In my opinion, if you are only planting 2 or 3 tomato plants, there is no reason to stagger them. I am in zone 7 North Carolina, so my growing season is likely different than yours, however, my tomatoes grew and produced all summer long and into the fall some, not just 1 month. Plus the tomatoes you are planning to grow are 3 different types used for 3 different purposes (roma, slicing, cherry) so it is ok to have some of all at the same time. Do check to make sure if the tomato varieties you are growing are determinate or indeterminate. Indeterminate tomatoes can easily be trellised 1 per square foot by keeping the suckers pruned as it grows upwards. Tomatoes do not grow onto a trellis by themselves like beans do - as they grow, you weave them in and out up the trellis. I have left about a little over a foot of room behind my trellis that I can walk behind it and tend to my trellised plants from the back side. In fact, my garden interior dimensions are approx 18 feet x 2.75 feet (31-32 inches). I have that 32 inches divided into 3 squares - 12 inches, 12 inches, and 7-8 inches deep for the back square where my trellis is. My trellis sits about 3-4 inches in from the back garden edge over the middle of my 8 inch square. This was plenty of space for my tomatoes planted one plant per 8" deep x 12" wide square last year. I did keep them pruned to one main vine only. I have read that sugar baby watermelon can easily be trellised. I have those seeds myself and will be trellising them this year. I will also note that I have a very strong trellis. I will be growing the following on my trellis ... peas, tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew (if I can ever find any seeds!), cucumber, blackeye peas (cowpeas). Peas and beans are planted on the trellis in 2 rows of 4, one row on each side of the trellis, all in one square foot, which will give you 8 bean plants per square foot. Cucumber is planted 2 per square foot in one row along the trellis. Unless you are pickling cukes, I think 1 or 2 plants is plenty. If you do 2 squares of beans, 1 square of cukes, and 3 squares of tomato, that is your 6 feet of trellis. However, here is an idea ... you were going to originally have 2 beds of 4x4, I am assuming they were side by side ? If so, could you do one bed of 3x8 ? There is no such thing as too much trellis in my opinion ! With 8 feet of trellis, you could also trellis your sugar babies. If you do not trellis the watermelon, I think you should plan on putting it elsewhere, as they take up a lot of room on the ground. Or possibly plant it in a corner of the bed and sprawl it outside of the bed. Assuming 3x6, with your 6 squares of trellis planned for, that leaves 12 squares ... I recommend the following ... plant your 2 pepper plants in the middle row next to the tomatoes on your trellis. The 10 remaining squares can all be broccoli and carrots and the watermelon. Staggered planting for those would be good. I have read online to plan for 5 to 10 broccoli plants per person and 20 to 40 carrots per person. Obviously, you will not have room for all that, so do what you can. Mel recommends 16 carrots per square. My carrot packages call for 2-3" spacing between carrots which would be 36 carrots per square on 2" spacing (6 rows of 6) or 16 carrots per square on 3" spacing. Last year, I think anniesgranny planted on 1.5" spacing at 64 carrots per square !! She harvested some of them as baby carrots though and reported great results. Watermelon will likely yield 1-2 melons per plant. This is also my first year for broccoli. I have read that once you cut the first head, more little ones will sprout from the cut area. Broccoli & carrots are spring/fall veggies, while all of your others are summer veggies. In the south, we have a definite spring season and a very hot summer season which does not work for broccoli & carrots thru the summer. My broccoli will be done by about June 1, at which point I will put something else in that space (bush beans) and then in the fall I will plant the cool weather crops again. You grow girl website has a seed planting chart based on last frost date that is easy to use ... http://www.yougrowgirl.com/grow/, click on The Lazy Gardener's Seed Starting Chart. For companion planting, this website has a long descriptive list http://www.ghorganics.com/page2.html. If you do end up using cinder blocks, a lot of people use the holes in the blocks to plant other things like herbs, flowers, onions, etc. Be sure to calculate the width of the blocks in your plan to account for what the interior dimensions of your garden will be. My bed is built with 4x4's of treated lumber and 2x8's of untreated lumber. I do not have an answer on the slugs question, as I luckily did not have a problem with them. I have just started my first compost bin this year as well, so am not speaking from authority, but I think there is no problem with compost being in the shade from what I have read. Mine is, so I really hope it is fine ! You can build a free compost bin by using shipping pallets (find for free on craiglist) and tie them together with wire coat hangers. It also looks pretty nice in my opinion with the boards oriented vertically. Do a google search for compost bins made from pallets. Finally, check out the square foot gardening forum on gardenweb and also read the FAQ's for that forum. Sorry this reply is sooooooo long ! : )

Thanks for your input. I poked holes in the bottom of the cardboard / plastic pans and haven't watered them since I placed them into the soil. Still haven't seen any seedlings in the Miracle Grow potting mix but its only been about 4 or 5 days since I put them into the potting mix. Also moved them back to my room which is usually around 68 degrees F. I think that I will wait 2 to 3 weeks to try to germinate more plants in the black soil that I bought. Temperature here is still -6 F to 25 F range. If the ones I planted live I think that they will have to be indoor plants till mid-may if they live that long.

I do much the same as Ladylotus mentions and I find that starting them in the spring is more effective. When I have started in the fall/winter months I used to put under a grow light to keep them growing throughout the winter. The seedlings need to be kept growing and not go dormant. I found that the ones started in Feb/Mar where at the same size by summer as those started in the fall. Did not seem worth the cost of extra heat and lighting. The big thing with these plants especially once transplanted in your climate and mine is to have them in a gritty mix. With this gritty mix, it will make the probability of cold/wet conditions around root zone less. When watering, do not water in evening or when you know there is going to be a temperature drop. I hope some of this is helpful. It is what has worked for me to date. Always, a learning curve. Rick

I would also suggest that if your buying from one of the big stores, lowes etc, that you go to an actual nursury, I think they tend to have healther plants and often a better selection (and the price difference isn't much if anything for a 4" pot). With that many problems, If the bugs came on the plants from the nursury I would switch nursuries. (seems like every bug in the world munches on my mints-I figure I can just share) For now, I tend to start herbs with established plants because it takes quite a while to grow from seed. I'm moving more toward growing from seed now. However, things like rosemary are really hard to grow from seed-the seeds have a really low germinaton rate. I would really suggest propigating things from the nursuries. This is the best of both worlds, cause you can get the more unusual cultivars and even if the plant has bugs if it's not too bad you can propigate your own baby plants. Mint is really easy, I propigate by layering. Just take a long bit of stem, pull some leaves off of a one section and burry this section under dirt (hold down with a rock or a hair pin) leaving the tip of the stem with leaves still on it out of dirt and the other end of the stem attached to the mom plant. When it roots, you can snip the baby plant from the mom plant. You can also pripagate the normal way using rooting hormone. Basil can be rooted in water. Parseley, I'm growing from seed now-I poured boiling water over the seeds to get them to sprout faster than something like 21 days (not sure if that's effective but I'll see).