which will give me a better harvest?

[Carriehelene]

Hi all! Its been several years since I've been on here. I'm in a new house now, which is great. The soil however, is not. At all. I mean really unworkably terrible. I'm talking subsoil bad.
So I've found myself in the brand new to me position of raised bed gardening. I've also gone from basically unlimited space to plant as many as my crazy brain wanted, to very limited space. I've constructed 5 6x6 beds, 1 of which will be tomatoes.
Now before, i just planted and let those babies grow as much as they wanted. So my question now is, to maximize production, do I want to just plant 6 in the bed and let them do what they will, or should I tight plant and prune to just 1 leader?

[SQWIBB]

Not specific to your question but consider the following,
To maximize space, look into intensive gardening, permaculture, guilds.
Think vertically
Also layering, like 3 sisters.
Succession planting.
I never follow companion planting charts but different varieties of plants together save space.

[FarmerShawn]

Following Squibb's comment, I find that lettuce and basil, in particular, do well under supported tomatoes. I can't really comment on the other issue, as the only times I've tried letting them go I got lots of rot on tomatoes sitting on the ground. Now I prune to two stems, at least to start, supported by Hortonova trellis outside and strings inside.

[Father'sDaughter]

Before you go too much further with planting, think about ways that will allow you to access the middle of those 6x6 (assuming you mean feet) beds without stomping down and compacting the soil. My beds are 4' wide and if I had to start over, I'd knock them down to 3' in order to better reach into the middle without straining my back. Maybe laying wide boards down across the middle you can walk on then planting in the remaining space...?

As for spacing, I finally settled on 18" between plants, 24" (or more) between rows. And while I still tie them to a stake, I do minimal pruning above the lowest flower truss. Below that everything gets pruned off. This gives me a much higher yield than when I used to plant them closer and single stem them, but still makes for a more compact footprint vs caging.

[mcsee]

If you tried really hard, you could probably get 9 plants in one bed, but they'd be close.

[Carriehelene]

thanks for all the replies so far, I appreciate it. Here's a pic of the layout of the beds. I designed it this way so I could access all sides of each bed.
I was going to have:

all tomatoes in the top right, I was thinking 3 in front, 3 in back, and 1 on right side in the "center" row, which would allow me access to the middle of the bed.
cucumbers in the top left,
potatoes in the center,
beans and carrots bottom right,
squash, zucchini, lettuce, spinach, peppers and peas in the bottom left.

If anyone has a better suggestion for plant layout, I would sincerely love to hear it. Also, before I always did the florida weave, but at that time I planted 75-100+ tomato plants. Cages seem a little more doable with this size garden.

[taboule]

Looks like you have lots of room to add many more beds. That's what I'd do ;-)

Congrats on your new home.

[Father'sDaughter]

Beautiful layout! If you are using cages, you'll need to allow more room based on the size of the cage. With stakes you can fit more in, but they'll need more tending. Either way it's all about maintaining adequate air flow for healthy foliage.

If it were me, I would go with one plant in each corner, then another on each of the four sides but set further back towards the center of the square. This would still give each plant some elbow room while still giving you eight plants.

[zipcode]

If you want to maximize production on those square meters, one stem is the way to go. Do you have what to support them with if they grow 9ft tall however?

[NM_Dirt_Digger]

Try some of the "Dwarf Projects" in your beds.

[clkeiper]

for tomatoes you need to determine ahead of time what type you are growing... indeterminates or determinates. if you are growing determinates you need cages. don't let them sprawl on the ground..that is wasteful of your crop. indeterminates if you go to a single stem you will need a very sturdy frame to attach them to. and read up on and use the lean and lower system. you would do this maybe in a circle on the bed rather than down a row like others would do.

[Black Krim]

my suggestion is put tomatoes on the north side of several of the beds. Provide a strong, tall support about 6 feet tall. 3-4 plants, keeping it pruned to 2-3 stems.

Shorter vegetables can be planted in fron, on the south side.

You might look at square foot gardening for more details.

Enjoy your new space!

[QAGuy]

I use 3/4 inch PVC irrigation pipes for my cages. Each cage has 4 upright legs and I trim my plants to 4 leaders and tie each one to one of the uprights. I get quite a good harvest that way.

Here's a link to a website that shows what I do.

http://www.feldoncentral.com/garden/tom_pvc/