Mary: Don't worry about the rototilling, concrete, or any disease issues either soil or airborne between veggies and fruit trees. The road salt might be a problem but probably not. So that leaves spacing which can be pretty close. With proper pruning you can hold a peach pretty small. Apples are even easier on M9 or M26 rootstock. I've grown both peaches and apples in 15 gallon pots. So even if you prune a lot of roots with the rototiller, you will still have 10 to 100 times more soil volume. The Fruitnut

Bonni, My family and I are in your Zone in year 2 of our ambitious kitchen garden. We use organic methods if at all possible. It does take work and with 2 preschool boys we don't have a lot of large blocks of time to work. DW and I take turns working and chasing kids and try to get the boys interested in the process. They have their own pea patch, a 5' stretch of fence line that they tend. You might want to check out the forum on gardening with kids. We don't have a lot of space in our typical suburban backyard, so last year, I built a 10' X 15' raised bed with homemade compost and topsoil. It's a beautiful growing medium. Right now, we have in the ground: garlic, onions (2 varieties), carrots, beets (2 varieties), lettuce (3 or 4 varieties), spinach, and ~15 tomatoes. Maybe as many as a dozen peppers will go in a smaller bed and a few pots as well as a few more pots of bush variety tomatoes. Two kinds of mini-melon will go in as soon as I can finish the trellises I'm building to support them, same as the three kinds of summer squash we will grow. I like to grow giant sunflowers in the middle of the raised bed as a centerpiece, at least until a big wind blows. We also have a very small asparagus patch, as well as raspberries, which did great last year, blackberries that look promising for this year and blueberries that just went in the ground a couple months ago. Two big pots of strawberries produced in late spring/early when last year and are flowering now. We have a lot of shade in the backyard, so DW's project has been building a bed of hostas, ferns and the like. She also has a very nice herb garden for all kinds of tasty spices. Finally, I am trying to grow some annual flowers just to attract bees and other beneficials and get some practice. It's a lot of work, but since I've started growing my own fresh food, it's hard to eat stuff from the store. You will find lots of good advice here. Sometimes it's conflicting, so you have to go with your best judgement. I find the trial and error method is most rewarding and try to keep track of our progress in a garden journal, but that part of the process gets neglected, which is a shame, because I end up making the same mistakes repeatedly. But something's gotta give. My only advice would be compost, compost, compost. Read that forum and post any specific questions. You will get a lively discussion and often an entertaining argument. Good luck!

Basil will flower, but it usually doesn't hurt it. I just pick the flowers off and put them in my pocket. I sniff them for the rest of the day. It will get big, but that is just that many more leaves for you. Things under the ground.....The top greens don't have much to say about how big the carrot or the radish or the beet is underground. The thing about them is that they are mature and ready to eat at any size, really. So, you can have tiny carrots, radishes, and beets, or large ones. They are all going to taste good. You will just have to pull some soil away from them to judge the size. My MIL has grown some of the most HUUU-MONG-ous radishes and carrots, and I don't know how she did it, except that she used a whole bag of triple 13 on the garden that year. Corn and tomatoes have maturation issues; that is, they must ripen to reach your high standards for tomatoes and corn. Corn is not really my forte, but I know that when the tassel is dark brown, you can pull an ear and check it. Peel the husk back on the corn, it should be filled out nicely. Pierce a kernel of corn with your thumbnail, and you should see 'milk' of the corn. The corn is right then. Tomatoes should be red, and soft enough to eat. I like to sit in the garden with a bowl of salt and eat my tomatoes. Also, I love to graze at the trellis that the peas or green beans are growing on. Nothing better. I pick those flower buds off my onions. They will go to seed, but probably won't be good seed. You wouldn't believe what they have to do to get good onion seed. (You wouldn't want to know, either.) DH pulls the soil away from the bulb of the onion when they start to bulb, to just leave the roots in the ground. It frees the bulb up, so they can get big. He has grown some BIG onions, too. When the tops of the onions fall over, the onions are supposed to be done. Garlic is one we let go to seed, but it doesn't grow from seed, as far as I know. The bulbs multiply, like lilies. Chives do the same thing, as do the multiplying onions. You can eat squash, cucumber, zuchinni and peppers at any size. Too big is usually not nearly as good as little. Pumpkins I am not so familiar with. The coyotes always got ours before we did. I don't find what zone you are in, and that is an important thing for us to know. Best of luck to you! Janie

I found some articles on community gardens in the Orlando area. Condo associations can be particular about this topic. Just thinking of a work around for you. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/keyword/community-garden Then there is meet up which is a way to find people with similar interests. http://commgardens.meetup.com/cities/us/fl/orlando/