I like sinfonian's boxes...nice & deep. Well made too. Anyway, all new lumber is pricey these days, and weather resistant woods like cedar or redwood are the priciest. Even pressure-treated boards are something like 7 - 10 bucks for each 2x6x8ft board. And some people have issues with pressure-treated wood and vegetable gardening. Since it is Winter and you have a few months til Spring, keep your eyes peeled for people recycling wood from decks or houses or barns or whatever. In VA you're unlikely to find any redwood but you may get lucky and find some usable lumber sometimes for free or cheap. That's how I do it. It is quite interesting what people are happy to get rid of. Check craigslist or local newspaper classifieds or check out house demolitions or ask around. You can also use less weather resistant types of wood...they just won't last as long. But they will be cheaper. Or find another way to keep your soil contained...reinforce old pallets, use cinder blocks, etc. From what I know of TREX, it is easy to work with and I'm not sure it would bow more than any other wood since you're just using it to contain dirt not support the weight of dirt. But it is probably pricey. It would look pretty darn sharp though. And it would last for many many years. I built my deck with new redwood. A couple years later I found a person giving away lots of redwood from an old deck and rented a truck and took that home and used it for planter boxes and raised beds for me & my friend. That was sweet! Good luck.

1. Can/should I stain the 1x12 wood? Yes you may. Do you want to? probably not for edible crops. I use regular fir 2x10 lumber, with no treatment (you'll probably have fir, not pine as you mentioned). I'm on my second year now and there is absolutely no sign of rot. The wood changed from.. 'wood' colour to a beautiful silver. I expect at least 5 years of service, at which point i'll unscrew and replace the wood as necessary. Wood where I am from is cheap.. about $6.00 for a 12' 2x10. 2. Can/should I use Thompsons Water Seal on the wood? Again, you may - but I wouldn't. It's a chemical you don't need in your food. Wood that is in direct contact with the soil is still going to rot. Thompson's might prolong that a bit, but it's not magic. Skip it. 3. I also have a large pile of leaves/grass/compost the corner of my yard that I was thinking of lying down on the bottom 2-3" or so of my vegetable garden on top of a layer of cardboard. Should I use that pile of leaves and grass that is semi-composted on the bottom of my vegetable bed? Sure, spread it out among your beds, mix it with the soil you're putting in there. It'll help condition your soil. You don't need the cardboard. 4. What is your best suggestion for a top soil? Compost is your base, then you can add materials as necessary to improve drainage, retention etc. You can use mushroom manure (which is actually spent soil from the cultivation of mushrooms) It lacks in the big nutrients like NPK, but remains high in the trace and mineral nutrients. Add some additional fertilizer or mix with the compost in your yard - get's better with age.

So funny! You people will never win! Why take it upon yourself to micromanage a job, sourcing material one place and labor from another, if you don't know good from bad in either case! If you paid one contractor $16K to do the floors, you would have a case. But the way you went about the job, you took on responsibility of the general contractor. You should blame the installers for using the defective product. They are the ones with a license, right? 1. you can't measure. 2. your installers do crappy work. 3. you paid them extra for their crappy job. 4. nobody, not you or your installers noticed any defects with the product until after most of the installation was complete? Had anybody ever done this before? HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!

Before you decide on Trex or any other composite for that matter take my advice and do more research! We completed our 430 sq. ft. deck a week ago and originally had planned to use Trex but after a lot of reading we decided to use ipe instead. Ipe was only a little more money but it gave us the option to do a little yearly work to keep its rich color or to do absolutely nothing to it and let it turn the same silver that most composites end up turning in time. We live in a neighborhood of many similar houses and wanted ours to be different. The area is very wooded and very natural looking so we wanted a rich, natural wood addition to our backyard. The deck is built around a spa so we were also concerned with splinters, ipe has a very tight grain and doesn't splinter at all. We were also looking for longevity, we plan to stay here for a while and don't want to be doing this again ever. Our biggest issue with Trex (other than the mildew spotting that can't be removed, the cracking/splitting, and horrible customer service issues that many people have with it) was that when it fades the only thing you can do to get the original color back is replace it. Our neighbors just used it on their deck and love the way it looks, today anyway, in 5 years when its color has completely faded we'll see what they think. As for the environmental impact of using ipe, this is my opinion and is probably quite debatable in a forum like this. It makes more sense to use up wood that will last 40+ years once than wood that lasts 15 years multiple times or composite wood made using petroleum and will likely be replaced (and put in a landfill never to rot or degrade) by real wood within that same timeframe. For us it was easy to justify the extra money for ipe.