Oh dear- I made an error on my compass direction! Just went outside with iphone compass app (the only compass I own) to triple check it and it showed the following (updated picture below).

That is a great deal of a great many things! I too hope you use for all that if all goes well. You'll have squash and melons coming out your ears. ;-)

But what is most obvious to me a lots of over-crowding that will make daily care, pest control, and harvesting difficult without a great deal of pruning and trimming. I'd be inclined to reduce the number of plants and increase the spacing reflected in your diagram.

I assume you also know that tomato plants are self-fertile so all those pollinator attractors aren't necessary and have different water and nutrient needs. In a 3x5 bed the tomato plants would better appreciate the extra space. That's the main problem with all the so-called companion planting - it ignores the very different needs of the plants.

Good luck with your many gardens.

Dave

Thank you both for your thoughtful review and feedback. Will reduce plant volume and review where they are in shade. Does the concern on volume of plants apply to beds 4-8 or also the others as well? How many plants should I plant in the squash and melon area? 1 or 2 plants each?

I have planted as aggressively as you have planned here when I had less space, and it can work. Particularly bed 4 - that looks a lot like I've done in the past. For beds 5-8, I think it would be easier to put three beds totally in tomatoes, and the fourth as herbs. I'd probably put in 4 tomato plants per bed, may with a marigold or two tucked in (dwarf plants. I've mistakenly grown some giant marigolds with my tomatoes)

Agree with digdirt, you're going to have a lot of things! You'll be popular with your neighbors, if you don't have plans for it all. Also agree on the companion planting, have done it in the past and I guess it worked, but now just plant wherever and it seems to work OK. Being old, I like the idea of all the herbs together as in a herb garden. I would only put 1-2 plants in for the melon and squash and probably remove one when I saw how things were developing, you're going to be training vines back into the beds all season anyway. Now I'll get the "pole bean posse" riled up. Even though I was raised on pole beans, IMHO I get much better results with bush beans and you can replant and get a couple crops per season with minimal fuss. Also, depending on wind, a tepee of bean vines is an excellent sail, so you'd better anchor it down well. You're only giving your Marzano's a 1X2 space which is adequate, but you'll need some type of heavy duty trellis arrangement as they do VINE. Having the luxury of a big garden, I plant mine on a 4'X4' grid with 7' metal posts to tie them to.

You mention this is your first garden, does your family like everything you're planting? If you're planting things because they look good in the catalogs, you're traveling a road we've all traveled before.....:-) Intensive gardening does work well, however, it's also a very miserable form of stoop labor, my back aches just looking at your layout. However, like I said I'm old.

You're going to have a lot of fun and learn a lot of fascinating things!

@exmar - thank you for your feedback, very helpful! I grew a small vegetable garden in pots last year. This year trying my hand at growing from seed where possible. have tomatoes and peppers and basil going under lights in my garage, eggplant has not germinated yet - might have to buy those plants. i purchased starts for the leeks and shallots (might be too late for shallots but will try). need to continue seed sowing this week for the rest of the needed plants. it is fascinating already!!!! watching a lot of youtube educational shows - the rusted garden, claires allotment garden, vivi's kitchen garden.

I am not attached to pole beans, I might have a packet of bush beans? - will check! i am growing only what i like - no beets in this garden EEEEWWW! i need to find a place for fennel. i love fennel but not sure where to put it - heard it does not do well next to other stuff?

i learned how to can and make jam last year and want to do some major tomato canning this year - would be great if I could can all of my tomato needs for the year. i also made and canned a delicious roasted tomatillo salsa from last years garden - great on chicken enchiladas. have a few more jars but will need to make more soon! with the exception of the in-ground squash/melon beds, the rest are raised beds 22" high or in pots - largely due to gophers. I have a trapping service I use and am burying roses and new shrubs in gopher cages. Hopefully that will help with the back? Will have to think of what to do for trellising the San Marzanos.....very good point, need to figure something out pronto!

Been a long time since I was in the SF area, but I recall they have a lot of really excellent farmers markets. My experience on canning tomatos is that it's very tricky to have enough gorgeous ripe tomatos ready to justify all the boiling, sanitizing, finally canning from a small patch. Consider just buying a bushel or two and get it done. Your Marzano space can be used for nice slicing tomatos. What we now do, as there's only two of us, is freeze tomato sauce. Easy enough to get enough tomatos to fill a pot, cook down, put through a food mill and vacuum seal or zip loc and you're ready for pasta sauce which is what 90% of our crop goes for. We do can some for other recipes. I've learned that while it's tempting to add garlic, basil, etc. prior to freezing, it disappears when thawed. Just do the tom's and add spices during sauce prep. I've learned that whenever someone talks about canning, etc. if good farmers markets are available, buy in bulk and get it done. A lot of stuff isn't as agreeable as corn, beans, etc. that are ready at the same time. :-)

I also keep honeybees, there's an old joke among beekeepers. Ask two beekeepers one question and you'll get seven answers-from each. The irony is, that most of the fourteen answers are correct depending on time of year, type of hive, type of bee, weather, etc. etc. and more so. Gardening is like that, very personal, and opinionated. When I make comments, they're not mandates, just "lessons learned" and suggesting points of departure so you can ultimately figure out what makes sense to you and evolve your own philosophy.

