In article ,
"Steve B" wrote:

We are ready to rip into our existing garden, a haphazard thing from its
inception, not done by us. I now have a tractor, so have the ability to
scrape ground, till up, rake, and bring in large amounts of topsoil.

Is there a good guide to planning a garden, either a book or a site? We
want to put in trellises for things that grow good on them, and mounds for
melons and cucumbers. Separate the winter foods from summer foods. We want
a couple of rows of corn. Overhead sprinkling on some areas, ground
watering in others. Things like that.

Now that it is a raw canvas, it is the best time to do this. And we'd like
to do it just once, and do it right. Advice appreciated.

Well, you don't want to get too fixed or your going to have problems
from not rotating crops, probably (not that our usual rotation cycles of
4-5 years are fully adequate for most of the things they are supposed to
be protecting us from, so perhaps you can get away with it for a while,
but...)

As such, something like a set of beds for tall crops in different
rotations and a set of beds for short crops in different rotations, and
trellises you can move may work better than "a melon bed" or other such
fixed places/furniture for annual crops. Depending what you intend to do
with your tractor in the long haul, you may want to not have permanent
beds so that you can till the whole garden with it and make new
beds/paths each year - or not.

I can't claim to have anything like perfection (far from it most years),
but you'll also notice that most garden planning books stick to
drawings, because reality is always messier than the design...

I would try separating out the perennials, and using them - after a few
years they give more food with less work - so strawberries, blueberries,
rasberries, blackberries, asparagus, etc. - if you eat it and it grows
on a plant that doesn't need to be planted every year, and you can grow
in your climate, plant it. Grapes too, though I have to say my personal
luck with those is terrible. Tree crops also, if you like, but that's a
longer term project (however - the best time to plant a tree is 20 years
ago, and the second-best time is now, as the old saying goes, so if you
are going to, get started on it.)

For books, I like to imagine I could ever keep up with the stuff in

The American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia_of_Gardening

and I think it's a good general reference, though not perfect either.
Includes lots of flower stuff as well as vegetable gardens. See what
your library has.

Eliot Coleman's 4_Season_Harvest

is a good read, and has some planning ideas, but I can't say everything
I've tried out of it has worked by any means.

You could try a landscape architect in theory, but in practice I think
few if any of them grasp vegetable gardens, though perhaps they should.
If you have a school that teaches the subject you could offer to be a
design client/victim for the students and see if they offer up anything
that you think would work (go for looking at the designs, rather than
committing in advance to actually constructing one - but if you like
one, you might be able to give them some hands-on in putting it
together, too.)

My own garden has changed over time as I've worked it over and given up
and reworked it. At one point I had a giant bed (no space wasted on
useless paths!) 5 feet wide and 50 feet long, because I could reach in
30 inches. Too bad I didn't try reaching in 30 inches and actually
pulling a weed or picking something when I was in the design phase for
that. Next iteration was 40 inches, latest is 30 inches. I could
straddle the 40 inch beds with some effort, but at 30 so can my
partner, and I can more easily. So, I now give up a lot of space to
"useless" paths. Without it I had a lot of "useless" garden space
getting away from me. The "useless path space" should be wide enough to
take your wheelbarrow or garden cart or whatever you use to move lots of
stuff around the garden - perhaps your main paths should even fit your
tractor.

If you can bear the effort and expense, a wall around the garden is
probably good, and offers more climate buffering than a fence - if not,
a serious, tall and well-built fence will pay dividends one day. More
critters than you like your produce.

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