Your best bet would be to double dig it and work some nutrients into that clay now and then mix some in with the top soil.....It's not an easy task but honestly I started off 5 years ago with the worst soil imaginable and Just yesterday I was marveling at the look of the soil in my beds....my raised beds.....but I made the beds long before the sides were put on them....and the dirt is really nice now. Lots of grass clippings and leaves go on top as mulch and and then later they are worked into the soil. Oh did I mention that I have a bunny I got from freecycle and he makes me plenty of poop for my beds.......I feed him good and let him romp around on my deck and he makes me fertilizer to help break down the grass clippings and leaves.

Our club is considering planting a vegetable garden and donating the food to the local food pantry. Very cool. I was going to use raised beds but no more than 6 inches high as it gets very hot and dry in our area in the middle of the summer and so it might be too hard to keep them from drying out. The deeper the beds are the less often they need to be watered. Water in the top 2-3 inches will dry from evaporation, but below that it won't so it only goes dry as plants use it unless there is an extreme drought in which case it may dry down further. How big a garden would be sufficient to donate, initially, a few hundred pounds of produce. Yikes, I dunno as I never have weighed things. A few hundred pounds sounds like a a lot, but a tomato will weigh much more than a pepper. Rather than worry about how much you have to donate, why not focus instead on the area you and your club can actually handle attending to? Secondly, does anyone find it easier to build the beds first and then dig and amend the soil inside the box, or till the whole area first and then place the boxes, adding more amendments on top of the tilled soil. We have heavy clay. Save yourself a lot of work and don't dig the ground at all. 6" of good growing depth is enough for all the plants you mentioned. They will grow deeper if they wish. You really don't need to do anything at all to the ground under the beds. I have heavy clay and my beds are 8" framed with around 6" of growing depth over the clay. Clay is actually really good for growing things provided it doesn't get compacted or dry out to the point it becomes brick like. Under 6" of growing beds that aren't walked on this won't happen. Lastly, how easy is it to use a raised bed without borders, just mounded soil. Does the bed decrease in size over the summer with soil running off This depends entirely on the rain run off. If the garden is in an area with significant run off you want to frame the beds to prevent run off. If run off isn't a major issue you can just mound the soil and have no frames.

A followup on my garden - I've been having lots of problems with the new garden beds I built with the manure amended soil I purchased earlier this year (see post in January). I was seeing weird growth, like a virus, but it was affecting only plants in beds with the new soil. After doing some research and speaking to the Extension office - it seems that my nice soil which had been amended with cow manure apparently is contaminated with Grazon - an herbicide used on animal hay because it kills pigweed and other broad-leaved weeds. It doesn't hurt the cows, passes right through them into the manure. The manure takes anywhere from a year to several to lose the toxicity of the herbicide... So, instead of terrific beans, cowpeas, potatoes, etc. I have twisted and deformed plants... I'm hoping to let others know about this phenomena - it's apparently well-known in the industry. Too bad I didn't know... Cindy Here is a link that might be useful: Warning about herbicides in manures...

I've been pondering on how to replace the raised beds that I'm currently taking out; the lumber is rotten, and...I guess inhabited by a colony of carpenter ants. Not in a hurry to put any new wood back there. I thought about making new raised beds out of concrete block, but decided that was yukky. (heavy, could be spendy) I'm not ready to commit to anything very permanent anyway, so for this year...my plan is to make temporary raised beds out of the hardwire fencing I've been using to compost. When the texture of the compost gets so fine that it falls out of the wire cage, I line the bins with landscaping fabric, and attach it with zip ties. With the raised beds, my plan is to cut the fabric into strips...to whatever depth I need the dirt to be. I can use lenths of rebar to stake the fencing in place, without bulging too much. Could plant directly in the ground around the bins on the south and west side, to protect them from direct sunlight, to keep the soil cooler. Keeping potted plants there might work too. I'd keep the north and east sides clear, so there's a place to walk...need access with the wheelbarrow, and so on. For composting, I make round bins... But there's no reason they couldn't be bent into rectangles, or whatever shape is needed. When I empty one, I just flip it over and step on it to make it flat again. They slide right under my deck for easy storage. When I bring home a new load of mulch, pine straw, leaves, or whatever...I bend them back into a circle - takes a few minutes. I yank them off the hot piles all the time, dump the contents back in - its a fast way to flip the piles, those bins are easy to move around, very handy. Mine have a green coating, which blends right into the landscape when they are empty. I often run into them when they are like that, I can't even see them... but with landcape fabric around them, navigation is much safer. My roll of fence is 5'feet tall, but its easy to cut with wire cutter...very customizable. I like this idea, because it leaves plenty of options open. At the end of the season, I could pull the bins up...rake everything level, and plant a cover crop there. Could leave them in place, move them over... and ammend the soil when it goes back in. To extend the growing season a little, one might slide lengths of flexible pvc over the rebar to make hoops... cover the whole thing with 6mm plastic, make a mini greenhouse. I'm going to try making double walled bins, and stuff the resulting 'wall' between them with a layer of straw. That should keep the soil cooler in the summer, warmer during the winter. (I'm talking myself into this as I go...can you tell?) The disclaimer is...I don't really know if any of this will work in practice, but it sounds good in theory. Sounds like David has been doing something similar, and he's saying his dirt didn't freeze last winter? That encourages me even more... Maybe the best part, the materials are cheap! In my case, FREE...since I've got everything here already. It might cost me a new roll of landscape fabric, but thats nothing compared to what it would cost to build new beds out of redwood or cedar. Composite, even more spendy. No major committment from me is required, since its all temporary. If I want to try something different next year, I can just flip them over, step on them, and slide them under the deck. And the ants can't set up huge colonies in them, which is always a bonus. Speaking of carving out huge colonies, I better get to sleep if I want to work on this tomorrow. There's snow in the forecast, so there's extra work to do before it shows up. Brick by brick...weather permitting. Leslie in CO