The row's center is about 3 feet from the edge of the raised bed. In March I sow my very first salad greens down half this row—mostly assorted leaf lettuce plus some spinach—and six closely spaced early Seneca Hybrid zucchini plants. The greens are all cut by mid-June; by mid-July my better-quality Yellow Crookneck squash come on, so I pull the zucchini. Then I till that entire row, refertilize, and sow half to rutabagas. The nursery bed of leek seedlings has gotten large enough to transplant at this time, too. These go into a trench dug into the other half of the row. The leeks and rutabagas could be reasonably productive located farther from the sprinklers, but no vegetables benefit more from abundant water or are more important to a self-sufficient kitchen. Rutabagas break the winter monotony of potatoes; leeks vitally improve winter salads, and leeky soups are a household staple from November through March.
Row 2: Semi-Drought Tolerant Brassicas
Row 2 gets about half the irrigation of row 1 and about one-third as much as the raised bed, and so is wider, to give the roots more room. One-third of the row grows savoy cabbage, the rest, Brussels sprouts. These brassicas are spaced 4 feet apart and by summer's end the lusty sprouts form a solid hedge 4 feet tall.
Row 3: Kale
Row 3 grows 125 feet of various kales sown in April. There's just enough overspray to keep the plants from getting gnarly. I prefer kale to not get very stunted, if only for aesthetics: on my soil, one vanity fertigation about mid-July keeps this row looking impressive all summer. Other gardens with poorer soil might need more support. This much kale may seem an enormous oversupply, but between salads and steaming greens with potatoes we manage to eat almost all the tender small leaves it grows during winter.
Row 4: Root Crops
Mostly carrots, a few beets. No irrigation, no fertigation, none needed. One hundred carrots weighing in at around 5 pounds each and 20-some beets of equal magnitude make our year's supply for salads, soups, and a little juicing.
Row 5: Dry-Gardened Salads
This row holds a few crowns of French sorrel, a few feet of parsley. Over a dozen giant kohlrabi are spring sown, but over half the row grows endive. I give this row absolutely no water. Again, when contemplating the amount of space it takes, keep in mind that this endive and kohlrabi must help fill our salad bowls from October through March.