Normal people measure their gardens in feet or yards (which i am sure Nick has because I am about to show you to-scale graphs) but I prefer to measure the garden in fence lengths. Of course the fence lengths are uneven (usually between 4 and 8 ft), but it's a better visual for me. Our first summer here, our garden was 2 fence lengths by 4 fence lengths. Last summer, it was 3x5. This coming summer, it is going to be 4x6 and that is the maximum size for that location. Any deeper, and it'll be into the fire pit, any wider and it will envelop our fruit and nut trees (saplings, though they may be). If I were a betting woman, I'd wager that next year Nick will be begging me for a garden annex elsewhere in the yard because I refuse to let it grow any larger in it's current position.
In addition to simply expanding it, we also rotate the layout. Sometimes we do so because we found one plant impeded our access to another, or a certain plant didn't fare well in a certain spot. Sometimes we rotate to run away from dormant bugs, like the Colorado potato beetles that absolutely ruined last year's potato crop. But mostly we rotate because of soil nutrients and sheer love of variety.
Here is last year's garden layout:
And This coming year's layout (please note that fence posts are decorative and not for measurement purposes):
And, in case you were wondering why I bothered to color my own version of it here is Nick's idea of a blog-worthy garden diagram:
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