4x8 bed: top row is north with trellises; west end of bed gets more shade

cucumber==cucumber==cucumber==cucumber==melon(2 squares)==pole beans==pole beans
carrots=====carrots====carrots====carrots====radish==broccoli===radish ====broccoli
spinach====spinach====chard=====chard====broccoli==radish===broccoli== ==radish
spinach====spinach====lettuce====lettuce====lettuce==lettuce===lettuce ====lettuce

4x6 bed: top row on north side; "bb" is bush beans; peas on 3 teepees - one teepee for every four squares

peas======peas======peas======peas======peas======peas
peas======peas======peas======peas======peas======peas
cauli=====radish======bb========bb=======bb=======bb
radish====cauli=======bb======chard=====chard=======bb

4x4 bed: top row on north side

eggplant===eggplant===eggplant===eggplant
peppers====peppers===peppers====peppers
peppers====peppers===peppers====peppers
onions=====onions====onions=====onions

Thanks!

I know the book doesn't state, but I interplant within the squares to give shade to lettuce in summer or squeeze in a few more salad plants like onions or kale around larger slow to mature plants like cabbages. As long as I am careful to not disturb the rootball to harvest it works okay.

In my climate I can plant in spring for summer & fall harvests, in early summer for late summer harvest, in mid-summer for fall & winter harvest, and sometimes in early fall for winter & spring harvests.

It all depends on the weather when the soil can be worked in spring, but usually between Feb. - April are our 1st plantings. Then every few weeks through June & once spring crops (lettuce, spinach, peas) are harvested I can replace with summer crops (beans, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers). Radishes are planted with carrots & pulled before leaving more space for carrots. Beets & onions stay in longer. Chard can be cut & come again grown until it bolts which might be a year or more for us.

In summer I try to tuck the cool season plants in the shade of the others, so you might want to move your spinach & lettuce behind some of your larger plants you might have better growth. Also, peas for a fall harvest do better started partially shaded from summer heat.

I am able to keep some cabbage family crops (broccoli & cabbage) cropping all summer due to our cool climate, but others like kale & kohlrabi go to seed quickly. I don't know how the cabbage family does in your area, but some gardeners in your area know.

By mid-summer it's time to plant for fall & winter harvests, but my beds are still pretty full if I've not set aside squares vacated by spring planted crops, so it doesn't always work out like I plan. The good thing is that the garden grows & we're keeping it productive!

We also grow potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini & cucumbers rotate around in permanent beds in the ground with large stakes & trellis as the soil in the SFG beds just didn't support my tomatoes so well when we tried it a few years ago. Plus, we only have 4 boxes & not enough room for all the veggies.

Hope that helps!

I like the idea of interplanting within a square to maximize space/output, but I think next spring I'll leave each square to one crop to see which ones will have room for a close neighbor.

As far as shading the spinach and lettuce, I'm kind of counting on the shade from the sycamore to help them last longer - of course that means the more sun-loving plants may not perform as well. This is why I may have to reorient the beds and start over. If I leave the beds as they are, I'm thinking my spring and early summer crops should be good because it takes awhile for my sycamore to leaf out, and there's lots of sun on the garden then. I'm also hoping my fall plants will be ok because the sycamore will lose all its leaves and provide lots of sun again. It's the dead of summer that worries me. I think I'm getting maybe 4 hours of sun on the majority of the beds right now.

I am planning a fall/winter garden and am anxious to try it out in a couple weeks. It looks like I'm supposed to wait until early/mid August into September to plant for that. Since I got such a late start this year, I'm looking forward to getting *something* from the garden (I've only harvested radish so far). I'm waiting on some tomatoes, pumpkin, melon, cantaloupe to produce. Haven't been able to get carrots to grow, was too late for the pepper plants, and have yet to see my bush beans produce. So, this summer is just kind of a "let's just throw this in and see what it does" time. Fall and next spring are what I'm really planning for. I don't even have the 4x4 built yet!

I have to say, I've been trying to cover all the bases: shade, height, companion planting, etc., and my head hurts! I'm probably making this more complicated than it needs to be, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I don't do things halfway! Thanks so much for your input. Anything else you think of would be greatly appreciated!

Erin

What I like about SFG is that it simplifies gardening and since you plant by squares you're not planting huge long rows of things you won't have time to harvest & eat up. It's handy to carry a basket & scissor out to go "get dinner". A lot of things that aren't mature enough can be put in a stir fry if you just want to thin out your plantings a bit. I don't want my garden to be harvested at once, so that's an easy way to eat it up.

Starting late is no big deal. You're working the soil & figuring out your gardening habits as well as conditions with lighting, moisture needs, etc.

Working on your soil is also a good thing because hungry plants don't grow no matter how much sunshine you have.

The book says you won't need to add anything except compost to SFG beds, but I find that adding a complete organic fertilizer (COF) in spring for the heavy feeders is important to get fast growth for my limited sun site especially as the sun position lowers mid-August onward & tall trees give more shade. Just follow the directions on the bag & keep it in a closed container to keep dry as it won't expire.

I do add compost after harvest before planting again. My soil needs lime yearly, so we add that with manure in the fall with used coffee grounds from St*rbucks as a mulch to protect from the pelting winter rains. Then in spring we add the COF & if needed to top up the beds more cured compost. We mulch with dried grass clippings, so that also feeds the soil.

Maybe you can limb up the Sycramore tree a bit to get more sunlight. Then as it grows taller those lower limbs will be higher up, right?

In part sun conditions the harvests are a bit longer in coming. Teaches patience & can be frustrating when you read 66 days to harvest. I find bush beans more successful than pole beans and runner beans better than both because of the shade & my cooler climate.

The crops you're waiting on are longer to harvest & warm weather ones. Growing lettuce, spinach, & other greens quickly is rewarding because it fills space & you have a harvest to "prove" you're a gardener.

You might want to try planting chives because they are a well behaved perennial edger & you have multiple cuttings from each clump. I have onion chives in one bed & garlic chives in 2 other beds. I let them flower away & don't worry about them seeding around because I mulch. The bees love it & pollinate my other things, too.

Here's a pic from early last summer with chives, pansies, calendula & bedding dahlia in front. Cabbages, broccoli, bok choi, etc. in the back. The green buckets are leftover from a self watering container experiment the year before, but got blight, so I have left them vacant. The other buckets collect rainwater & the big black thing is a composter. Burlap bags are on the paths to keep the weeds down. Notice the large douglas fir trunk in the back on the north side of my garden We've limbed it up as far as we can reach & that helped a lot, but it still sucks the moisture out from the bottom.

homeend - Could you elaborate a little? How do you think it should change? Any and all feedback is helpful!

by June more then 44 square feet- 39% of you beds will be empty.

Corrine

Broccoli and cauliflowers gets huge. I wouldn't plant radishes between broccoli or cauliflower because they will be overwhelmed and shaded by their neighbors

Chard also gets really big, especially if you plan it dense.

Personally, I'd put the lettuce and radishes next to each other and let the broccoli, chard and cauliflowers duke it out.

Here is a picture of my rainbow chard this year in a 4x4 box planted in two adjacent squares. This is in the late spring when I had pulled everything else up to plant my summer squash but the chard was still producing so I let it be for awhile.

Here is another 4x4 bed with my green chard, again in 2 adjacent spaces. I've pulled all the other winter crops out (carrots, peas, beats) and planted some beans, eggplants and cucumbers for the summer.