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 ! : )

I can't speak for others but when we started this process, we had very clear ideas of what we wanted (like you do from your above list) and searched every online plan site we could find. We just could not find the "one". We did find close to what we wanted on a contemporary blog and found a house/plan we loved (with mods of course) from an architect in South Africa. We took all of the inspiration plans, our list of must haves and worked with an architect locally. It was important they understood the site, view lines (we have great views and vistas from lot and wanted to max them out), grading, ARC restrictions (if that applies to you) and local building codes. Took us about four months to design our forever home. We felt the cost of having an architect design the home to our specs (and having our builder as part of the design process to guide us on design vs. budget) was well worth the cost. At the end of the day, the cost was only $5 per finished square foot (we interviewed architects ranging from $3-9 per sq. foot). But...what we got for that was EXACTLY what we wanted, custom designed for our lot/lifestyle. They also ensured that all of the community design guidelines were met and attended the meetings to explain/review/negotiate design elements where we pushed the envelope from the ARC preferred traditional to our contemporary must have home. I think it is worth it to at least have a preliminary conversation with a local (Wyoming) architect or two. Others may disagree.

I'll chime in and agree with GreenDesign. We have our 90% finished plans and will get the blueprints Monday. It's been tedious. The client goes to the architect with all their wants. Just like jeff2718, we are on a lot that is longer than it is wide. With our constraints and wants, there were things that could be done and couldn't. Plus, after you take budget, square footage, etc. into consideration, something has to be given in order to take from somewhere else. And if you move a wall here, you have to shift entire lengths of walls and other walls are shifted b/c of that length of wall. With us, We started wanting our master downstairs, turned stairs that did NOT face the front door and we wanted our living area, dining, kitchen to be one open "L" shaped area with the breakfast/dining and living all against the backyard wall so you could see right out to the backyard (and the kitchen would be part of that eating area). My DH's guy space would also be downstairs. Well, we then started thinking about how my mom comes to stay with us a lot and decided in the end, to try to fit the guest suite downstairs instead of up w/ the kids' spaces, which then moved my small exercise space (that was right off of the master) UPSTAIRS and it got bigger as a result. Also as a result, the L-shaped living area became a long open space instead of the L ...kitchen then dining/breakfast and living in that order with the living open to the backyard. It's still one big space but with the eating area between and a window seat bump-out bay-window with hutches on either side. It wasn't my ideal lay-out in the beginning at all (when we were deciding between the L and this and could do both) but I've grown to like the layout now that I've "lived" with it on paper. However, with this change, my turned stairs changed into a straight staircase that you walked right into from the front door. THAT was a deal breaker for me. Back to the drawing board he went and somehow maneuvered things to put the stairs sideways again and with the turn. Yay! But I think a closet shrunk in doing that. There's been a LOT of other adjusting but it's just things like that that happen. It's like a big puzzle...all the pieces have to fit in the end, PLUS fit into the entire shell of the exterior and into your budget. So you will go through drafts and figure out what are the most important things to you and what you can give up and what you can't. Everyone thinks it's so fantastic to build. And it is great to be able to have a lot of control over what you want. But there's also the misconception that when one builds, they get to have everything they want! Unless one has a really large lot and a really large budget, there will be give and take in order to keep things realistic and to make things fit.

It was the first one for us too. Really loved the many decisions we made during our reno. 1) The 36" wide deep zero radius sink with a low divider really came in handy. Its amazing how much stuff can fit in this thing with still room to wash/clean 2) The double convection wall oven worked all day. Everything turned out perfect. I have no idea what conspired to make the turkey perfect this year. I am sure I won't be able to reproduce the result next year if I tried 3) The 36" 6 burner bluestar Rangetop worked all day. All six burners were in use at times, but didn't leave anything to be desired. It slowly simmered a big pot of turkey stock all day while the other burners were used to do a variety of boiling, sautéing, and gravy making. 4) The biggest "wow what did we do without this" moment came from the touch activated Delta faucet. I wash my hands after every step, especially when processing raw meat. being able to wash every 15 seconds at times without having to fiddle with the control was awesome, and keeps everything sanitary 5) The quartz counters really helped. Never a worry about spilling or raw meat juices, or spices, or anything else sitting on the counters. They were pretty messy all day through a rotation of meats, and eggs and milk and flour and cleaned up without a hitch. 6) stone backsplash - Cant tell you how nice it is to not have to worry about splashes during the various activities. Everything wiped off easily, unlike last thanksgiving where I scrubbed the paint off my walls trying to wipe off some of the gravy splashes. Things I wanted more of but just not possible in our size kitchen: 1) More counter space or a big island. Our kitchen and layout of spaces around the kitchen didn't allow for more. Its perfect for our every day, but would be nice at holidays like thanksgiving. 2) A separate prep sink - Day to day, its never one of the things I regret not having, but would have been very helpful at thanksgiving 3) A warming drawer. Maybe I will get one installed one day. Not a need day to day, but would be nice to put things once done when you are making several items. My oven has a keep warm function, but since both ovens were being actively users, a separate drawer would have been handy