttings from my "breeder" zinnias blooming inside now, under fluorescent lights. It's nice to be able to do some gardening year 'round. I hope to build a small greenhouse kit in the future. Welcome to the forum, Happy Holidays, and happy gardening! MM