It's a wonderful article, filled with useful and very practical information. When are you going to write a book?

I need to practice more companion gardening, although I do already plant radishes and carrots together in wide rows. The radishes come up quickly and remind me to keep watering the carrot seeds. The carrots are shaded a bit by the radishes, and when I've harvested all of the radishes, the carrots have plenty of space to grow into the loosened soil. Also, the worms that like carrots like radishes better, so they are a trap crop. Growing long rooted radishes has a definite advantage, as the worms enter the root early and are usually only in the bottom 1/3 to 1/2 of the root, leaving most of it for us.

Wide rows? Why? More space for plants and not so much wasted on pathways between them.

That's good info on the carrots and radishes - thanks for sharing that tip.

I generally don't use wide rows. In fact, my rows are usually just narrow enough to walk on.

Great article Dave!

I plant my garden in squares. One narrow path to walk on down the centre of the garden and square plots of veggies on each side. I rotate the squares every year.

Yes, really great article Dave. Very informative. As was said above, you answered questions
I didn't even know to ask.

We are finding that we need to make our rows wider each year mainly to give the heirloom
tomatoes more air circulation. Heirlooms are the ones we prefer to grow, even though they
seem to be more prone to blight than commercial varieties. For other veggies, more narrow
rows do okay here.

Loved this article. It was full of helpful information, such as planting basil with tomatoes. I also love the idea of using weeds as a mulch, I never thought about doing that. I will definitely give it a try this growing season.

We have done regular row gardening and raised beds. I now find the raised beds to be much easier to care for.
This was our very first garden as a married couple, 1963. That's my baby sister I'm holding.


One of the raised beds with tomatoes and nasturtiums.

Thank you for sharing that, Lynn! I love those photos!

We lived in MS and mom and dad came for a visit. The two fiest dogs kept all critters out of the garden. We never lost a thing due to critters.
We had a man come with a mule and plow it up for us. And we did plant with space between each plant, as you can see in the black and white photo.

We did the same with the raised beds, that is just one tomato plant in the other photo. We have found that using the raised beds, our yield was greatly increased. The plant grew much larger, and more productive.

Fantastic. We are planning to add several more raised beds this year. I love 'em.

Love the photo's Lynn - thank you

Dave - I read this article last year and it' so good, you should run it at least once a month. It's loaded with such good and wonderful information and your enthusiasm just spills over every word. Any person reading it will want to grow veggies.

My seed catalogs have started arriving. I love to study my way through each one. I'll have to order a Baker Creek one. I don't think I've ever received one.

Has anyone ever grown Rouge D' Irak, from Baker Creek? I am looking for a new tomato to try this year. One that has a nice balance of tart and sweet.