It's totally possible Jeremy, a Die is commonly use for making threads on blank steel bolt not to mention on plastic material such as riser pipe , you can acquire them at some hardware stores. The idea is to customize your own length, whether to resume a used broken pipe or start from a blank riser, a coupler is also an option but lesser the joint the better the performance, my pipe breaks often by accident from garden service and I am tire of running to stores for parts. Photo Houzz Photo

Oh wow... thanks everyone for all the generous feedbacks and input. I think I came to the right place. I am taking this project slow and plan to spend this Spring gathering knowledge and info ... and you guys are helping a lot. I'll probably start "breaking ground" this summer and hopefully have my first bed built by fall... with my first grow season in Spring of 2016. If I'm lucky enough, plant some cooler season variety before the end of this year. I'm also hoping to grow some seedlings inside later this year in prep for Spring 2016. I want to start small, but I want a "big picture" already drawn out so I can expand in phases and hopefully - if I'm lucky - full realize the full plan. At some point, I want to draw it all out and have an overall plan for this "addition" to the yard... and have it in a way that maintains, or even enhance, aesthetics of the yard. So though I want to start small, I'm gathering as much as I can so I can plan for the rest of the garden. I'll start off in one area and build from there in subsequent years following the plan. Again - thank you for all the responses. Skybird... I get the point of making sure to get all the weeds out of the lawn (where I will place the beds). I'll have to google it a bit to see what's the best way to exterminate weeds, including their roots once I clear the area of grass. I've got an area in the backyard that I think is a good candidate to be carved out for the garden. I haven't measured, but I'm pretty sure it gets at least 6 hours of sun. Mix in some of the topsoil into the subsoil - dully noted! Thanks for that tip! Dan... turfgrass rhizomes. I assume you mean rhizomes shooting under my bed walls and surfacing inside my bed. The plan I have is to have the garden completely sectioned off from the rest of the yard - fence, paths, and all. At the turf edge, I'll like install edging to keep the lawn at bay. My initial recon has gotten me some good ideas on how to install plastic sheeting as to extend my growing season - using PVC pipes as my wall support and hoops placed into the pipes, etc etc. I definitely plan on having plans for that. Maxin... Yes... irrigation will be a big factor in the plans. Based on what I've read and watched, drip systems seems to the the ideal and overhead irrigation is discouraged. I definitely have some specific questions around this topic, but I think I'll save them for another thread. But at this point, I think much of my initial leg work will be setting up the new irrigation lines, but also re-routing/displacing the existing lawn sprinkler heads. Anyway... I'll post my initial plans/layout soon and have you guys critic it. Lastly, I wanted to share a video I found in youtube where I'm getting a bunch of my initial information. It seems to be a video made in the 80's by a gardening author/expert name Jeff Ball - seems to know what he's talking about. 53 minutes long - he take the beginner from start to finish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO2CLU-O6mU

