Eliot Coleman recommends 30 inch wide beds, with 12 inch wide paths. So I'm sure it's a good choice, depending on what you're growing. A lot of people, including him, also recommend 4 foot wide beds, to get the maximum amount of growing space, while still being able to reach the middle of the beds. I obsess over bed widths and spacing every time I start new ones, and always end up using the 4 foot width for maximum growing space. This year, I'm designing for 4 foot widths and 1 foot paths. But I may not completely expand my beds this year to take up the full 4 feet. So I'll have a little more path space. But it still leaves me the option to fill out the entire 4 feet, without having to start over.

Sounds lovely!! I would recommend that you build up the borderless beds higher, or amend your soil underneath before you put on the compost layer because I think a 2 inch growing layer above clay soil isn't enough for veggies. Maybe you could till the 2" layer of compost into your soil, then add another layer of a topsoil/compost blend on top of that to build up the height, and lightly till. You may also want to consider laying the drip tape beneath the hay mulch layer. I love your idea of string markers, I've been doing that in my veggie beds and it makes planning a lot easier. I just remove the string once everything is established. Good luck and happy growing!

The Samuel Roberts Nobel Foundation in Ardmore has conducted all kinds of research on raised beds the last 10 or 12 years or more. Their research is generally aimed at serious home gardeners or market growers. I've linked their "Permanent Raised Bed" handbook below. It is worth viewing just for the photos alone. They show several of the newer ways they have built and tested raised beds in recent years, using some materials you may never have considered before. Based on the material used in one of those types of beds (rubber tire "lumber"), I don't think they're especially focused on organic gardening, but I concede that not everyone is focused on using organic techniques. This is a long "article" and you can arrow through using the arrows at the left and right of each page. The Noble Foundation is a leader worldwide in all kinds of agricultural research, but using their website can require a lot of patience because it is not necessarily easy to find what you're searching for there, even when you know it is there. I've watched their research on the galvanized metal beds for years, but the other two are more recent research projects and I haven't read about them before. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Raised Bed Gardening Guide from The Noble Foundation

I didn't start out to grow so much, it just kind of happened. I was also a military wife and planted small gardens and flower beds in a lot of different climates as we moved from place to place. When we finally retired, I wanted a garden, but we lived in southern Oklahoma at the time and I had only red clay. Although I tried to improve it, I never got it the way I wanted it. When we moved to Grove, I cleared a corner of the back yard, which had once been a garden, but was then a lawn, and I planted a small garden. The soil was really good and it did well. The garden did so well, that I wanted it to be larger, then larger, then larger, until it now takes up the entire back yard. Some Springs we get a lot of rain, and in the beginning, I had such mud that I have had it pull my shoes off when I tried to walk in it. I sometimes had to rescue tomato plants that appeared to be swimming, by digging a trench to drain off the water. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of trees and many people burn their leaves. Some of them now know that they can just dump the leaves in my north yard. One guy has a huge lot and he just drives here on his lawn mower with his 4x4x4 grass catcher, and dumps them for me. He loves it because he doesn't have to burn them. I love it because he doesn't have to burn them. I not only hate the smoke, but they are great for my garden. I also buy mushroom compost by the pickup load, and I have chickens. Although I still get rain, I just don't have the mud problem that I once had. At first, I only grew what I thought we could eat fresh because that is what I had always done since I had small gardens and we moved so much. What I discovered was that there were so many great things to grow, that I wanted to grow them all. LOL I wanted the great taste of fresh produce, I wanted food that hadn't been sprayed with dangerous chemicals, and most of all I just wanted to learn how to grow as many things as I could. I think our economy stinks, and is going down hill each year, so I wanted to learn to be self-sufficient in the event I needed that skill. Although I plant mostly in the ground, I have 3 raised beds that I use for early crops. One now has asparagus so I can control the moisture level, and I normally plant salad crops in another so I'm not growing them in the Spring mud. This year the third bed is filled with the first onions I planted. I covered it with row cover as soon as I planted because we have a neighborhood cat that thinks any box is just for him. As far as costs go, I consider gardening a hobby, and a health benefit and a lot more exciting than a gym membership. As my gardening skills improved, my soil improved, and I practiced growing more things, I found myself with all of this food. I can't stand to see it wasted, so we freeze it, can it, and eat it. If I had more space, I would grow even more, because I like doing it. I could garden for less money than I spend, but I am no longer young and I have some health issues so I need to do things in the smartest way that I can. Like George, I buy Lee Valley tools. I have others as well, but it is the Lee Valley that I normally reach far. My daughter-in-law says that my shovel is so heavy, that you just hold it up and drop it instead of pushing it into the ground. LOL When I have big purchases to make, I just buy in quantity, but buy for several years. Once you have a hoop bender, then it is cheap to make all of the hoops that you need. One year, I bought 500 feet of row cover which I am still using. I can usually get several years use out of each piece. If it gets holes in it, it is still useful. It is good enough to use over the raised bed that the cat likes, or to lay over the tops of plants that are under a poly low tunnel if we get excessively cold weather, or even to wrap around the sides of a CRW tomato cage to keep sharp winds off small plants. One year I had pepper plants until after Thanksgiving by surrounding the bed with row cover and putting a piece of greenhouse plastic just over the top part of the plants. There was plenty of air flow, but it still provided protection from the harsh cold wind. I still have plenty of unused row cover to use for a few more years. Last year I bought greenhouse plastic that was 100 feet by 10 feet. It is perfect for use on low tunnels since conduit comes in ten foot lengths. With the conduit pushed into the ground, the ten foot poly works just great. I only needed about a third of that last year, and even that piece is still good enough to use again. I need to learn to grow more herbs. I am fine with basil, dill, cutting celery, parsley and things like that, but struggle with others. They may get too much moisture, but I'm working on building a new VERY raised bed to try again. If you saw the location of my garden, you would wonder how I can grow anything because I have trees and buildings all around. Oklahoma has such brutal summers that the shade seems to help, and the buildings seem to take winds mostly over my garden instead of whipping through at ground level, so I think that extends my Fall growing. Even in the same State, we have many different growing conditions and just like a flower that 'will bloom where it's planted', we have to take what we have available to us and make it work, and just 'bloom where we are planted'. Every year I learn more about my garden. Last year I lost a tree which made a difference, so I have to adjust for that. Everyone has waste, whether it is paper, cardboard, kitchen scraps, chicken pen cleanings, hay, etc. If you don't, your neighbors do. Just get creative and you can make your soil better for gardening. Spend money if you have it, and want to spend it on gardening, but even if you don't, you can still grow a few things and learn a lot....and most of all..have fun.