I built my raised beds two years ago. I went with concrete blocks (the decorative kind). That first year, I laid out the beds and bought enough block to go all the way around each bed one time. Since my garden is on a slope, it actually ended up being enough for the front of the beds to have two rows of blocks. Last year, the blocks were on sale for $1.09 at Lowe's, so I added the same number of blocks again, which made the beds now four blocks high in front. This translates into more than a foot deep, though the lower height worked well too. I dug and tilled the soil under each bed before I built the edges. That way, the plant roots could go deeper than my beds were that first year. As I dug the footers and levelled out the paths, I threw that extra soil into the beds too. Then when all the beds were constructed, I got two trailer loads of manure/bedding from our local rodeo stable/showplace/Ag Center for FREE. I also emptied my considerably large compost pile into the beds, mixing it all together. I could have gone to my city landfill and gotten all the compost I wanted from there free for the loading. Like all new enterprises, there were happy surprises and not such happy surprises. As it turns out, horse manure is absolutely the best conditioner for heavy clay soil I have used to date. Within two or three weeks, it was hard to believe it was the same soil. It was soft and crumbly and black. As it turns out, the sawdust bedding that was mixed into the manure tied up the nitrogen in the soil for most of the first gardening season. Just this once, Miracle Gro came to the rescue. My season is so long, I can plant three crops in most of my beds each year. That first year, each time I pulled out a crop for replanting, I added bagged composted manure and/or leaves, compost, etc to the beds and turned it all under with a spade. By the second year, I had such fine loamy soil, it was amazing. BUT... That beautifully well drained soil dried out extremely fast in my hot MS summers, even with a 3 inch layer of pinestraw mulch over the beds. Last year, the second year, I dug a bail of peat moss into each bed. That really seemed to help the moisture situation. I have been contemplating soaker hoses too. The problem I see is the length of hose between the beds. I know that you can add closed tubing between the beds so that the water is not lost into the paths. This would be pretty important. I would definitely keep the hose on top of the soil. Maybe you can bring it into your beds under the sides. My past experience with soaker hoses is that they are all too easy to damage when you are digging, hoeing, and especially when you are lifting them for storage during the winter. AND they never seem to go back down in the same way again. Oh yeah, now I remember: I hate the things, but maybe you won't. The first year, I used overhead sprinklers. That used WAY too much water for my little beds, plus it turned my (mulched) paths to muck. The second year, I just hand watered with the hose. I rather enjoyed it, but then again, it does take alot of time. This year, I am going to try setting jugs of water with pin holes in the bottoms on the top of the soil around my plants and see if I like that way better. If you have a rain barrel, which I am also contemplating, this would be a pretty easy way to irrigate, I'm THINKING. Lord have mercy, I don't recommend landscape fabric in any garden, and most especially not in veggie gardens. The stuff is a nightmare. First of all, the worst perennial weeds (like nut sedge, for one) will not be stopped by it. They will just puncture that stuff and come right on up through it. Second, you have to cut holes in it to set your plants in the soil. So, next year, what if you want to rotate your crops (a good idea) and therefore need to put different spaced plants in there? Before you know it, your fabric is just full of holes (not to mention what happens when you forget it and stick a spade in it). So then, it has to be replaced. Oh brother. That stuff ways 20 tons when it is covered with mulch, and it always tears apart as you are sweating and fuming and trying to get it up. MULCH is the best way to control weeds I have ever found. I know it doesn't work in every part of the country, but I would surely ask some questions! You can put worms in your beds if you want to. I have done that. But I guarantee they'll find their way in whether you do or don't. If you put compost in there, they'll come with the compost. I wouldn't count on the screen keeping pill bugs out..but they ought to keep voles and moles away. Sorry this is so long. I include a link with pictures. If you click on a picture, it gets larger. Here is a link that might be useful: Pics of my vegetable garden

Well, sounds like most of you are going to jump all over me. But I crunched the numbers and went for the synthetic (polyester) pine straw. I put it over weed cloth in my flowerbeds in 2004 and it still looks great. It and the weedcloth have cut my weeding time by about 98%. The artificial straw contains no molds, diseases nor insects. My beds are on high ground, and the straw stays put. There is one area that gets a lot of leaves. For that, I take the straw out on the lawn on a lovely day, sit on my rolling garden wagon and shake the leaves out, bagging the cleaned straw as I go. Then I blow any remaining debris off the weed cloth and replace the straw. I understand that they now have a glue that one sprays over newly installed texstraw so that you can use a blower to get the leaves off without disturbing the straw. That might work if your planting were all perennials and you weren't planning on new plants for a while. When I want to add a plant, I simply remove the straw from that area, cut an x in the weed cloth, plant, and replace the straw around the new plant. No problems. My spring bulbs come right up as usual.

I have a gravel path (actually drain rock so larger) over landscape cloth. It is only about 3 years old and I know I will have to decide if I would rather use some kind of screen/wire to hold it away from the soil in the future, but for now I have a super thin layer of the rock so moving it to replace is mostly an one day pain in the rear. I get a few weeds in the stuff that lands on the rock and ends up on the weed cloth, but not that hard to pull a few weeds here and there. The walk goes right by the house so I don't want to use bark-fear of adding more termites, the gravel is hot enough, concrete would cook us and I can't see spending money on watering lawn (besides part it is over a leech field that I don't want to add that much water too anyway) I will probably start at one end with some kind of walkable ground cover, just have not had it that high on the to-do list to start on that yet. Living in Santa Barbara, the no water cacti gardens over lava rock front yards were common. Back in the day everyone seemed to want to have one. Guess if having painful to touch lava rock was not unfriendly enough adding cacti made it better..... I can top all of your plastic bits woes. My dad LOVED using black plastic. Plastic soil bags, Yellow heavy plastic.. grocery store plastic veggie bags. Perfect for killing weeds. right. He would put something on it to weight it down so it would not blow off, but over time leaves would fall and next thing you know, the plastic was gone. So he would add a new layer. After awhile he discovered that maybe picking up old sheets of vinyl might last longer. Of course that was harder to find. Then he hit on the mother load of free material to lay down on the yard. And even better, he could lay it upside down where he wanted people to walk and it would add traction on that slippery clay. And it would not blow away. Used carpet. Fun is trying to dig through loopy strands of carpet (the backing as long since vanished for the most part leaving miles of plastic/manmade yarn for you to pull. Hitting a layer of vinyl that pulls in up small rotten squares, Just to find layers of "lasagna gardening" gone wrong with multiple plastic layers. My point is to think about what you might end up doing in the future and just how hard it will be to undo what you are working on if you change your mind.

kublakan Are you still on this site? I was wondering if you could post a picture of your raised beds. I am getting ready to yank my roses out and put in raised beds too. I am wondering what logs you are using from the big box store? I haven't seen any logs? Are you special ordering them? How tall is the actual raised bed? And should I be using straight potting mix in the raised bed or should I be using the dirt that is made for raised beds. This past year has been brutal.... lost a lot of plants due to rain.... and a couple of years before I had lost a lot due to intracostal flooding..... Should I put a layer of sand down to also help with drainage. I am also battling grass in the rose beds. I think mine is torpedo grass. It spreads by rhizome. I just hate it. Thanks Sharon