It looks like you don't have enough corn for good pollination. My understanding is that you need at least 4' x 4' of corn for decent pollination. Do you have a plan on how you will get to the plantings in the back for care & harvesting? I think you might want to consider some stepping stones at least. Consider also that your plants will bush out - when we grew cukes & beans on a trellis in a bed 2 feet from the fence they bushed out so much there wasn't much room to get behind them. Also, I have never grown okra, but I've heard the plant can be irritating to the skin. I think it gets pretty big, too. You might think about putting it together & somewhere you won't have to come into contact with it until you want to. Why are you mixing things up? Are you trying to avoid cross pollinating varieties, or going for aesthetics? Or is it for another reason? I would consider putting same plants together because they will have the same needs & you can more easily deal with them as a group. Beans are great & can be very productive. You could substitute them for the corn along the back. Perhaps you could do a block of a short variety of corn (so it doesn't shade other things too much) if you move things around a bit. I am not familiar with your growing area, so I'm not sure what else to add. I see you have cukes growing on the fence, but you have a line of them down into the bed. Will those get a trellis, or are you putting bush varieties in front? Definitely (IMO) put as much organic matter into your soil as you can. We have terrible soil here (sand), but my small gardens are looking lush. We found a local coffee shop that gives us bags of their compostable material regularly. We add that straight to the garden beds (coffee grounds, veggie scraps, egg shells) with some manure (we use quail because it is inexpensive & convenient). Also, we added in some peat moss & vermiculite the first couple of times we were turning over the beds. Hopefully someone with more expertise will give you some good tips. Best of luck!

BronwynC, I forgot a couple ideas for your salty roadside bed: I have ornamental onions there, and they're thriving. I have allium 'Purple Sensation' and nectaroscordum (allium) siculum. They've been multiplying steadily for a few years; the n. s. especially is thriving (it needs staking, however - I'm willing to fiddle with it because I love the flowers and seed heads). Daffodils and tulips don't perennialize well for me there, but they do give a good "once off" performance from a fall planting, so you could plant them in the fall and treat them like annuals. Many gardeners do that anyhow. I have a small clump of lilium speciosum rubrum in that bed. So far, it's growing well. It's set about 6 feet in from the road in a sheltered spot, and doesn't get totally buried, but I'm sure it gets all the salt runoff anyhow. A roadside bed doesn't have to be a desert - keep trying, and you'll have a LOVELY garden there (even if you make your husband crazy in the process). Laurelin P.S. You could set a couple large containers in the bed as accent pieces, and totally control the soil to suit yourself. I've got blueberries in very large foam containers in my front bed this year.

If I was looking at this house to buy, I'd want the huge brick blockade below the fireplace to be removed. Edited to add that I see a duplicate post below; you may want to delete that one. Sometimes it takes a while to see a post or reply appear, which is probably why you added this newer one.

Here is one option that would work for the wall.