Paths and garden growing

One question I don't really see asked is how wide paths should be between raised beds. I don't actually have an answer. I like to use a 3' wide path, but once the plants start growing there is no path left. And this is just potatoes and kohlrabi. A 4' wide main path is wide enough for walking now (the zucchini only takes up about half the space), but that's partly since onions are well behaved and beets don't stick out more than a foot or so. In the tomato area, I left 5' between rows, and there's just about enough space to walk; at least half the plants have stuck branches several feet out into the path. I've done hard pruning of the tomatoes at the ends where there's a 3' path, so I can walk, but a couple of days later there's another branch in my face.

The squash of course have eaten the path, and are invading everywhere. All that plenty-of-space was nothing like enough. The cucumbers are invading the onions, the melons are overwhelming the tomatatillos, which are leaning over to menace the peppers; those poor peppers that have a 5' high wall of squash vines massing on their border.

But I'm happy that all the plants are happy, and we can eat as much zucchini as we want, the potatoes are ready, there's cucumbers, beans, beets, onions and all sort of good things to eat.