Hi Everyone, Thanks for the suggestions on herbs - sounds good to me! The compost was delivered and put in my beds today. It is ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS stuff!! No way I could get something like this mixing up things out of bags. It's rich, dark, and has a great texture thoughout. "My guys" went to the landfill and paid for 10 cu yds and were told they got that amount. But when everything was in place, it was obvious they were short changed so I called the landfill. They doubled checked on things and said, "Oh you only got 7 cu yds, come back and we'll give you the rest." So the guys went back and they gave them an additional 7 cu yds (instead of just 3)! So I've got my beds totally filled and mounded up with more compost (which will probably settle out to level after a few months), plus a nice additional pile to use in additional beds or my salad tables. The guys said that the bulldozer driver had to drive up this mountain of muck at the base of the pile and was sliding all around. They thought they got extra just because the bulldozer driver didn't want to have to go back up the mountain if the order was still short . Anyway, I'm so pleased with the outcome and I have to give credit where credit is due - to all the people responding to my various posts here on the forum! Thanks everyone!! Anne

I make my raised beds out of sandbags, and it seems to work really well for me. I'm so clueless with tools and wood that I'm not sure which end of the hammer you hit things with, so that wasn't an option; and I can't afford stone, so bags of sand turned out to be the way to go, for me. I was lucky enough to get all the bags (already filled!) for free the first year, from the soil testing lab at the engineering firm I work for. (That hasn't worked out as well in the last few years because I need so many bags at a time, but the bags only cost about 15-25 cents each, and a pick-up truck load of whatever sand is cheapest at the landscaping facility to fill them with is only 11 dollars). I use the 15" by 27" white polypropylene UV-treated sand bags with tie strings attached. They hold up pretty well for me, usually a year or more. Eventually, they start ripping (probably because I sit down on them to weed so often, and I'm not skinny :), and I dump out the sand that was in the bag, mix it with some compost, and toss it in the veggie beds. The beds honestly don't turn out as tacky-looking as they sound. (I wish I had a camera!) Stacked 2 bags high like I have them, in a half over-lapping brick pattern; and because the bags are plain white, it just kind of looks like big pieces of fieldstone, especially with the mulch all around the beds in the paths. If you wanted to try something similar, check your local phone book for geotechnical engineering firms, paving companies, concrete plants, commercial borrow pits and rock mines and quarries. Also your local branch office of the US Dept. of Transportation. All those places have full sand and rock sampling bags laying around all the time, and usually just heave them into dumpsters. They also usually also have stockpiles of various kinds of dirt: and all that black, organic, grass & wood debris-filled dirt that concrete and paving contractors PAY to haul off their job sites and have disposed of is free gardener's gold.

At my last house I had raised beds - 4' wide by 12-20' long with wooden sides about 1 1/2 foot tall. Over two or three years we built 8 of these large beds plus several smaller beds for perennial crops like stawberries, rhubarb, and horseradish. For that situation, there were several advantages. It allowed us to have flat areas on a hill; we terraced with rock walls and put the beds on those flat areas, surrounded by woodchips for mulch, so there was no weeding at all. The beds were sunk about a foot below the grade, and we had to sift the soil, which was shallow over fractured ledge, to get rid of all the rock, and then we filled the rest of the beds with composted cow manure, thanks to our local dairy farmer. So, we ended up with no weeds & great soil in flat beds from an area that started out mostly rock on a steep grade. Other pluses were sitting on the bed sides to plant, screwing trellises for beans, melons, cukes, etc. directly into the bed sides, and the ablility to plant early due to good drainage and early season warm-up. We also sometimes put plastic hoops over the beds, tucking the hoop ends inside the beds to hold them, to cover with spun-bond or plastic. On our strawberry beds, we put hinged wire mesh covers so the chipmunks couldn't eat the berries. Between mulch and the high organic content of the soil, we only had to water when it had been dry for a couple of weeks or more. Our current house had a pre-existing ground-level garden which we simply took over as was since the house needed a huge amount of work, so that's where our efforts and energy went. I miss the raised beds, and find that I have more difficulty with soil-living bugs like wire worms in my potatoes and cutworms crawling in from the surrounding field. I can't work in the garden as long since I have to bend more or sit on & scoot along the ground. (I'm no spring chicken!) The grass and weeds migrate into the veggie garden from the surrounding field, and the soil needs to be prepped in the fall so I can plant peas, potatoes, etc. earlier in spring since the soil stays cold and wet for much longer. There are two only advantages I can see to the ground level garden: it's easier to till with a machine like a big tiller or tractor if you want to be able to do that, and any crops that need winter warmth can be well mulched and will stay warmer in the ground. Garlic, which is a bit borderline as far as hardiness here, has better survival rates, and my leeks and root vegetables overwinter better with a thick layer of mulch when they are in the ground rather than in a raised bed. So, like Lisa, I will eventually have some of both, but with most of my garden as raised beds and a smaller part of it in the ground.

CCA treated wood has been off the market since 2004, so that is no longer an issue. And there has been no significant scientific documentation to support the notion that CCA-infused lumber leaches excessive amounts of arsenic into the soil anyway - modest levels of arsenic tend to be present in most soils. Raised beds do not have to be created from lumber - inexpensive concrete blocks work just as well and can be assembled into raised beds and disassembled at will. Or use recycled concrete chunks, often available for free. And using these or any recycled wood products like Trex eliminates any rotting issues as well as any insects that may be attracted to wood. Slugs are slugs and in the PNW they will be present regardless of planting situation - in ground, in raised beds, even in container plantings. Baiting will control the worst of the slug damage in any case. Any mounded or raised planting area will require at bit more frequent watering than inground or nonmounded/bermed areas - that is just the physics of drainage and water movement. There is nothing specific about constructed raised beds that would make them any more higher maintenance than mounded or inground row plantings other than the use of materials and even untreated cedar or redwood will last 5-10 years before needing to be replaced, longer if they are lined with plastic to limit contact with damp soil. And problems with cultivation is a non-issue. Once they are filled with soil, additional cultivation in the way of tilling is seldom necessary and generally not recommended anyway. Additions of compost or other OM can be made easily in the offseason or before planting. There is no need to disassemble a raised planter to renew or refresh the soil. We all have our preference on what we like best, but there is nothing innately inherent regarding constructed raised planters that makes them less desireable than inground plantings other than personal choice.