I'm with Conchita! 3-4' wide at the most! I started with an 8x8 ' bed, then found this forum! I was able to change it to 2 3x8' beds with a path down the middle. All other beds have been 4x8' and a couple of 3x6'. Be sure you allow enough path space to maneuver a wheelbarrow and be able to turn and dump it. That was another mistake I made was not enough room in the paths to do wheel barrow work! (You or the later tenants will always have to add compost or more soil each year) Also, since you will be leaving these wonderful beds for the landlord, can't he pitch in and you do all the work? He's going to get the gardens in the long run! Even my skinflint neighbor landlord paid for the materials for his tenants to do some beautiful landscaping! He was able to up the rent by a couple hundred per month cause of the work the tenants had done over several years! Now their daughter has moved in and let everything die! Nancy

I took your advice and split up all my questions. Thanks and thanks for the advice! All of the plants I purchased were already outside or were in an open air nursery. I'm really pretty convinced my compost was the culprit becase as soon as I got some fertilizer in them they perked right up and the yellowing, stunted growth, and dying foliage lasted for a good 3-4 weeks. I feel really dumb that it took me that long to correct. As far as shade/sun half the beds get mornign sun, all of them get midday sun and half of them get afternoon sun. Other wise they are completely shaded in the morning or afternoon. I've been trying to get a hold of some clean straw fro mulching but having a hard time finding any that is def organic and doesn't have weeds and other junk in it. I had been using shredded newspaper for my alpine strawberries but it was really messy so I trashed it. THe peas are shaded form the afternoon sun almost completely so I thought that might work but apparently not. They aren't dying, they're just not growing...or they're growing extremely slowly. Otherwise they look healthy. Idk what to do with them. I really wanted peas and don't know if I can do them as a fall crop in Nebraska. Again, thank you for your reply.

LOL memo - I have a SERIOUS before picture available! Soon as I can I will go get new pics and post em up... Basically this is how we got the place. Construction unfinished and front is a parking spot and turn around for all the neighbors - not something I was too thrilled about - which was the main reason for throwing the garden in ASAP. That's my littlest baby boy smiling at you, he's a cheeseball to the extreme. The grey roof to the right is one of our neighbors. Very nice people, with a couple of very cool dogs, a chain link fence seperates us. Those two white posts with the wierd green at the bottom now have clematis on them since it was the only way I could think of to hide them! The old shower and the doors are gone. The two arched windows in the patio roof are history. Gosh this was almost a year ago! VERY VERY "BEFORE." Here's the area I'm starting to work on now, around the side of the house. It will be divided in two - a woodland garden with pond and play area for kids (will occupy the from somewhere off the left of the pic to about level with the basement door), and another area (everything to the right)that has a fairy village/garden and a butterfly/hummingbird garden, and a large lawn and patio for entertaining. That purple leaf plum was planted within a few months of signing papers - it was my way of staking my claim to the property. Nothing was growing there and I decided that HAD to change immediately. It has since been moved and replaced with a redbud and numerous tulips.

Not sure if you had a previous thread where you mentioned these worms, but it would be good to see some pics. Without knowing for sure about your worms and ants, I'll assume you might be talking about earth worms and fire ants. However, your comment about how the roots are gone, may refer to other kinds of bugs and worms. Fire ants (big red ants) will eat earth worms and grubs if they get a chance to. This usually happens if the ant hill is nearby and some luckless worm moves near. Since you don't yet know what is eating your garden, you may want to hold off on the DE. That is usually suggested for slugs and snails, since like you said, people would want worms around. As for the growth of a plant, there are many unknown and unseen bugs and microbes that will interact with your plants. Unless you actually see damage or loss of the leaves or stalks or harvest, having these bugs nearby is not necessarily a cause for alarm. Generally, you will need to identify the kind of damage they are doing (which may come from how the plant is disappearing or how it looks after being infected) and what they are, then you can have an idea on how to treat them.