Val, what kind of mulch do you mean? Many things can be used as mulch, some would not be desirable for the medium one plants everything into, for instance hunks of pine bark. Shredded leaves are a mulch I use, but I don't imagine one can buy that. As for putting a layer of peat ON TOP of your beds, I would tell Lilacs and everyone else reading this to not do that under any circumstance! I don't know how it is pre-moistened when you buy it, but I have heard from gardening friends and read numerous times on gardenweb how peat dries out and forms a layer through which water does not penetrate. That is the last thing you would want on top of your garden bed. Peat, if used at all, must be mixed in with other material. After another growing season, hopefully we have told Lilacs enough times that she will be adding to the raised bed after her harvest with leaves, coffee grounds, grass clippings, manure, whatever. By the way, I got two bales of straw free during my late fall gathering of other people's leaves venture. People buy them for decoration and then throw them away after Halloween and Thanksgiving. I live in the country, but I scrounge in a nearby subdivision in a neighboring city. Marcia

Ken's advice is really very good. If you need to purchase soil in any quantity, always go with a bulk product - it will be at least half the price of bagged soil of similar quantity, if not less. And never purchase w/o examining the soil. 'Topsoil' is an extremely generic term that can refer to anything.....and not necessarily any good anything :-) Technically, "topsoil" is just the top 4" or so of any natural undisturbed soil profile. It could be a good rich, fertile loam but it is just as likely to be a rocky, rooty, nutrient-lacking product that is of minimal horticultural value. It is often just fill and typically contains a fair amount of debris or garbage, not to mention weeds. If you want to purchase a good quality bulk soil, look for something labeled garden planting mix or 3- or 5-way mix, which tend to be some combination of sandy loam, compost/manure, bark and/or other drainage enhancer. And to be precise, you can't make soil....unless you have a LOT of time on your hands (like eons!) and have other godlike qualities :-) Compost, even well aged and very thoroughly processed compost, is at best close to humus but not really soil, as it has no mineral component and lacks variety of particle sizes that will provide aggregation, aeration and good drainage. I do applaude your attention to wanting to create a good soil base for your plantings. Soil quality is easily the most important aspect of gardening and one that tends to get overlooked more often than not. Soil is not very sexy and it's tough to convince gardeners, especially new gardeners, that it is worth spending the effort and expense to develop a good soil base before you start any planting. Hot new plants are way more fun to spend your money on but all the hot new plants on the planet are not going to be worth a hill of beans or thrive and perform as you wish if you don't spend the time and $$ first on the proper soil prep.

A followup on my garden - I've been having lots of problems with the new garden beds I built with the manure amended soil I purchased earlier this year (see post in January). I was seeing weird growth, like a virus, but it was affecting only plants in beds with the new soil. After doing some research and speaking to the Extension office - it seems that my nice soil which had been amended with cow manure apparently is contaminated with Grazon - an herbicide used on animal hay because it kills pigweed and other broad-leaved weeds. It doesn't hurt the cows, passes right through them into the manure. The manure takes anywhere from a year to several to lose the toxicity of the herbicide... So, instead of terrific beans, cowpeas, potatoes, etc. I have twisted and deformed plants... I'm hoping to let others know about this phenomena - it's apparently well-known in the industry. Too bad I didn't know... Cindy Here is a link that might be useful: Warning about herbicides in manures...

