Alys, I love your plans! I wish I would have put that much thought into my garden before I started digging in. Right now I just have a big rectangle in the back yard, but hopefully it will evolve into something beautiful like you have planned. In fact I just learned about potager gardens from reading this forum a few nights ago. I had to wiki it to find out what exactly it was. Such a cool and pleasing way to plan a garden. I already have the neighbors peeking over my fence. Once I get something like that going, they will be climbing! Good luck and have fun digging (that's my favorite part)!

Jacci

If it makes u feel better Alys I decided to build an official vegetable garden in Feb 2001. Well, I finally got the last bed built this winter and filled last month! (yup - 6 years! I am probably the slowest garden builder in the world)

Take your time and build your garden up as you can and have fun doing it. one bed or two beds is still enough to put some great food on the table!

I do these kind of plans too, with Photoshop.

One question, though. In your square backyard garden, somebody is going to get shaded by beans, either the tomatoes or the zuchinnis and peppers. Maybe the beans should be to one side of the bed or to the other, to guarantee that all your heat loving plants are in full sun.

Sometimes it's troublesome to work our attractive design with the sun requirements of vegetables.

Hmmm. I was wondering about that. The area is in full zun. The pole is loose in the ground and can be turned. If I set it so that the wide part runs from North to South, and the zucchini/carrot side to the East and the tomatoes to the West, like so...

Actually, looking at it, if I turn the pole the other way, wouldn't the whole thing get sun all day? (Looking at my drawing, just pretend the sun is rising in the south and setting in the north! LOL)

You may substitute a bush type bean for any pole varieties and still get a high quality crop.

I think turning the pole east-west is a good idea. If you wanted to plant bush beans instead, you could use the pole's arms to hang some pots. That could be charming.

BTW, I used to have two of those T-shaped laundry poles, but we had them dug up, because DH was always knocking his head on them, and he was afraid that one day he would poke his eye out. That was a big job.

Anyway, good luck with your garden.