I like a combination of fine redwood bark (sold as mulch), home made or bagged compost, and clay cat litter or Napa Aui\to Parts Oil Absorbent (part #8822). You can read more about the mix on the container forum. Roots grow best in the intersection between water and air and a chunkier mix with good water retention encourages healthy root growth and everything else follows from that. I kind of stumbled into the mix of chunky stuff years ago. For years I used chopped garden waste along with compost and clay cat litter, but getting the right mix of garden waste that would last an entire season without completely breaking down was always hit and miss. Then I stumbled on Al's information on the container forum and the redwood bark which is cheap here in California turned out to be a great replacement. I've just started experimenting with the Oil Absorbent in place of cat litter. The peat moss and vermiculite additions are not very useful although they are traditional. The peat moss is hard to wet and doesn't provide for the light, porous mixture that promotes root growth (and is not a sustainable choice, either). The vermiculite breaks down very rapidly so that it provides little value and is quite expensive to boot. Additionally, I dump leaves and clippings between the plants to compost in place and dump kitchen waste into small holes that I make in random spots. My tomatoes grow to about 14-16 feet tall (there's a pergola overhead for support), so I must be doing something right. Here is a link that might be useful: Al's Container Soil

Thanks Carol, sea myrtle sounds cool; think I'll keep it around. I found some packages of Ball freezer boxes awhile back in a thrift store; so I've been blanching and freezing green mixtures for a bit now. Need to do some more this week. I put greens in just about everything. Later this week I'm going to make a crockpot lasagna where I use layered green in lieu of pasta for the lower layers. I will let you all know how it turns out. I'm am so pleased to be having tomatoes getting ripe. Starting tomato seed in November turned out to be one of my better bright ideas. It was just a few pots so carrying them in and out wasn't too much. Having early tomatoes now is so worth it. The fountain is so nice, can't wait to get all finished around it. Hopefully today I will bring home a few small pond fish. I moved some of the bright lites chard over near the fountain. It was going anyway from being in full sun; so it will be interesting to see if it stays perennial in the dappled sun. And for now, it brings some color to the area. I've also got some Florida Variegated Collards that I'm going to plant over here and see how they do. They are also suppose to be perennial. Not that I think they would taste all that good in August. Thanks for the compliments everybody .... blush ~dianne

Thank you, all, for your responses, I greatly appreciate them. Let me see if I can hit on each of your questions. The box is 69" long x 24" wide, and 18.5" deep (these are the inside dimensions). The whitish stuff around the base is the native soil, a hard clay. We dug up the grass in the area where we planned to put the bed, tilled the clay somewhat, and set the bed down on that spot. We did not put down any barriers between the bed and the clay. I plan on growing vegetables - mostly tomatoes and peppers, hence the depth of the bed. I'm honestly not entirely sure if I'll start vegetables now, given that it's already the end of August - I'm thinking that, maybe for now through autumn I'll just do some late-season annual flowers, just to have something there, and then start my veggies next spring. Since the native clay is pretty useless for growing what I want to grow, we bought soil to fill the bed. My husband (God love him) hates to spend much money on anything, and most of the soils available at the store were between $4 and $11 per bag. My husband was not keen on this. So I did some online research. I read somewhere that you can mix topsoil with compost 1:1 to make a good gardening soil. Both the topsoil and compost were selling for around $2 per bag. I hate cheaping out on stuff as important as soil type, but it was the only way to get my husband on board, so I'm really hoping this mix works. I forget how many bags of each we bought (the receipt is lying around somewhere), but when we mixed in the last few bags into the bed, I noticed that the soil level was considerably low (as shown in the picture). I commented that we needed more soil. My husband argued that he wasn't shelling out any more money on dirt. On another trip to Home Depot for something else, I finally managed to convince him to get more soil. So the soil level is higher now - not quite the 2" from the top that I've read is ideal, but better than it was before. The fence is going to provide some shade in the morning, yes, but once the sunlight clears the fence, the bed will have many hours of full sun. I didn't want to put the bed in the middle of the yard because I want to keep as much open space as possible for the dogs to run around. As an aside, the other reason the bed is as high as it is is because my male dog loves to pee on everything, and I didn't want him peeing on my plants; so, I made the bed high enough so he can't reach them. *chaparralgirl*

Well as Ken said, better mulch would help. I have found that if you gently pull the the top spreading threads back to the main plant, then you will actually have to dig it up getting all the roots. I know. I dug up ajuga ground cover which I had planted several years earlier. Wow, it was a nightmare. I am convinced I injured my shoulder permanently digging and pulling it out! And in spite of this, I am finding small pieces all over. :-( Lesson learned! debra