Hello Emmie. This isn't going to sound right and may upset a bunch of others. You don't need to rotate crops. Not on the level you're working with. Certain plants remove certain nutrients from the soil and rotation refreshes the lost nutrients over time. You, as a gardener, can replace those nutrients easily (with compost) and will never need to rotate. My dad grew gladiolas commercially and had nowhere to rotate to. What did he do? Replaced any lost nutrients every year. Go right ahead with your gardens and don't even worry unless you don't have some compost to set things right. Put it into the soil in the fall and the gardens will be ripe and ready for the same plants from last year. Some say rotation avoids diseases and pests. Those are treatable whether it's during the growing season or during the winter. Raised beds are the way to go. Go with your plans and best of gardenng to you.

I agree. Rotate if you can, but otherwise add lots of compost, as you're doing now with your lasagna bed.

You might also consider sowing a winter cover crop among your veggies about six weeks before the first frost, such as this. (I was told by a Parks' horticulturalist that 1/4 lb. covers 1600 SF, so it would last you for years!) You wouldn't have to order from Parks -- many seed companies sell combinations like this you can grow. Pull up all your veggie plants and compost them separately and thoroughly to kill any pathogens. Leave the cover crop in the beds -- the vegetation and roots should continue growing there before being killed by freezing weather. You can also mow or cut it down in the late fall.

However much the mixture grows before dying off due to freezing or mowing, it will add a lot of goodies to your soil to fight soil diseases. It adds some top mulch to the area, though the main soil goodies are in the roots of these cover crops. You could continue to put more lasagna layers on top of the mown or freeze-killed vegetation, and plant down through all of it next spring.

Re this: Pull up all your veggie plants and compost them separately and thoroughly to kill any pathogens.

Don't do this until the harvest is over in the fall! But leave the cover crop there.

I love New England
If I didn't live in oregon I think I would be in Western Mass

First...don't worry about shade. Looks like you have plenty-o-sun. A tomato plant is NOT a towering maple

Second...forget the corn. there will be plenty-o-local product. You do not have the space for it.

Third...don't worry about rotation, do learn everything you can about compost and start immediately

Fourth...to me, you need to think larger bed. Obviously you have caught the gardening "bug" Think about expanding to the right into that grassy area that no one likes to mow. Istead of 4X5 maybe 4X10 (plus)

Finally...do not pull up your spent veggies. Cut them off at dirt level. The roots are of more value in your beds than they are in your compost piles.

Have fun

Peace

Thank you both, you have certainly given me something to think about! Thanks very much, I feel much less stuck now.

If I were doing larger beds, it might be a bigger issue. However, with the beds being the size I am contemplating, I can easily get enough compost to turn in with a pitchfork, and I will have more than enough yard waste to layer into the mix. I have a reply saved in my clippings about building a bed for potatoes, and the poster swears it gets better the more he uses it for potatoes. So, that could potentially work!

I also started to realize, as I thought about it, that I can probably swap back and forth between the two end beds, and also make certain I plant things in different sections each year. So, if the peppers are in bed 3 on the left, the next year I could make sure to put them in bed 4 on the right. I think it's the corn being so tall that has had me stumped; it can kinda only go in one spot because of that. (This all assumes I can get corn to grow at all! If it fails, then the problem is solved in yet a different manner.)

Anney, if I were to use the cover crop, I would sow it about 6 to 8 weeks before planting, correct? Or would I sow it in the fall after I harvest the last of the vegetables and pull up the stalks? Either way, it would sound easy enough to chop it in with a pitchfork and hoe, then put layers over it and plant again. (I'm trying to avoid tilling, and I don't know if the mower will fit in the beds.)

Thanks for the input so far! If anyone has other advice, I am very open to hearing it.

Take care,
Emmie

Enjoy your garden and follow the advice you have...do what you can and keep your garden clean and as free of litter and pests as possible...you will manage quite well...keep adding good stuff to your garden beds and you will be fine..

