Raised beds - what to plant where?

[Novice Gardener]

Help!!! I'm having a bit of a dilemma. I've got 3 raised beds in my garden - all about 3ft in depth - one is about 10ft x 2ft which I'm using as my salad bed, one is about 3 ft x 2ft which is my herb bed, and the other is kind of U shaped where I'm intending to grow the rest of my veg but I'm not sure what to put where. I read about a bed rotation system, but my veg bed is one big bed (if that makes sense). My neighbour suggested this square foot system as the soil won't be walked on at all, so I've started off with climbing french beans, runners and peas at the bottom of the "U" bit, running along the back against a wall. Down one of the straight bits I've got potatoes, jerusalam artichokes and a row of swiss chard - but still got space for loads more, and on the other side of the U, I've got a couple of globe artichokes but I'm not sure what to put where. I've got some PSB ready to go out and I was intending on putting them in front of the beans in a row as I think they grow fairly tall. I've also got tomatoes, courgettes, aubergines, peppers, spinach and beetroot that'll be ready to plant out fairly soon, but I'm not sure if they need to be in certain parts of the beds, or if I can just put them in where they'll fit?? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Novice Gardener]

ooooooo, come on you lot, give us a hand here Purleeeeeese

[Demeter]

My immediate thought for the U-shaped one if you want to do crop rotation is to do a 3-year plan with the end and each side as a separate area.

Of course you U-shape might not be suitable for this idea, but here are a couple of web pages that might be useful is this interests you

~crop rotation~
Vegetable Crop Rotation: VegetableExpert
http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/scho...opRotation.pdf

You just need to find a plan that suits the veg you want to grow, without forcing you to grow / not grow certain things next year... unless of course they are things you would never want to grow in a million years... um.

Sit down with some paper and a pencil, make a list of all the veg you are growing and see if you can work out which ones go together... same family or same requirements or whatever. Draw diagrams and make lists, and cross stuff out and move it around until you have something that seems to make sense to you! I don't really know what I'm doing, this is just how I've approached it but it's my first year really - although I'm doing, more or less, a four-year system, because that's what My Book recommended, and I sort of have space...

If you have too much stuff to fit the space in a way that makes sense to you, then you could always use containers for the surplus e.g. I have planted loads of potatoes but have nowhere to put my tomatoes in the ground without messing up my rotation plan so I'm just sticking them in pots and vowing to think more carefully about how many spuds to plant next year!

Wish me luck and I'll do the same for you

[wellie]

Wishing you both good luck....
And I'd say that's excellent advice given there for you Novice Gardener.

My own advice NG, would be to be aware of what vegetables are going to need physically 'digging' for harvesting, like potatoes and jerusalem artichokes, and whether that will disturb the crop planted next to it.

Do be aware also, that with jerusalem artichokes, you will need to remove every single tuber (and same with potatoes actually) at the end of harvesting, or you will get stray/rogue ones invading that space the following year when you don't want them, which can be an absolute nightmare....

[Alice]

Novice Gardener, if this is your first year planting in those beds it doesn't matter much where you put anything. Just use common sense as to where is the most convenient place for you. For next year, just make sure you don't plant things in the same place they were before. You just build up problems that way.
There's a bit more to crop rotation than that, but to get you started, that's all you need to know.
Your beds sound great and should do well for you.