Don't get too jealous of those pictures mwieder, they aren't from Violet's garden, they are from a web site that discusses square foot gardening plans. Pictures are a great help in designing, because it lets you plan for plant height, spacing, and entry into your garden area. Fences are useful as supports for your vining veggies as well as to keep out the critters. I'm lucky here that deer are not an issue. Rabbits are a problem. I can't grow sugar snap peas without a fence. Luckily, the fence is needed for support as well. Don't be fooled by pea varieties that state they don't need staking. They lie. Peas need support. Growing vertically as well as using the Square Foot Garden intensive planting can give you quite a lot of veggies in your 4' x 10' area. The only veggies I wouldn't recommend for that small of a TOTAL garden space are the big vining types (Hubbard squash, pumpkins, watermelons, etc) or the veggies that need a significant planting for pollination (corn). Beware, If you decide to plant a sunflower in your garden it will shade a large space. I'd recommend you visit the Square Foot garden site, and check out their range of books at your local library. I find the information endlessly useful. I don't always plant exactly to their scale, but I do refer to the spacing they recommend. I feel that some plants need more room here in the South than the Square Foot books recommend. I definitely wouldn't go any closer than the spacing recommended in these books! Here is a link that might be useful: square foot garden official site

Sounds like a multi-purpose back yard. How about a parre terre (sp?) that has all your garden beds in raised planters and pavers/patio/cobbles around all that? The ones that are set up symmetrically look really neat and allow you to draw the visitor toward a focal point (swing, fountain or whatever). Kids can ride their big wheels, etc. and you can have mixed beds of edibles, foliage plants and flowers that don't get run over. You could do the whole back yard this way with no lawn at all! I did a similar thing once, with a circular knot garden (herbs) in the middle, and rotated veggie crops and flowers in 4 triangular corner gardens around a wood chip pathway. If there are any cats in your home (or neighborhood) I'd think twice about sand. What would be its purpose other than as a substitute for bark mulch?

I'm pretty sure those are aphids. I think I'd go ahead and mow high--you don't want all those dandelions to go to seed. We don't mow our lawn really short either, because I hate to have to water a lot. I lean toward the least interference possible. Aphids are easy to treat if you see them on your veggies--so I'd wait and see if they appear or not before you spray anything. I've never had them be a big problem in my garden beds...except on a hoya I have on the front porch. I just squished them with a gloved hand. Or you can spray them off with water, or look up a soap recipe to spray. Most veggies need six hours of full sun at least. I've never tried to grow any in dappled shade, though--perhaps someone else has. Mulch....depending on the location in my yard...I've used cypress....eucylptus...but I do like free...shredded leaves(undiseased of course).....pine needles(they sometimes need to be fluffed up to keep from compacting)....I don't use grass clippings because my lawn is too weedy. I prefer shredded mulch to chipped because I don't like it when the mulch washes down the driveway. I have never used Garrett juice...to be honest, I'm too lazy to mix all of that. From what I've seen of the recipe, it looks pretty harmless, and has a lot of what most organic gardeners use to spray. I use seaweed spray--but I only spray once a week as a foliar feed (and hopefully to discourage mites a little). You could spray more and more often I suppose, but diminishing returns apply. I'm afraid if you say, sprayed every day, that you might be wasting money. All that being said...gardening is a lot of trial and error, and can be suited to the gardener. You will drive yourself crazy at some point trying to find the perfect solutions and no one agrees on exactly what those are. Have fun with your veggies. Sounds like a good time to me!

@greenfish1234 Thank you again for your input. I'm attaching a better picture of the back door area. Our door is currently a slider door - not sure if that will be switched in the future to a french door. How far past the door should the steps/landing go? The further we go, the further we cut into that dead space next to our family room wall (to the right of the door). Also, the deeper the total of depth of the steps/landing combined, the deeper the bed gets to the left of the steps/landing, unless we don't make that bed as deep as the steps/landing, but not sure if that will look right. I'm also attaching a pic of landing/steps I found on line. Not that I want curved steps or that material, but was wondering if I could turn that dead space into a raised planter on the landing. That way I can soften that area. If I did this though, not sure how far to bring out the planter - just to the last step, or to the edge of the back of the family room wall. In this pic, their dead space is probably 1/2 that of mine.