jasonvanorder
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Garden Size for this amount of fruits & vegetables?

Hi everyone! I'm a newbe here and to gardening in general. This will be my first year (2016) my family will be putting in a garden. As a kid my parents always had one but from what I can remember it always ended up overgrown with weeds and all the vine plants (melons cucumbers....) would just overtake everything else.

Here is a rundown of what we would like to plant and if you all could give a rough estimate on the size we would need to make it all fit and not look like a chaotic mess that would be much appreciated. We plan on having cantaloupe, potatoes, garlic (next fall),tomatoes regular and cherry 3 plants each, onions, bush green beans, bush yellow beans, carrots, cucumbers, butternut squash, bell peppers, watermelon, jalapenos and pumpkins for the kids.

Right now where we live the old garden there is about 15'-25ish. I know thats going to way to small for everything. We have a rear tine tiller and plenty of room to expand. Any insight or suggestions would be great! Thanks in advance.

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jal_ut
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I am thinking something about 1200 - 1500 square feet would do well for your beginning garden. 25x50

You may want to make your row spacing such that you can run the tiller between rows for weeding? Carrots and onions don't spread very wide. You can plant the rows close. Potatoes, bush beans and peppers need a bit more room. 20 inch rows at least. When it comes to the vining plants, for sure give them some room. Crooknecks and zucchini will have vines around 4 feet long. I like to plant 5 seeds close together so the vines go out like the spokes of a wheel, then move over 8 feet and plant 5 more seeds etc. Some of the big squash and pumpkins will have vines 8 to 12 feet long. Ya, its no wonder they end up in a jumble. :)

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jal_ut
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Rear end tiller hilling potatoes.

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jasonvanorder
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What's the best way to avoid the jumbled vine mess? I'm sure trimming them isn't the best option but maybe kinda guide them along the row instead of everywhere? Or is it just let them go where they go?

imafan26
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Ditto on what has been said
carrots, onions, and garlic. and most root crops are cool season crops.
Onions and garlic are usually planted in the fall and you need to get the right variety for your area.
Carrots can be planted year round but are best in the cooler months. They mature in about 70-90 days. They need to be planted about 1 inch apart. For the most part carrots are relatively hard for me to grow in my climate and I don't have the space to grow enough for a year. They are cheap so I buy them instead. If you have a lot of space it might be worthwhile for you. Same with potatoes. They are relatively cheap and I cannot grow them well and I would rather grow sweet potatoes anyway.
Cucumbers, beans, peas, tomatoes, some squash need to be trellised so you need to get that in place before you plant. I have three tomatoes because that is all I need and I grow them on a trellis that is wrapped around the end buckets and the middle bucket sits between them. It takes up about 10 linear feet and I don't have them in the garden because they would take up too much space.
I have an overhead trellis for squash and I can grow beans and peas either on the tomato trellis or on the overhead trellis. I use tomato cages for the cucumber.
Watermelon, cantauloupe, most of the rambling squash vines take up a lot of space if they sprawl. Sugar baby is an icebox watermelon I do grow. They are just the right size at 11 lbs and the vines are about 6 ft and they can be trellised. I have trellised kabocha pumpkins and I have seen cantauloupes on a trellis but on the ground they take up a lot of space.

In a garden with limited space I would plant
3 tomatoes in cages. I don't like to prune. It is easier to manage them in 24-30 inch CRW cages and the cages are sturdy enough to support them.
Beans, peas, butternut squash, cucumbers need to also be on a trellis so set up your trellises first and figure out the linear feet you have and how much they can support.
Bush beans will give you beans all at once and then they are done but do not require a trellis
Zucchini can take up a lot of space a 36 inch circle for one plant. Vining zucchini would need a trellis

In the ground in the cool season
Leafy greens.
lettuce spaced 8-10 apart. Plant in succession every 2-3 weeks about the number of heads you can consume in a week for me that is about 8-10 heads.
Asian greens- 10 each pak choy, bok choy, tatsoi, mustard cabbage.
spinach. I harvest mine all at once since it freezes well so I plant a 2ft x 10 section and they mature in about 2 months
root crops carrots, beets, radish, daikon carrots, radish one inch apart. Beets and daikon 4 inches apart
Swiss chard, Kale - Truely the work horses of the garden. They are cut and come again so 1 or 2 chard will give you repeat harvest for months and so will kale. Kale is very cold hardy and doesn't mind a light dusting of snow.

Summer crops
Corn- It will take up most of my garden but I eat all of it. 4x4 block is minimum. 1-2 ears per plant. It is a space hog so you really have to want it.
Tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, squash, jicama, most of the herbs.
Tomatoes - 3 plants is a good number to start with. You can add more if you have more space and can use all the fruit.
Cucumbers. I can plant 4 in a CRW-30 inch tomato cage. Beans and peas. every 4 inches along a trellis. I usually only plant nine of each. They provide plenty but must be picked daily.
Jicama is a long season crop. It needs 150 days of heat. Only the tuber is edible so I plant it in a pot on a trellis.
Herbs can fit in anywhere there is extra space. Cilantro will only grow in cool weather.
I grow green onions, rosemary, thyme, in pots. I have in the ground lemon grass, chives, Jamaican oregano, Italian flat leaf parsley. In the cool season I can grow cilantro, chervil, and fenugreek. Borage will grow in early summer. Shiso will grow throughout the summer. I also plant sunflowers, nasturtiums and marigolds. They are attractive, attract beneficial insects and marigolds and nasturtiums are trap plants. Basil has to be downy mildew resistant.

