It really depends on how many of each of those you plan to plant. If you limit yourself to one each of the squashes you can probably do it. The carrots are going to take up a good amount of space. I have never had a lot of luck with trellising my squashes, but others on this forum have. Bush beans also take up a good amount of room. I would very carefully plot things out before you plant, and check with the square foot gardening forum for how many of each things to plant in a square foot. I think beans are like 9 a square foot and squashes are 1 per 2-3 square feet or something. Sorry i can't remember off the top of my head.

Hi Lynn, love your adobe look walls in the front and your view in the back is wonderful. I'm glad you plan on preserving your view in the back and think it's great that you're thinking of water conservation. Since you're close to Santa Fe I hope you've been to High Country Gardens/Santa Fe greenhouse. I've been buying plants mail order from them for fifteen years and I understand they have some great waterwise landscaping at thier store in Santa Fe. In this month(Sept.) issue of Sunset magazine there is a Santa Fe landscape with adobe walls and a planter against the wall like what you are talking about. It does have a lot of plants in the ground also but it is a great backyard landscape by Wilder Landscaping. Your idea of all raised planters sounds very attractive and ambitious. I know you where conscerned about the heat situation with all that masonry. All your walls would act as a heat sink collecting the warmth during the day and then radiating it out at night. You would have cooler temperatures in the mornings from the walls and warmer temperatures at night. About the planters using less water I can't get around this idea. Planters because they are exposed to the hot summer air on the sides as well as from overhead actually heat up the soil more than in ground plantings. This makes them use more water not less. Of course you are talking about other issues too such as ease of planting and not having to deal with your rocky soil. Mulch is a great way to help keep soil cooler and use less water, rock mulch for more deserty type plants and organic mulch for others. And your shade trees will really cool things off for you too. If you use plants well adapted to your area you could really keep your water use down and not have to feel like you need all the planters.

Actually, several professional websites say that they have used ALL perlite and NO sand, without any loss of strength. I haven't tried that yet. I'm not sure if they use perlite of all one size, or a mix of sizes to fill in the tiny gaps in the mix to make it more dense. Adding some silica flume might help with strength, too, but many people don't want to give away all their hard-won secrets. YOU are the one who determines how much water is added to any mix. I know you've seen concrete "poured", but that kind of pourable mix is too liquid for the way we mostly use it around here. It's okay for 4" thick slabs, but not for what we do. Just like you would with tufa, you add water carefully so it doesn't get too sloppy. More water than you need will weaken the concrete, as will not enough. In fact, I would say that nearly all the rules that apply to tufa (with the exception of the addition of organic ingredients) also apply to concrete (regular or lightweight). You want a fairly stiff mix (relatively speaking), that is neither too dry (crumbles when you squeeze a handful) nor too wet (drips, or slumps too much). A test handful that you squeeze should retain its shape well, but still be malleable enough to do as you want. Before you start this fairly large, complicated project, I hope you try a few small experiments of a similar nature. Since you're using mesh, form a section like you will be doing in your project, and fill/apply the mix. Discover what kind of mix is best for YOUR project. See how it handles, and if you should be doing something some other way, find the easiest tools to use for packing and shaping. What you THINK should work doesn't always happen, and you have to change your plan fast. Try to do it on a small experiment rather than a big project. Discovering a mistake with a wheelbarrow load of mix that's ready to go can get you peeved in a hurry. Besides, then you have to stop and dig a big hole to dump the mix into..... Sue

Under the new deck - as you prepare the area, establish good basic drainage. There are a lot of ways to do that, but the easiest is with the final grade. Using a geomembrane/weedblock fabric is a sound idea. If it is well covered (the deck will do a lot of that) then a good quality membrane should last a decade or more. The cover over the membrane should be something that won't give new weed seeds that will find there way into that zone a foothold for germination. Rather than sand, I would suggest stone or gravel for that reason. The new raised bed -- the soil you are going to move is full of natural weed seeds. Practically, there isn't much you can do about that. It will continue to support germination whenever the conditions are right. As a bed it will also get new seeds from the surrounding environment. Once the bed is built, then a good mulch layer of 2-3 inches will help minimize new weed germination. But like all exposed beds, there will be weeds. For moving the soil to the new raised bed, you can just dig up the old, turn it over and put it in the new bed. Covering it with newspaper or a good mulch will prevent new germination, but when that cover is removed for planting then you face the same old problem. A different strategy, but more work, is to turn over or till the soil after it's in the new bed location, leave it exposed and then cultivate every week or two to disrupt newly germinated seedlings. The object here is to deplete the included weeds seeds by encouraging germination, then destroy the seedlings by cultivation, over and over again, until it's planted, then mulch.