Cher- Your plans sound good, except for the food scraps, which I agree are just going to attract raccoons (and rats and squirrels). I suggest you just throw the scraps in your composter, and use them that way. The situation you describe sounds a little like mine at my last house. I was in a pretty heavily wooded lot with 100' tall firs that I was not inclined to take out, so it was pretty shady. We finally decided to have an arborist limb the trees up to about 30'. The trees looked better and the light increase was substantial. That year my grove of Yellow groove bamboo -- which had been around for 30 years -- acted like it was on steroids. Just that increase in the amount of light made the the new culms shoot up 5'-10' higher than ever before. Other species, which had been doing ok previously, also started to put up significant numbers of new shoots and get leafier. If you have the means to increase the light to your bamboo, that may help the growth as much as anything.

Thanks guys. I bought some of the garden soil yesterday before I read your replies but I'm returning it tomorrow and buying the soil conditioner like y'all advised. Is there a difference in the one at Lowes (Scotchman's brand I think) and the HD one (nature's helper)? I ask because the HD one comes in 1.5 cubic ft. while the other is 2 cubic feet. Just looking to get more bang for my buck. I'm going to use pine straw to mulch the bed. There are two pine trees in my front yard that are dropping needles anyway, so putting anything else down would be silly on my part. But not quite as ridiculous as dumping a truckload of gravel on the beds without any concern for the integrity of the soil or the next homeowner who has to spend many hours of back breaking tedious work to dig it all out after it has spent many years sinking into the ground! ...Sorry about the rant, can you tell how much I hate the gravel heehee. Are there any other amendments I should add? I purchased a bag of MOO-nure also for some added goodness(the store didn't have Black Kow). In case you need some info: the soil is going to be slightly rocky since I won't be able to get out all the gravel, besides that it appears to be kinda sandy on the top layer and as I dig deeper it appears more yellowish orange, almost like there could be some clay. I'm going to plant some dwarf gardenias in that area along with some tulip bulbs and some annuals for now. Thanks in advance!

I have red clay soil and it can be turned into beautiful garden soil with the addition of organic matter. We're in our 16th year here and the soil in the areas we've amended bears little resemblance to the clay we started with. We added organic matter to it as much as we could in the early years, amending each area well before planting. Then we mulched, and we continue to add mulch regularly. As the mulch decomposes, it further enriches the soil. Red clay is full of minerals and plants grow great in it once you've added organic matter to improve its tilth and drainage. Have you ever gone for a walk in a woodland? Ever notice how brown, humusy and rich the soil is there? We have about 10 acres of woodland filled with beautiful native plants of all kinds. The soil is brown, rich, humusy....just gorgeous, rich soil. When we first moved here, I wondered why the soil there was so gorgeous when just a few yards away in the area where we had built the house, we had dense, compacted, hard-as-concrete red clay. I incorrectly assumed the woods grew there because the soil was so great. Then, in our 2nd or 3rd year here, we transplanted a bunch of tiny oak trees out of the woodland and up into the yard area. Guess what we found? There was about 8 or 9" of brown, humusy soil, but once you dug down that deeply, it was the same yucky red clay we had up the hill where we built the house. Those gigantic trees might be growing in humusy rich brown soil, but they started growing in red clay and their roots are deep in that clay. Over the last few decades, as leaves, bark, dead trees, other dead plant material, insects and even wild animals died and decomposed there on the floor of the woodland, they all combined to created that brown, humusy rich soil. So, in an odd way, the red clay---by being rich enough to feed and nourish the trees when they sprouted---in essence created that brown, rich soil. No one dug out all the old yucky red clay dirt and replaced it with brown rich soil.....it happened naturally, in its own way and its own time. To enrich our soil, we added any form of organic matter we could to the soil....compost, chopped/shredded autumn leaves, pine bark fines, composted animal manure....you name if....if it was organic (from nature), we added it. We added lava sand, Texas green sand, soft rock phosphate....you name it....all in the name of improving the soil. As the soil got better, earthworms and all other manner of earth-dwelling creatures thrived in it and further improved it themselves. When we were searching for land here, I deliberately searched for land with clay as opposed to the fast-draining sugar sand common in my area, or even the brown sandy loam found in some parts of our county. Given the choice, I'd choose red clay every time. It is a lot easier to amend it than it would have been to amend the sand, which tends to drain much too quickly in our area which stays much too dry most years. With red clay, so many nutrients are already there. With sugar sand, the nutrients aren't there and you have to add them. All that clay needs in general is organic matter added to it to make it great soil. I've never regretted choosing property with clay soil. We actually have a few pockets of sandy soil, and I have more trouble with them. Among other things, voles tunnel through the sand and eat everything they encounter. I'd be a raving lunatic by now if we had only sandy soil and not clay because the voles would have eaten virtually everything I've ever planted. Don't fear your red clay soil. It likely is highly fertile and only needs to have organic matter added to it to make it both retain water properly and drain well. Once that aspect of clay soil is fixed, it is perfect. Dawn

Just which herbs you're growing could make a difference. For example, IIRC, while basil can handle a richer, moister soil, rosemary prefers a better draining media. If you have any duplicates amongst your herbs, you could experiment a bit by leaving one of them in the current media and repotting the other in a different mix.