Ditto to the above. There are several strategies that can be employed. Intercropping is one, where you have, for instance a leaf crop, a fruiting crop, and a root crop all growing together - for our purposes, lets say arugula, snap peas, and turnips for the early season. Of these, the arugula will be ready for harvest first, then the turnips, then the peas. You could time your planting so that everything is ready at the same time, making the entire bed ready for a new crop. Or, you could plant everything at the same time, meaning you would have a succession of harvests, perhaps overlapping slightly, of 3 different crops. Or, you could stagger your planting dates, so that you get a longer harvest, but less yield on a weekly basis. Each strategy has advantages, depending on your long term plans. For me, staggered plantings of the arugula and turnips make sense, because i want to eat them in a few meals every week, but because the peas will provide a continuous harvest over a longer period - because we're harvesting the fruit, and not the whole plant - I would put in that row all at the same time, and in another bed put in a second row a few weeks later, or establish a succession by planting a variety with a different maturation period. The arugula MAY provide multiple harvests, depending on your method, and will be available first. It is also least tolerant of heat, so will benefit from being shaded by the peas as the season progresses. Because it will see the most attention, I would plant it at the outside of my bed, where it is easiest to reach. The turnips, being root crops, will cause some disturbance when they are harvested, so I will make sure that they are not too closely spaced, to the other turnips, but also to the other crops in the bed. The peas will be comparatively tall when they are ready to harvest, so the shade that they produce will need to be accounted for in the layout of the bed - not only in terms of North-South-East-West, but if the row is in the middle, with other crops on either side, or on one edge, where the effect of shading is reduced. Assuming 70 days for the peas to mature, and perhaps 2 weeks of harvest, it's possible that you could have the entire bed emptied and ready to plant on 3 months, but that would mean a significant amount of space was being underutilized where the arugula and turnips were removed. You could choose to reseed those areas with your second crop, but it would be more time-efficient to transplant. In the interest of rotation, and taking into account the season, you might put in cucumbers, to climb the trellis soon to be vacated by the peas, or eggplant, or squash. Broccoli would work, but it's a heavy feeder, and it's related to turnips, so less ideal. Greens could work, but you're getting into the warmest part of the season, so kale would be a better choice than spinach. And ideally you want whatever you plant to be ripe and ready in time to get a third crop into the ground - and ripe - before winter sets in, so maturity dates become even more important as you do your planning later in the season. Otherwise, you'll get to the end of the growing season, and unless you have some kind of season-extension tactics, the only thing able to grow to maturity in your garden will be 25-day radishes, and really, how many of those do you want to eat? Another consideration is how you will deal with the harvest. If you are growing only to have fresh vegetables for the length of the growing season, successions are the way to go. But if you want to freeze pesto or can tomato sauce or make pickles, you want a large harvest all at once so that you can efficiently process your produce. Personally, I don't want to be stuck in a hot kitchen on August, so I schedule some of my plantings so that the canning can take place, as much as possible, in the cooler months, and the foods that can be enjoyed raw are coming ripe in summer. That means not only making choices about crops, but about varieties - slicing tomatoes to ripen early, but plum tomatoes in September, or Hakuri turnips to eat in summer, and purple-tops, which taste better cooked, for fall. As you can see, the process of multiple cropping is wonderfully complex. This is just one example, with only a few crops, and doesn't fully incorporate the varying needs of water, nutrients, and sunlight that a detailed plan should include. Short maturity crops like radishes and salad greens can often simply be tucked in wherever space and time allow without much planning, and having seedlings always on hand to transplant will provide you with a denser harvest schedule, but a successful plan for multiple harvests is a multi-dimensional puzzle, involving space, time, species, cultural requirements, season, and use. Personally, I enjoy the complexity, it's like a game of chess, or planning a perfect heist, but for some people it can seem daunting. It is probably best, in the beginning, to follow one simple rule - plant something every week, and when you harvest one crop, renew the soil (I add lots of compost, and nothing more) and plant again. Lastly (for now), although you are growing in the same space, it is never the same soil. It is important to renew the soil regularly, to replace all of the nutrients that multiple cropping removes. Lots of compost, and fertilizer when needed, will go a long way towards providing a good succession.

Sounds like you have caught the dreaded, "if one is good, 30 are better," disease! There is NO cure!! Stay away from the UC Davis site, or you will be swimming in cuttings like me! My home vineyard started with 7 wine grape vines, and I now have 80 viable cuttings (some going into containers,) and some tucked in every corner of my yard I can find. Make wine out of your fruit, and your boyfriend will soon get on the "let's plant 60 trees page." I am now going to keep in pots a few fig trees, pomegranates, and olives. UC Davis is a humbling place because for the cost of shipping, they send you cuttings for Free, and when you get them, you suddenly become very spiritual and pray more than you ever did, that these precious living things bestowed on you will grow into mighty thriving plants. God started this whole thing anyway, with his Garden of Eden! Where is that place? Dana Point? I wish you sunny days, and the best of luck with all of your trees! Here is a link that might be useful: Shop for Cuttings at UC Davis

Fog: You are right: they are 3 different fruits of the same species like a navel, Valencia and a Midknight grafted unto a single root stock trunk. I have not seen 3 rootstocks in one container. I popped that question here a long time ago having to grow 3 different rootstocks of 3 different trees planted in a triangle sort of in a large pot and Joe real answered that question as I answered them as above. On your second question, I can not answer you. I am not an authority regarding grafting or on anything for that matter. But as for your question,that would be something to see. You are saying grafting a branch between 2 trunks of 2 rootstock? To tell you the truth I think that is possible and not hard to do but from what I read on grafting noone has done this _on citrus. But I've seen it done many things like a shape of a ladder, or shape of a church from plants planted together and while young twisted the branches and let them combine each other branches to shape like a figure of anything their mind set to. In due time these branches whose bark and wood healed as one. Toni: You guys are of disadvantage in terms of availability and in terms of weather and yet you guys keep pushing on growing them- Atta girl!

I planted 2 El Nino's together 3 years ago and one has significantly wider margins than the other, so now I regret it. It's obvious there's 2 diff. plants there. The wider margined sport of El Nino has been found and named Blue Ivory. I intend to seperate the 2 next year. I assume the TC process is what caused this to happen, but it wasn't evident until the plants started to maturity that I noticed it.