Eloise Martindale

A lot depends on the plant varieties. Sunflowers have very heavy heads and may need to be tied up themselves. If you plant them in a row, you can use metal grid fencing and tie them ALL up to it. No need for the cucumbers to lay all over the ground. If you decide to do this, you may want to use a medium to small fruited cucumber. Enjoy! Experiment! Have Fun!

Looks like a great plan to me. You may want to add some Borage near your tomatoes. I have had no tomato horn worms since I started using Borage. I was amazed.

Ollas are terracotta pots with narrow necks, that are dug into the ground BEFORE planting the particular crop with which you are using them. They are not cheap. I have spent 3 years collecting enough for my use. I have used gallon ollas in the center of the hill of squash and pumpkins. The first time I tried it with pumpkins, I got a 25 lb. Musque de Provence, which is the maximum size they grow! I was impressed. I have also used long narrow ones in 15 gal. pots with Potatoes and small round ones with small melons. If you get gallon or larger, they will work with tomatoes as well.

They are durable, but need to be dug up and stored for the winter in any place with frost. If you are careful with them -- don't drop them on concrete, bang them into each other, let water freeze in them or bang into them with a shovel or hoe -- they should last about 3,000 years. It's the sort of thing archaeologists dig up.

I like them, but sometimes I have placed them in inconvenient places and had a hard time getting them filled with water. Keep this in mind when you decide where to locate them in relation to the path in your garden. Also, you need to insert a stone of appropriate size and shape in the top of the olla to keep mosquitoes out. This stone must be removed each time you fill with water, so keep the location within easy reach. I learned the hard way.

Scarlet Runner Beans come up from the fleshy roots every spring, so once established they just need something to grow up. That could be a bush or a twig Trellis or a wire grid etc. They bear well in cool and warm weather, but not in hot weather. Where I live in California they bear both before and after my regular green beans. They put out a lot of green beans in a small amount of space. They begin to die back when it gets cold and completely die to the ground when there is a frost. They do especially well in Great Britain.