Peppers and eggplant need heat to start so either sow indoors on a heat mat or wait until it is at least 68 degrees preferably 70 degrees before starting them.

jasonvanorder
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Marlingardener wrote:Tomatoes and cucumbers can be trellised--growing upwards takes a lot less space, and also helps keep the fruits clean and more disease-free.
Pumpkins for the kids sounds like a great idea, but pumpkins take a whole lot of space. How about taking them to a commercial pumpkin patch before Halloween and letting them pick out pumpkins?
Watermelons take a lot of space and water. How many watermelons does your family eat?
Potatoes are fun--digging with your fingers at the base of the plant to find the little potatoes, and then later digging and finding the more mature ones is like a treasure hunt. Your children will enjoy that!
When we started gardening over 40 years ago, we were given great advice by a gardening neighbor. He said, "Grow what you eat, don't bother with what is cheap at the grocery, and use your garden area for what you can't get easily at the grocery." We've gardened that way for years, but now we are on the farm and have lots of space, we plant "fun stuff." Don't ask me about the dipper gourds that took down the fence around the seasonal garden . . . .

We were told our area is great for tomatoes. The store bought cages a my hold them they grow so big. As for the pumpkins the last few years we have done that. We have a farm that has a corn maze that leads to the pumpkin patch. Well my son wanted to keep his seeds from his this year to plant. So that's why we are going to give it a go. The rest is all stuff we eat and being our first garden we have now idea what will do well and what won't. I swear we could live off watermelon though. So hoping those do great

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jal_ut
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The problem with saving pumpkin seeds is that they freely cross with all the other squashes, so next season no telling what your pumpkins will look like. Pumpkins are bee pollinated, and bees fly 2 miles, so in order to grow true pumpkin seed the plants need to be removed from any other squash 2 miles. Well........ you can always plant and see what you get? Sometimes the hybrids are interesting.

I have never been one to trellis things. Just give it room to sprawl and let it sprawl. If you have limited space, then trellising will let you plant more in small space.

jasonvanorder
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As far as the pumpkins go there is nothing but corn for miles around. And if they are crossed as you said might be neat to see what comes out! Since it's still fairly nice here in the land of snow I went out and measured they old garden. It was roughly 27x19. And in the space they had corn squash rhubarb tomatoes green beans cucumbers bell and jalapeño peppers watermelon and cantaloupe. Way too much for a small space. Shooting for 25x50 doubles the space. Should have plenty of room

imafan26
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That is a nice size garden. It is more space than I have to work with. I plant in different sections of the yard. My main veggie garden is 8ft x 16 ft oval. I plant more things in pots than in the garden itself.

HoneyBerry
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Your list sounds ambitious to start with. You might want to consider starting small and then expanding slowly. There is so much to learn and starting small makes the process more manageable.
Taking kids to a pumkin patch to buy pumkins is a great idea. The farms are fun and most have fun stuff for kids such as mazes. But I must add that I really enjoyed growing pumkins when I was a kid. They do take up alot of room and the leaves are subject to downy mildew. There are some nice tunnel trellis ideas for pumkins and squashes. They grow better that way, up off the ground, less prone to diseases.
I had good results growing bush beans. The green ones produced more than the purple ones, about twice as much, but the purple beans were so pretty, and looked so nice when I canned the purple and green beans together.

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jal_ut
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"What's the best way to avoid the jumbled vine mess? I'm sure trimming them isn't the best option but maybe kinda guide them along the row instead of everywhere? Or is it just let them go where they go?"

If you have space, just plant and stand back. It really doesn't matter if the vines get jumbled up. Probably not a good idea to prune the vines. The plant needs those leaves to make food.

I like to plant 5 seeds in a spot, then move over 5 feet and plant 5 more etc. The plants come up and go out like spokes on a wheel and make a squash patch. Zucchini and crookneck have vines around 4 feet long. The winter squashes may grow vines from 8 to 15 feet or more.

Any way when you consider one small squash seed may end up producing a couple of twenty pound squash, that is quite a gain? Have fun!

Taiji
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Being limited with space myself for the last few years, (size about 13 x 28 inside a high fence) I have tried what you suggested Jason..."kinda guide them along the row". That has worked for me these last few years. This year I planted a row about 18 inches wide and about 9 or 10 feet long, along my fence line, with about 12 squash plants there. (my variety was butternut). I got 25 to 30 nice squash.
The fence kept them from going out into the forbidden zone, (outside the garden) and they will climb it somewhat, and laying them up on the row kept them from the rest of the garden, well, at least for awhile! Eventually, the squash vines won, and I just let them have their way, but by then the corn, tomatoes, etc, were tall enough that the squash didn't bother them. As was said, they easily get to 15 feet long.
This coming year I will have more space, and a better well, so I hope to grow some other varieties, among them Blue Hubbard. I haven't been able to grow those monsters for about 20 years! I'll just let them sprawl.

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jal_ut
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squash patch

jasonvanorder
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Found a nice program online that allows me to lay things out and get a feel on how it will look. I'm sure the spacing isnt perfect but I'm sure when it comes time to put plants/seeds in the ground things will shift a little.

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