The wood is just decoration and doesn't stop the grass. I respectfully disagree, based on many years of experience in different states, with different grasses. When I lived in OH, I had "nice" grass, non-rhizomatous, mostly, like it looks like bgaviator has. Bricks or timbers laying on the ground will stop about 95% of the grass permanently, especially when the bed is well mulched such as this. Wherever there's a low spot, or seam between pieces, the grass may creep under/through. Easy to fix in a few minutes about every-other month. As the timber settles, it will sink a bit and then it's even less of a problem, something to check maybe once in the spring, once in the fall. Even here, with a yard of St. Augustine or Bermuda or whatever type of vine-grass this is in my yard in AL, with Bahia invading that, something like this timber is enough of a barrier to easily achieve control. Agree it's not a type of border that is completely certain, but certainly worth doing, especially compared to the effort and expense required for a completely reliable border. I prefer this type of border because it's easy to pick up the timber and definitely remove any invading grass by the roots. I spend very little time on out-of-bounds grass. Often grass is let to make seeds before it's mowed, then not enough care is taken to direct the outflow away from the bed, or it drops in the bed before mowing. When the seeds sprout, the border gets blamed for not doing its' job.

This is my first year gardening, we picked up a good sized back yard so we put in some fruit trees and built a raised bed. So far we're doing ok, I learned a lot just doing it this first year that I think will go a long way in the future. We have one 4x8 raised bed with some squash, bell peppers, and pumpkin plants in them. I had no idea the squash and pumpkin would get so big, and packed the bell peppers in way too tight to get big plants. Still seems to be growing well, and this is the first pumpkin. We've already pulled out about 20 pounds of squash and get another pound every other day or so. I have another smaller box made from recycled pallets that I put some jalapeno plants and soybeans in. The soybeans are tiny but the jalapeno plants seem to be doing ok. I put a fig tree in the ground back in October or so last year, it died down to the ground but came back from the roots. It's pretty tiny now but seems to be fairing well. The stump next to the fig is the former trunk, I cut it to get it mostly out of the way. I almost pulled it out but we'll see how the recovery goes. I put a Granny Smith apple tree in the ground back around April and got a few flowers. We get some pretty bad spring time winds though so most were blown off. One of them did start to develop and I figure I'll see if I can eat it this year. I have a couple of fuji trees in the ground that seem to be growing really well, but haven't gotten flowers yet on them. We have a few other things growing in pots, my wife put some basil in the same pot as a mint, strawberry, and some random flowers (I'm not a flower guy). We also have a meyer lemon tree that was totally neglected and left outside all winter. It looked like a twig but came back in the spring, so now I'm excited to see how it does next year. And I have a cayenne pepper plant that only produced 1 pepper then quit for a while. Once the monsoons hit it kind of exploded with peppers. Good learning experience this year, next year I think we'll expand it a lot if I don't get deployed again. I think it's going well though for being my first time gardening ever and doing it in Arizona :D

Everything is from seed. About 50 variety of peppers. 300 plants. Then onion and sunflower. Squash, zucchini, cantaloupe, watermelon, corn ,cucumber, okra , beans, sweet potato, and tomato. Hopefully I'll be off work Saturday and can actually finish everything. Yes I probably will be selling. That's going to be a lot of vegetables lol.

Here's what I've put up so far: Canned 42 quarts chicken soup 14 quarts chicken broth 9 pints split pea soup 7 pints strawberry jam 21 half pints strawberry jam 7 pints strawberry rhubarb sauce 12 pints raspberry jam 21 quarts green beans 3 pints blueberry jam 34 1/2 pints blueberry jam 10 1/4 pints blueberry jam Froze 64 eggs (from our chickens) 42 bags of strawberries 13 bags of blueberries Dehydrated mushrooms - got 1 half gallon jar and 1 quart jar lemon slices - got 1 half gallon jar and 2 quart jars strawberries - 1 quart jar Getting a half bushel of peaches to can tonight and can't wait till my tomatoes ripen to can my sauce. Paradisa