Inventory, Planning & "Companion Planting"

The seedlings are doing well - most are nearly ready to plant.  Now I need to take an accurate inventory of what I'm growing and lay out a garden plan.  I'll start with the inventory.  This will change once I eliminate some of the seedlings.  I'll be giving them to friends and neighbors as I simply can't plant all of them in my garden. Container gardens have limited space, so a well thought out plan is vital.

Inventory
9 Green Peppers
9 Red Peppers
9 Salsa (medium heat) Peppers
9 Jalapeno Peppers
9 Eggplant
10 Roma Tomatoes
8 Beefsteak (Big Boy) Tomatoes
9 Cherry Tomatoes
12 Tenderpod Green Beans
6 Heavyweight Green Beans
8 Pumpkins
1 Cantaloupe
4 Romanesco Broccoli
5 Watermelon
9 Strawberry - various types


Now that I have my fruit and vegetable inventory, I need to figure out which companion plants will work well.  What is "companion planting" and why should I use it?  There was a time when the Indians from North America planted corn, pole beans and squash together, the beans were nitrogen-fixers, the corn acted as a support for the bean plants and the squash was like a natural mulch (the spiny vine also prevented raccoons from entering the corn field). This method of planting one or more corps in close vicinity for the purpose of extracting mutual advantage is termed as companion planting.

To start, I'm going to refer to this handy dandy list of companion plants to lay out my garden plan.  The list says that I should plant tomatoes with peppers and my beans with my eggplant.  That is going to be a little tricky as I'd planned originally to do the opposite, but I want the best possible benefit for my plants, so I'll have to add some additional containers for the extra tomatoes I plan to grow.  We eat a lot of tomatoes and I wanted to try my hand at making and canning my own sauce from the Roma tomatoes.  The pumpkins and watermelon are going to be planted in the ground in a sunny spot on my property.   There, dear handy husband JJ will be setting up a nice support system for them to climb on and they'll have plenty of room to spread out.  We could use the ground cover, too.  The Romanesco Broccoli plants were not started from seed.  Those are coming from a supplier in a couple of weeks and will be planted in separate pots companioned with  some geraniums and rosemary (should be very pretty!).  Because I wanted a special kind of cantaloupe, I also purchased that as a plant from a supplier.  Also arriving in a couple of weeks.  I was thinking of planting that with the melons and pumpkins and then doing a row of corn behind for them to climb on.  Still fussing with that idea, though as I'm taking on a lot as a first time gardener.  I'll let you know what I decide and, of course, if it works :).  The strawberries will all go into two gorgeous large strawberry pots made by Burley Clay.  They're the best pots you can get and well worth the expense, if you ask me.  I have 9 holes and the top to fill in each pot, so I'll probably have to buy another 12 or more strawberry plants from my local greenhouse once they get them in.  Should be any day now!


Was that everything?  I'm pretty sure that was everything.  Now comes the hard part and I'm going to have to think on this for a few days.  How many plants of each type to plant in my containers?  Here are the two large raised plant trays that I have set up.   If any of you can offer any advice, I'd welcome it as this is the hardest part for me.  :)  Thanks for reading and commenting!