Was the plastic you used BPA free? If it's not certified organic BPA-free free range plastic, better rip it out and start again.

Just messin with ya.

The new pressure treated wood (any purchased in the last 10 years or so) no longer contains arsenic. You probably still wouldn't want to snort the sawdust, but yeah.

If you can see intact horse apples, then wash the produce before you eat it.

Now... I'm trying to understand... Did you amend your garden soil w/ the manure/hay/compost mix? Or did you fill the beds entirely with the compost? If it's straight compost, you might want to go back and double-dig and/or till to get some native soil in the mix. Just my $0.02

A lot of questions. From the top:

1) that the manure hasn't composted enough and I will be exposing my family to ecoli by planting my veggies now.
Possibly. The only real guidance comes from USDA and the regulations associated with their National Organics Program that pertains to their organic certification for commercial growers. Because of the pathogen concern (e. coli being but one), the regulations require that the manure either be composted (with specific temperature/time requirements), or be applied not less than 120 days before harvest for crops that have soil contact (carrots, beets, potatoes, leafy greens, etc.), or 90 days before harvest for crops that don't have soil contact (tomatoes, corn, etc.).

2) there seems to be a good deal of hay in the manure. How will this affect weeds and unwanted growth in the soil?
What you're seeing is probably straw bedding, but there may be some hay in there as well. But without regard to the bedding, uncomposted horse manure is notorious for weed seeds. No big deal, other than the need to pull or cultivate should they germinate in your soil.

3) I lined my 4 x 4 raised beds with plastic stapled to sides to keep the pressure treated wood from coming into contact with the soil, and I laid cardboard down in the bottom of the beds to prevent grass from growing up into the beds. ...Does this setup sound like a good one?...
How deep are those beds and how long ago were they filled over the cardboard? If the soil depth over the cardboard is less than ~10", then the cardboard needs to decompose enough to not act as a barrier for plant roots. The plastic sheet is polyethylene, no BPA, no problems there. People vary in there views on using arsenic free treated lumber - some use it freely, some won't touch the stuff. USDA, again only as part of the NOP program for commercial grower certifications, doesn't allow treated lumber for soil contact.

For further information you might find the Colorado Master Gardner note, "Using Manure in the Home Garden" linked below helpful.

So now a couple of question for you: how much manure did you add to your beds, and how deep are they ?

Here is a link that might be useful: CMG GardenNotes #242

Leaving any animal manure piled up is largely a waste since the nutrients simply gas off to the atmosphere. That odor you smell from manure is those nutrients gassing off.
Unless there is about a 3 part vegetative waste to 1 part manure mix there will be little composting done, so if this manure is "several months old" and still has distinguishable material it has not composted and there is that possibility of plant seeds being in there.
The old CCA PT wood was supposed to be removed from most commercial sale around 2003, however the EPA is revisiting that and, with certain restrictions, the sale of CCA PT wood may again be allowed. Plastic used to line raised beds has not been shown to be of concern.
E-Coli is one of several disease pathogens that you could get from animal manures which is why guidelines in use of them have been put in place. You should put the manure in the soil at least 90 days before harvesting food crops growing above ground and 120 days before harvesting below ground crops.
If these raised beds are deeper then about 8 inches there was no need for the cardboard since the only reason for it is to keep any plants under it from getting access to sunlight and the depth of the soil at 8 inches is more than enough to do that.
What else, besides the manure, went into the beds. If those beds have only manure your plants probably will not grow well and you could well expose your family to all kinds of disease pathogens.

Thanks everyone for your input. The beds are 8" in height. I used landscaping timbers and only went 3-high to keep cost down. I filled the beds with only the horse manure compost, so it looks like I need to go back and till some native soil or something else into the compost?

You should go to the florida forum where you can get a lot of experienced advice about container gardening in FL.

What you have made there are containers. They are much too shallow, for starters, and filling with only partially-decomposed horse-stall sweepings is not going to be successful, IMO. The plastic is a bad idea unless you dug a hole in the ground two or three feet deep and filled with a well-balanced material.

Beyond that is the issue of appropriate crops for the season in florida. Now is the time to plant the hot-weather crops like okra, malabar spinach, cowpeas, pigeon peas and so forth. It is already too late to set out tomato plants or to sow beans or any brassicas or most typical summer crops in the north.

I have a lot of experience gardening in fla; since you are not very far into the project I strongly encourage you to empty the boxes, take the plastic out, dig out the sod underneath, mix the manure into the sand after first adding a little lime, and sow some cowpeas as a summer cover. This should set things up better for your fall garden.

Pic helps a bunch.

Your raised beds look good, and looking at the far one it looks like you used the plastic only on the sides where the wood is. So I don't see a problem with the plastic. You simply have raised beds, not containers.

At 8" depth the cardboard is unnecessary. You can just pile the dirt into the beds on the grass, on the grass will be smothered. At 8" in the near term it will limit your root depth, and may cause problems with deeper rooting plants and roots veg's. If it were mine, I'd take it out. With the soil on top of the underlying turf, it will settle over time as the grass underneath decomposes. My experience with St. Augustine is that settling will be ~ 1". With the cardboard the settling will be a bit more, maybe 1.5".

Now, the grass -- it looks like you're in Cocoa Beach (zip code), and the turf looks like a very decent stand of St. Augustine. Your problem with the grass won't be the stuff in the beds that gets smothered, it will be the stuff on the outside that comes right up to the edges. It will try to find a way into those beds, and usually St. Augustine is successful (if there's any Bermuda in there it tends to be even more invasive). I would encourage to develop a turf-free zone around those beds. There are many options.

