When I am picking where to place vegetables in my raised garden bed, what is the rule of thumb in terms of the larger, taller plants on what side to avoid them shading the other one's as much as possible.
In my two 4x6 feet (121 cm by 182cm) beds I want to plant, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, beets, green beans, peas, and zucchini. What is the optimal layout? The beds are 11 inches or 28 cm deep.
EDIT: The long side is on the East-West Axis and Width (4 feet) North-south
Unless you have room for the zucchini to wander outside of the raised bed, you may want to forget about them because they'll take an entire bed and then demand more room.
I would probably lay the beds out something like this (plant count is speculative, of course); the drawing is to scale:
I put the tomatoes and peppers together so that you can rotate them out of one bed into the other every other year to help prevent disease. Disease prevention is also why I spaced them a foot apart - better airflow that way. The peas are on the north side of the bed.
The second bed assumes that you like carrots and beets equally; also, you'll want to eventually space each plant about 3" apart, which leaves you with no more than 16 carrots and 16 beets per row. If you don't need more than that, and if the beans in the first bed are enough for you, then you could maybe put a bush zucchini in 60% of the second bed.
I laid out the root crop rows north-south, which some sources say decreases overall shade on the rows. Other sources say it doesn't matter. If you want to change orientation, then put the beans in the last row, the carrots in the middle, and the beets in front. Note that beans may need support to prevent them from falling into the neighboring crops (mine usually do).
If you want three tomatoes, you could put the tomatoes in the back row of one bed, fronted by four peppers, and the root crops in the second bed. There would probably not be enough room for zucchini, though.
One last thing - mulch the beds!