Have fun!

the plan is crude and violate numerous garden common sense rules and guidelines go back to drawing so to speak. what info source did you use to draw up the plan since you did not seem to read it through. beds should be oriented north to south or east to west or at least orient the plan so north is at top.

ROFL.

bed three for example is planted all wrong; tall plants go on north or west side

you using raised bed and your using teepee grow beans.

you should use trellis instead to grow pole beans not a teepee.

you seem to be using square foot spacing in some places and not others.

if I were to list all problems; I see in your plan I have list with over 100+ correction and changes you should make. and that just at start.

"over 100+ correction and changes you should make. and that just at start."

Wow where did this guy crawl out of?

I would agree IMHO tall plants to the North and shorter ones in front, beds oriented East to West since they are lengthwise, with the bigger gap between east to west rows. But we don't all have the space to orient things textbook style and far more important than bed orientation is shading. Are there trees on the property? Where's the shade? Keep the biggest plants like beans and tomatoes in the back (North) and give them space. If you want to use a Teepee then use a Teepee. I prefer trellising or simply poles for beans.

And I agree with Dave, the pollinator attractors are a waste of space. Unless you just want them for them of course. :)

Go tell my prolific pole beans grown "teepee style" in raised beds for the last few years that they were "all wrong."

Babushka, there are some good constructive criticisms in this thread. But I'd focus on those and not War Garden's ranting.

Nice layout babushka! I think just about everyone gave you good advice but one was rather rude to say the least. Feel free to go back where you came from War gardens.

On bed #2. The spacing on the leeks is going to be very tight. If you want thin scallion type leeks it will work but if you want big 1 1/2"-2" leeks you will need to space them at least 4" apart. You could compromise and plant them 9 to a square and then harvest some of them as leek scallions and leave the rest to grow large at 4-5" spacing.

war garden could have been much more tactful but he/she has a point that some of the basic "common sense" gardening guidelines are missing or voided. Over-crowding, too many of some plants, and wasted space with too much "companion" focus are the most obvious ones that we can all agree on I think. Sure some of the E-W orientation isn't great but that may be unavoidable and can still work.

But this is all to be expected with a new gardener trying to incorporate all they have read or watched on the great (NOT!) youtube. It's the enthusiastic jumping into the deep end of the pool syndrome. ;-) And she will learn to swim. It is admirable, a normal part the learning process, and it always resolves itself as experience is gained and lessons are learned.

So while we'd all like to help her avoid the painful lessons that isn't possible. So let her enjoy this first garden. Keep good detailed notes babuska for use next year.

Dave

Always listen to what Dave says. I learned that in the Harvest Forum. :)

I was also an ambitious novice gardener. I went from containers on the porch to eight 8' x 4' beds in two years, and only got crazier each time we moved. I'm going for full-on over-ambitious crazy this year at the new house.

Thanks Liz, Peter, digdirt2 and LoneJack for the constructive and collaborative feedback, super helpful! Will review and update my plan given these good suggestions. Yes you are dealing with an enthusiastic gardener - I am usually pretty obsessive on whatever I undertake and am a voracious learner when something is of interest to me. I have 13 years experience of a large rose / perennial garden so have a good foundation on garden principles but veges are new. I will make mistakes, but that is part of the fun and joy of learning.

@ Liz - good to know I am not the only crazy one. Your plan makes perfect sense to me! :)

I think I would put all the tomatoes into their own plot(s)
instead of spreading them out. You can
interplant with basil, leeks, marigolds, other herbs in the corners of those
beds if you wanted to. I wouldn’t put
basil in the middle of three tomato plants – it would be very difficult to get
in there to harvest it when the tomatoes are 5, 6, 7 feet high!

Having the tomatoes planted next to each other would allow
you to take advantage of staking/supporting them together.. I was happy last year when I could tie plants
to their neighbor’s cages.

Similarly, you may want to plant the bean plots right next
to each other instead of spaced with radishes…for similar reasons (utilizing
supports and getting to the produce).

As far as canning tomatoes… we had a very successful canning
season last year by freezing the tomatoes whole, right off the vine, in gallon
ziplocks and canning the sauce in one marathon session at the end of the
season. This of course requires freezer
space (last year we filled up both our kitchen freezer and our garage side by
side… this year we are contemplating a deep freezer). This method has its advantage in that peeling
frozen tomatoes is as simple as rinsing them under hot water for all of 3
seconds, the skin slides right off.