"It seems that it is highly recommended to plant peach trees in raised beds from the experience on this board. Does anyone have a good link or more detailed directions as far as how to do that? What type of soil do I need? How deep do I dig the hole? How high should the bed be?" For my peach trees I use mounds and terraces. It doesn't seem to make a difference how tall the mound is. Some of my mounds are 1' tall, others started out 4' tall (before settling). The peach trees do about the same either way. Some people enclose their raised beds with a raised border of some kind. I think that's fine too. I don't think it makes much difference what soil you use for the raised beds/mounds. Several years ago, I installed drain tiles in the orchard area (The drainage was horrid and I was tired of losing peach trees.) In places we had to excavate to a depth of 4' to install the tile. What we dug out was pure clay. I used this material for some of the mounds. The peach trees have done fine in the clay mounds. Per the above posts, I would only use mounds if the drainage is poor. But since you mention puddling, I strongly suspect you could benefit from raised beds/mounds. Mounds not only provide good drainage, they also loosen the dirt so there is minimal resistance for the roots to spread. Mulching on top keeps the soil moist longer into the growing season, further encouraging root growth. It's hard for peaches not to succeed when they have moist (but not overly wet) loose soil with no weed competition and plenty of sunshine. Here's a picture that's a couple years old. You can see some tall and shorter mounds. Some of the older trees aren't in mounds. The drainage tile helped them. Here's a pic of some terraces I built last fall for planting peaches this spring. By the way, I don't bother with mounds for more water tolerant trees like apple, pear and plum, unless the drainage is really bad.

The when is NOW! Perfect time, because as mentioned above, the heat will help compost down. I did sunn hemp last summer and doing it again this summer as my research found it to be the best at adding nitrogen, repelling nemotodes, and amending my sand (no soil here!). I'm sure that horse manure is great, but I don't have the means to transport that. So, last year, my first year of creating soil, I did a lot of leaves and alfalfa. I was pleased with the results. I have lots of compost and leaves this year, so skipping the expense of alfalfa (although I chose it because it was the cheapest). I'm still doing the sunn hemp. Becca

My first garden was created 5 years ago...we took off the sod, amended with compost, tilled and planted and mulched. It was a nightmare. I probably needed 60 times more compost, and never could have afforded it. The following two years I hated working in the garden because it was such hard work with the clay and many plants didn't thrive. I replanted areas many times and each time I would add more compost/mulch, whatever I could get my hands on. I also added a soil conditioner that was very expensive but works like gypsum...breaks down clay. (Who knows, maybe it WAS gypsum with a bigger price tag.) It's 6 years later now and I have to tell you that the garden is just a delight to work in now. I plan to spread gypsum a couple of times each year and continue mulching the beds, but I'm sure I'll never have to do all that double-digging like I did before....just keep on piling on the stuff like everyone wrote above, and before you know it, your beds will be as you need them to be. I also highly recommend that you search out plants that LIKE clay, so that your plantings will be successful. I spent many, many dollars buying plants that needed more drainage than I had and would die...and I wondered why. Some of those plants might do ok for me now in the same garden, but I think it's important to plant things that actually LIKE the ground that they are in today. Good Luck!

I am in the process of transplanting my water-rooted lavender to soil. I am using a combination of the methods described above + one other which I can't find, or I'd link to. I add wet soil to the container (wet so that the soil doesn't rise to the surface.) I add some pebbles to keep the soil down. The article that I can't find said to use soil withOUT fertilizer bec the fertilizer could burn the roots, but all I had when I decided to start this project, was soil with fertilizer, so that is what I'm using. The article said to daily pour out a little water, and add more wet soil. I am doing this every other day to give the roots more time to change over. It has been about 6 days -- so far so good. The method says after a week, see if the roots are rooted in soil, and if they are take the whole thing out and put in container with soil. I will let you know how it goes. appreciate all the advice given above.