In my opinion you don't have room for the following. Peas, beans, watermelon, potatoes, and corn.

as for the sun blocking, plant rows in North/South direction
during summer the sun has a southern exposure, you will block very little sun as the sun will come between the rows.

emmie

Anney, if I were to use the cover crop, I would sow it about 6 to 8 weeks before planting, correct? Or would I sow it in the fall after I harvest the last of the vegetables and pull up the stalks?

Since you're in zone 6, I'd plant a cover crop (called green manure) among your veggies 4-6 weeks before the first frost, (not 8 weeks before -- you don't want to smother your produce!), primarily so it has time to germinate and grow some before frost kills your tender veggies, like tomatoes, beans, peppers, etc. Then the cover crops can take over the bed. Most are intended to grow in cool spring or fall weather, so they'll bear a little frost but won't survive extended hard freezes.

Thanks, again, for all your replies!

Lonmower: My Dh is the one who takes care of that grass, and when I talked to him tonight about expanding the beds, his response was "Less mowing is a good thing." And so, we might just make those beds 4x10 each. Thanks very much for the thought! He wants to try corn, but we are working on that. There is plenty o local stuff, so it's one thing we could certainly leave out.

Paulc: Thank you, that does help. If we expand the beds a bit, we might be able to do the beans at least, and maybe the potatoes. I could find room for the peas along the chain link fence we have to the left of the photo. The watermelon is fun, but it does take a lot of room. Corn, as mentioned above, might have to go. It would be fun, but it's not practical.

Ruthie, thank you for your encouragement!

Ristau and Anney: I will be looking for more advice, but thank you for this. I will keep working out my plans, and I am going to buy cover crop seed.

Thanks again, folks! This is all very helpful. My compost bin and pile are already working, so we will see what I can do in the spring!

Emmie

emmie9999, try corn if you want to and have some extra room (particularly if you expand your beds). I live in the country in PA, with lots of corn around. There's a farmstand a half-mile up the road that always has great corn, but I still grow some of my own, just becauase it feels good to look out and see a little patch of corn in my garden. (But I've got a pretty big garden, so I'm not so worried about the space.) This year I'm increasing the fun factor by experimenting with a couple of open-pollinated heirloom varieties along with a regular supersweet hybrid type.

You can plant a small patch of corn, but then it helps to hand-pollinate it to get good ears. When the silks show up, cut off some bits of the tassles from the top and dust it over the silks. CAVEAT: I haven't tried that yet, but I read somewhere here that it works well. I'm going to try it this year. Last year I had one very small patch of late summer corn that didn't pollinate well -- I didn't know about hand-pollinating then.

A lot of my gardening is just aimed at getting fresh veggies, but a lot of it is also just for fun. I grow some dried beans, for instance. From the perspective of food, it doesn't make any sense, since you can buy a pound of dried beans in the market for about 80 cents. But I grow old heirloom varieties, like Steuben and Amish Knuttle, which you can't get in the market. I don't have room to plant enough to get more than about 1-2 pounds of dried beans per variety, but the beans are pretty and it's just fun.

With green beans, you might consider pole beans. You get a much larger harvest from a small amount of garden space. You also can harvest a lot of it standing up. And the teepees look lovely -- I make mine out of 7- or 8-foot lengths of bamboo. One of the downsides is that you can't use row covers (at least not easily), if you're planning on using covers. You also have to make sure the teepees don't shade something else in the garden. One last downside to teepees is that occasionally a good wind will make them start leaning, especially in the early summer before the beans are strong enough to anchor them.

Have fun and good luck with your garden.

emmie9999. I didn't intend to shoot you down so quickly. As for peas: broadcast seeds and intermix some raddishes if you like. Raddish will come off early and them harvest peas by pulling up all the vines and go to shade tree to harvest peas. As for corn: Go to page 35 and see my post (sweet corn for small places). I will work for your small space. As for potatoes: Put in search http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/zoom/html/2002347128.html. This is how it's done if you want a lot of spuds in a small place.

According to the instructions they sent me with my 3x3 raised bed, I can grow 9 potato plants in it, which is what I'm doing.

Plant in rows moving in east-west direction for better sun exposure.Plant corn at opposite end of the plot not to cast shadow on other plants.Corn being consumer of Nitrogen feed the area with Nitrogen rich fertilizer, if you do not want to rotate.