Beginner starter bed
Tomatoes, basil, bush beans, lettuce, radishes, arugula and marigolds in a 4 × 8 raised bed, each spaced for its full-grown size. A good first bed if you've never grown vegetables.
- Bed size
- 4′ × 8′
- Soil depth
- 12″
- Layout
- Traditional Gardening
- Plants
- 106
- Sun
- Full sun — 6 to 8 hours.
Plant after your last frost (most of the U.S.: April–May). Direct-sow the beans, radish, and arugula; start the lettuce indoors or buy transplants, along with the tomatoes, basil, and marigolds.
What’s planted
- French marigold‘Naughty Marietta’2 plants · 9″ spacing
- Radish‘Cherry Belle’71 plants · 3″ spacing
- Tomato‘Roma’2 plants · 24″ spacing
- Sweet basil‘Genovese’2 plants · 21″ spacing
- Loose-leaf lettuce‘Black Seeded Simpson’5 plants · 9″ spacing
- Bush bean‘Jade’12 plants · 8″ spacing
- Arugula‘Astro’12 plants · 7″ spacing
Why these neighbors
- Roma tomato & Genovese basil
Basil volatiles (eugenol, linalool, methyl chavicol) have laboratory-documented deterrent activity against thrips, aphids, and whiteflies — the most common tomato pests in raised beds. Lab work backs it (Bekele & Hassanali 2001); tomato field trials are mixed but favorable.
- Roma tomato & French marigold
French marigold roots release alpha-terthienyl, a peer-reviewed nematicide against root-knot nematode — the worst soil-borne tomato pest in U.S. home gardens. Backed by UMass, Cornell, and USDA-ARS trials.
- Jade bush bean & French marigold
The same nematode suppression that protects the tomato roots benefits the bush-bean row two bands south of the N marigolds, and trials back that up for beans too.
- Black Seeded Simpson lettuce & Cherry Belle radish
Shallow-rooted lettuce shades the radish seedbed for the first two weeks of germination, then the radishes are pulled at 25 days before the lettuce sizes up.
Care notes
- This bed and its square-foot twin use the exact same seven crops in the exact same 4 × 8 ft footprint. Open both and compare the plant counts side by side — that's the whole lesson the pair is here to teach.
- Most of the plant count is radishes tucked into the gaps between slower crops. You pull them in about 25 days, long before the tomatoes and beans need the room.
- Stake or cage the two Romas the day you plant them. Roma is a determinate (no pruning needed), but a tomato cage keeps the fruit clean and the foliage off the soil.
- Direct-sow the beans, radish, and arugula; buy small transplants for the lettuce, tomatoes, basil, and marigolds at any garden center to skip seed-starting your first season.
- Water at the base, not the leaves — wet foliage is the #1 cause of tomato blight and lettuce rot in home gardens.
- Re-sow the radish row every 2–3 weeks until late May — Cherry Belle hits maturity in 25 days, so the same row produces 3–4 successions in a single spring.
- Lettuce and arugula bolt at the first sustained 80 °F days. Pull bolters and replant those slots with another round of bush beans, or let one or two run to flower for pollinator food.
- Pinch basil flower buds weekly to delay bolting; bolted basil loses the volatile oils that help keep pests off the tomatoes.
- Rotate the tomato slot off this bed for 3–4 years after this season — Solanaceae share soil-borne diseases (Verticillium, Fusarium, early-blight inoculum).
Add it to your garden
Creates a new 4′ × 8′ raised bed with every plant pre-placed at the positions above. You can move things around in the planner afterwards.