Allison - wine mentor? What a cool job that would be. I don't know. I've been drinking wine for years and ask questions all the time. Now that I'm selling it I end up answering a few questions too, but my suggestion is to read and taste. And if you ever get out to NYC, call me. That's serious incidentally. Anyway, I can offer a few suggestions for people. First, don't overlook Beaujolais. It's been producing wine for centuries, mostly for cafes around Lyon, where there were a number of silk merchants. They make a young wine for drinking within a few months and back in the 80s a couple British guys were drinking and made a bet with each other about which one could get the wine to London fastest. That set off a trend for about 10 - 20 years and increased sales of that young Beaujolais. Production shot up and a lot of second rate wine was made to cash in. Then the fad faded, the market crashed, and the area is suffering today. BUT - in the hills around Beaujolais they also have what are called "cru" sites and those are very much worth investigating. For education, bypass the young stuff and look for the crus - they will have a name like Fleurie, Julianas, Morgon, Moulon au Vent, Regnie, or something like that. This area is just south of Burgundy, and some of the winemakers in Burgundy work in both places and you can learn a lot and have fun. Find a producer, say Chermette, or Brun, for example, and sample the wine of the same producer from Fleurie, Morgon and Julianas. Even buy George Dubeouf wines from those places - they are great values and will show you the differences in the soils and environment and microclimates, which the French call "terroir". Because it is the same winemaking, you take that variable out of the equation and presumably taste only the differences that result from the terroir. It's a good lesson and the wine is wonderful, inexpensive, and not high in alcohol. And even try the young Beaujolais just to compare. As a rule it will be simpler, but quite nice. If you can start to understand those, you start to understand what people get excited about when they talk of Burgundy or Piedmont. You can do it with riesling too - they pretty much never use oak barrels in Germany for the rieslings, so you only taste the winemaker and the vineyard. For example, find some Prum - J.J. Prum, S.A. Prum, Weins Prum. They are related family and they make wine from the same vineyard. You can learn about the differences in winemaking. Or or St Urbans Hof and Zillikin who both use the Ockfener Bockstein vineyard and who are probably cheaper than the Prums. Or find a producer who uses multiple vineyards, like St Urbans Hof again, and try their Ockfener Bockstein vs their wine from Piesporter Goldtropfchen, looking at the same winemaker but different vineyards. Try to find Kabinett wines and don't mix Kabinett and Spatlese, etc., for this study, because the sugar will through you off. Write down the differences between the wines that you observe. You can do it in CA too - Andy Beckstoffer owns vineyards that produce really great wines, but those are going to be much more costly than those rieslings are. Schrader for example, is one of many people making wine from the Tokalon property, but you're talking $100 a bottle. The Prums have had their vineyards for years, maybe centuries. Beckstoffer moved to CA from Virginia, bought property, and sells his grapes at a price based on what the winery is going to charge for the wine! So those CA wineries, being pretty new and only recently opened by guys who became millionaires somewhere else and who paid $200,000 and acre, or else whatever Beckstoffer wants per ton, charge a lot of money for their wines, whereas Prum can sell a wine for $26 or less. I love the idea of Two Buck Chuck, but the wine isn't so great IMO. I'd rather pay another dollar and get a better wine and I think they could do it. What you won't have however, is the distinction you get from the other wines I suggested. That's because it is designed specifically NOT to have it. The idea is to create consistency, not personality. Again, no problem here and more power to him, but for me it would be boring to drink the same thing all the time, and I collect wine specifically to have variety. In 2005, the cabernet sauvignon harvest in Napa was pretty big and pretty good. People thinned the crop several times in some vineyards but the grape clusters were large so they still got more tonnage per acre than they normally do, although the wines are top notch anyhow. Prices? Not going anywhere good as far as I can see. As long as wines are selling for $100 and up, the prices aren't coming down. And about that thinning - in France and other regions, there are often regulations regarding yield per acre. They think that if you cut some young grape bunches off, called "green harvesting", the remaining ones will be more concentrated. That's becoming a basic tenet of winemaking. But there is some evidence and some opinion that this is BS. The concept was developed before there were adequate ways to measure. So a long time ago in France they thought they could improve quality by limiting yield. But maybe that's artificial, as illustrated by the 2005 vintage in CA. In a nice warm year, with adequate rain and no heat and healthy vines, the plants just might want to produce a little more with no drop in quality. In 1997 and 2005, that happened in Napa. If one were only to go by yield, we would have less wine but in fact, there was no reason to reduce production since the quality is fine. But as long as people are willing to pay, others will produce wine at $100 and up. In much of France today, they are trying to reduce production to keep prices high. You can figure out the economics of that, but IMO the idea is flawed because the competition is not simply air, it is wine from elsewhere. So if I can't buy or afford French wine, I'll buy Australian wine or Spanish or Chilean. It's a huge generalization and not 100% true, but you might say that in Napa the high prices are the result of extraordinary entry costs while in Bordeaux or Burgundy or Champagne, they are the result of production decisions designed to keep prices high. Again, that's not entirely true but its a shorthand explanation. So you look for areas like Beaujolais, Cotes du Ventoux, Cotes du Rhone, Languedoc in France, or the Rhine in Germany, or Umbira and Puglia in Italy, or Paso Robles or Mendocino in CA, or Walla Walla or Columbia Valley in WA and you can find much better deals. Or look at Argentina - some nice stuff coming out of there. And in the Texas Hill Country, they're working and in Arizona and in other states as well. Some people disparage those wines, but the people have to start somewhere. I used to disparage the wines from Michigan. Then I tried some. Taught me a lesson. I only knew the cheap sugary stuff but there are now some serious producers making good whites on the west of the state. Also in Ohio there are one or two - Kincaid makes really nice cabs down near Kentucky. I would never have believed it if I hadn't tried them. And in fact, they were in some pretty stiff competition - I had them at a dinner with people who brought some serious wine to the table and brought these just to educate us. So if someone is open minded, there is no reason to listen to wine snobs and you can find some great values out there, that are interesting, complex, and even educational if you care to go that way. Cheers all.