On the soil - since you're dealing with uncomposted horse manure, I would suggest no more than 1" of that per bed. Add it on top of a base soil fill in the beds, then mix in in well, trying to get it distributed through the entire 8" depth. The base soil in those beds would ideally be a loam or sandy loam, if you can get it. Being in Cocoa Beach I suspect your base soil is rather sandy. You could use that (if you have some to move) along with some compost and the horse manure, but you'll probably have better luck with bringing in new soil. Check landscape supplies in your yellow pages.

Final point - exposure. Don't know when that picture was taken, but the beds are in complete shade. Where do those beds sit relative to the fence -- west side, east side, etc, and what is the direction of the fence line (N/E/S/W)?

The good news is you're in the beginning so with just a bit of work you can get it right and enjoy some great growing. Since you are using raw manure I would encourage you to heed to 90/120 day before harvest recommendations. Someone getting sick because you were in a hurry just isn't worth it. Be patient. Since we're already into May, and you're way down there in south FL, your timing is really good for fall planting.

This post was edited by TXEB on Sun, May 12, 13 at 15:23

That's good the plastic isn't under the cardboard - good catch, TX.

If you soak the cardboard well then I think it will be fine to leave it - it'll break down fast in the heat if it is kept damp. Definitely need something more than the horsemanure, though. Mushroom compost or well-rotted pine bark, something like that. A little citrus fertilizer mixed in will help stimulate a good stand of cover and mineralize the fall crop.

Edible cover crop options are cowpeas, yard-long beans, new zealand or malabar spinach, or even sweet potato which makes good edible foliage for a cooking green. There are many non-edible covers as well, velvet-bean is one of the best.

Here is a close look at cowpeas growing on a trellis. You could let them climb the fence. Fresh-shelled cowpeas are a great treat.

Here is a link that might be useful: summer peas

Leaving any animal manure piled up is largely a waste since the nutrients simply gas off to the atmosphere.

Balderdash!! The only nutrient that is able to "gas off" is nitrogen and only in its form as ammonia. Even allowing for this gassing, the small amount of this nutrient lost is immaterial. Most of the nitrogen contained in animal manures is organic nitrogen and that must be decomposed into the nitrate form before it becomes available to plants. And neither organic N or nitrate "gas off".

You may get some leaching of soluble nutrients via rainwater but if only held for a few months, hardly enough to be of concern.

Seems a little more complicated. What about this part guys ?

Quote from original post:

FYI, I have been given some well-established vegetables from someone's garden and they are currently in containers. I am under time constraint to get them into the ground before they start to decline.

Mamashinn,

This is going to be really nice. I'm in a totally different place so will not add my two cents concerning the soil, but one thing I see that would be a long term problem for me, is the fact that the beds back directly to the fence.

If that were mine, I know the back of each bed would eventually have difficult weeds get established , then try to creep out to the rest of the bed, because that area is just too hard to reach without standing inside the beds themselves. Not good for the soil. You could place stepping stones in strategic places within each bed, but that adds up to a lot of prime growing space not being used. Then there's the taller plants flopping and hard to tie up, pinch back, harvest. In short a messy place right in the center of what I want to be an attractive asset to my home.

If the beds were moved out from the fence with enough space back there to walk, bend over without hitting your butt on the fence, or enough space to put a milk crate to sit on while weeding, planting, pruning up, harvesting, and admiring my work. Enough space to move my arms, shoulders while bending using a spade or rake. Better is enough room to pull a garden cart or what ever. That way the whole bed could be used and it would be easy to always remain in control.

In addition the best pest control starts with being able to observe closely and always catch anything right off the bat. Just makes life so much simpler.

When I lay out a new bed I judge width by reaching out my arm and double checking how far I can reach into each area with ease.

This post was edited by plaidbird on Sun, May 12, 13 at 16:21

Oh, I see one other thing. Don't know about Fl. but here if the bed was right on the fence, that fence would rot out all along where the bed is situated.

plaidbird makes a great point about being able to reach all spots of the bed from standing outside the bed.

In the OP the beds were described as 4x4, which is the standard Mel Bartholomew square-foot gardening bed dimension, so there shouldn't be a problem reaching center, or slightly beyond. Carefully sitting on the frame edge can extend the low reach a few inches without straining your back.

With the landscape timber frame you have, if you did need to get inside the bed zone, barring interfering with plants in the bed, a length of 2x dimension lumber (2x6, 2x8, etc.) spanning opposite frame sides for support makes a great walk-on plank. Alternatively it can be placed over a couple of taller supports (e.g., cinderblock) placed outside the bed. It's not a bad idea to have one pre-cut on hand. Then if you need to get inside the bed, pull it out, carefully place it for the task at hand, then remove it when done.

You can actually buy certain CCA treated lumber now - items specifically for 'ground contact'. Couple years ago I bought some 6x6 timbers for a pole barn that were CCA. A bit off topic though. I'm sure those landscape timbers are ACQ, which is a type of "copper soap" fungicide.

You'll deffly need some actual soil in those beds!

CCA treated lumber was never eliminated, but it's allowed use is rather severely restricted. It is largely eliminated from residential applications, except for some treated plywood used in roof and floor decking. It has always been available and used for a number of industrial and marine applications, and some agricultural applications including fence poles and structural timbers. It's out there, you just can't get it via retail outlets (or legally use it for anything other than the permitted uses).

gardengal, numerous studies I have seen over the years indicate that in animal manures simply piled up the Nitrogen loss can be between 20 and 50 percent with more from leaching because of rain fall as well as between 5 and 30 percent of P and K by leaching, I would think that significant. This may be one of the reasons that most of the Ag Schools teach that manure piles should be covered during long term storage.