You are more in left field than you might think. Your neighbors are pushing you that direction. Unless you know of a specific drainage issue you're having, then don't bring in any more topsoil. Topsoil always changes your drainage. What you don't want to happen is to change it from good drainage to poor drainage. With a brand new home the builder likely left you with a perfectly profiled and draining landscape. That means the soil begins about 4 inches below the sill plate of the house and slopes away from the house for about 10 feet at least to a depth 6 inches further below the sill plate. It also means all the water drains toward the road or an official drain on your property. If you or your neighbors believe there might be a problem with the ability of the existing soil to maintain healthy planting, that can be fixed. Bringing in new topsoil means you have to test that soil instead of the old soil. It does not automatically fix anything. If you want a soil test, now would be a fine time. The soil test will fix the chemistry. Adding organic fertilizer will help fix the biology. Then growing grass and plants will further help the biology. After some months of growing stuff, your soil should be much improved over whatever it is now. Actually your weeds are secretly helping improve your soil's health. You have a lot of prep work in front of you before the grass gets delivered. You need it all done first. Don't let grass sit around on pallets or on the truck waiting for you to dig the sprinkler system. Start by NOT rototilling. Rototilling will not do whatever you think it will and it will ruin your existing soil structure. Your existing structure is still figuring itself out, so don't monkey with it. Sod will go down directly on the soil as is once the weeds are killed and raked away. Mow the weeds and kill them with Roundup spray once. Then start watering 2x per day to moisten the soil and try to grow new weed seeds. Water like that for a week. Then spray any new weeds that start to grow. Then you can do your plumbing. When you take soil out of the trenches, ALL THAT SOIL THAT CAME OUT GOES BACK INTO THE TRENCHES. Do not make the amateur mistake of leveling the tops of the trenches. There should be a mound on top of each one so that soil can settle back down to level with the rest of the soil. Otherwise in 2-3 years you'll see your trenches reappearing as the fluffy soil settles. Then you can put down your new sod. After the sod goes down it should be rolled with a water fillable roller to ensure the bottom of the new sod touches the top of the old soil. Roots will not grow down through the air to reach the soil below. You don't need to aerate. You are starting with newly profiled surface, so it should be relatively soft. Furthermore, aeration does not do what you think it does. At this point I'm not sure it does anything, so give us your reasons for wanting to aerate and we'll probably suggest something else. If any of this gets delayed, keep in mind that mowed weeds look like a lawn. Just keep them watered and mowed and you can push this project into fall if you want to. I just bought a house last summer. It's 90% weeds, so I can sympathize. Here is something I put together several years ago to help people like you. Basics of Lawn Care After reading numerous books and magazines on lawn care, caring for lawns at seven houses in my life, and reading numerous forums where real people write in to discuss their successes and failures, I have decided to side with the real people and dispense with the book and magazine authors. I don't know what star their planet rotates around but it's not mine. With that in mind, here is the collected wisdom of the Internet savvy homeowners and lawn care professionals summarized in a few words. If you follow the advice here you will have conquered at least 50% of all lawn problems. Once you have these three elements mastered, then you can worry about weeds (if you have any), dog spots, and striping your lawn. But if you are not doing these three things, they will be the first three things suggested for you to correct. 1. Watering Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means at least an inch in every zone, all at once. Infrequently means monthly during the cool months and no more than weekly during the hottest part of summer. Do not spread this out and water for 10 minutes every day. If your grass looks dry before the month/week is up, water longer next time. If that does not work, then you might have to water more than once per week during the summer's hottest period. Deep watering grows deep, drought resistant roots. Infrequent watering allows the top layer of soil to dry completely which kills off many shallow rooted weeds. You will have to learn to judge when to water your own lawn. If you live in El Paso your watering will be different than if you live in Vermont. Adjust your watering to your type of grass, temperature, humidity, wind, and soil type. It is worth noting that this technique is used successfully by professionals in Phoenix, so...just sayin.' The other factors make a difference. If you normally water 1 inch per week and you get 1/2 inch of rain, then adjust and water only 1/2 inch that week. 2. Mowing Every week mulch mow at the highest setting on your mower. Most grasses are the most dense when mowed tall. However, bermuda, centipede, and bent grasses will become the most dense when they are mowed at the lowest setting on your mower. In fact there are special mowers that can mow these grasses down to 1/16 inch. Dense grass shades out weeds, keeps the soil cooler, and uses less water than thin grass. Tall grass can feed the deep roots you developed in #1 above. Tall grass does not grow faster than short grass nor does it look shaggy sooner. Once all your grass is at the same height, tall grass just looks plush. 3. Fertilizing Fertilize regularly. I fertilize 5 times per year using organic fertilizer. Which fertilizer you use is much less important than numbers 1 and 2 above. Follow the directions on the bag and do not overdo it (unless you use organics in which case you may overdo it without fear of hurting anything). At this point you do not have to worry about weed and feed products - remember at this point you are just trying to grow grass, not perfect it. Besides once you are doing these three things correctly, your weed problems should go away without herbicide.

" how do you manage to keep the plants adequately watered considering the sprinkler head I am using is tied into a zone in my sprinkler system and is scheduled to run for 20 minutes three times a week." Honestly I don't think you can. Not unless you can somehow create a new separate zone for the garden or find some other way to feed the drip system. Such a frequent shallow watering approach may be fine for grass but not for most vegetables. Many of the common veggies are deep tap root plants and even those that aren't have a root mass 6-8" down. Drip irrigation systems are design to run for much longer periods of time - think in terms of hours, not minutes even with the larger gph emitters. Such shallow watering as you describe only encourages shallow rooted, water dependent plants in the vegetable garden. Deep, infrequent watering is the ideal goal with the vegetable garden. Dave