The Bermuda will come up the sides of your beds, even if you line them and run it up the sides. I did that with a couple of small trial areas before and that @#$#@ Bermuda would send runners for yards to find an opening. Yards!

My new raised beds here are going to be 4' wide and, I think, 20' long with 6' paths of lawn between them. The 20' length is up for debate, depending on what materials we end up using but I'm pretty firm on the 4' width and 6' paths. Since we have the space, I don't want to be cramped. At all. I want to leave plenty of room for monster plants to sprawl in the pathways occasionally and I want to have room to maneuver wheelbarrows and whatever else in a pathway without knocking into overhanging plants at every turn.

I'm still trying to figure out what to fill them with, too. Since there is plenty of actual dirt up here, as opposed to rocks, I might just put a post up on Freecycle asking for decent fill dirt. "Fill dirt" around here is better than "top soil" down there. LOL Then amend with plenty of cardboard from WalMart and whatever else compost-y I can lay my hands on. Oh, you know what we did in OK? We lined the bottom of our raised beds with small trees/logs. We then topped with whatever organic material we had mixed with that rocky clay crap. Of course, we couldn't plant root crops in there the first year or two and it needed a bit of topping off each year as things settled in but it turned out to be pretty good. We grew things like lettuce, toms, peppers, etc before the logs broke down and had no probs because of it. Google "Hugelkultur". I think that's the correct spelling but, if not, it should be close.

Have you read up on the new treated wood vs. raw wood? The new treated lumber is supposed to be garden safe but "they" say that about a lot of new things. LOL I've not done much reading on it yet so just wondered if you had.

Just thinking out loud with you...

Diane

Paula,

I don't really have an ideal bed because what I do varies greatly from bed to bed depending on how the land slopes. Mine have to vary a lot because of my sloping property and I build them different ways to try to minimize erosion when heavy rainfall pours downhill from the higher ground on the neighbor's property.

Afternoon shade can help tomatoes a lot. My container grown tomatoes perform much better if I site the containers where they get about 6 or 7 hours of sun and have shade from late afternoon sunlight. In the past, I had them in full sun all day long, and they've performed much better the last couple of years with late afternoon shade.

We use raw wood for raised beds and it lasts a good long time here. I will never, ever use treated lumber because of the possibility of the chemicals leaching, and redwood and cedar are too expensive unless someone is only building a couple of beds, or has much deeper pockets than we do.

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever put down weedblock fabric directly on bermuda and build a bed on top of it. Weedblock fabric does not block bermuda grass at all. It might slow it down a little bit but the bermuda comes up through the weedblock fabric, making it impossible to remove the weedblock fabric or the bermuda and it becomes a huge mess. Since weedblock is better at blocking broadleaf weeds, what you have is a very healthy stand of bermuda because it doesn't have to compete with the weeds blocked by the weedblock.

I have never used linseed oil and have no idea if it would work. I bet you can google and find something about doing that though.

When we build a bed, we remove all the bermuda grass we can, add compost and other organic matter to enrich the soil, build the bed, put weedblock fabric down in the pathway, cover it with bark, and still have to fight bermuda grass and Johnson grass. In the beds themselves, after we remove the grass and add organic matter to the grade level soil, I like to put down 2 or 3 layers of thick cardboard and build the raised bed right on top of that. With the bermuda grass removed, the cardboard in place, and the soil on top of the cardboard highly enriched, the cardboard will slow down the reemergence of grass in the bed for a few months. Still, at some point bermuda shows up, especially in new beds, and I dig it out with a trowel.

With some beds, like with tomato plants where there is wider spacing, I put down weedblock on top of the new bed, plant through it and mulch heavily. STILL there will be bermuda grass coming up. Remember that if you leave even a 1/4" piece of bermuda grass stolon every yard or so, that's enough to completely repopulate the area with bermuda grass in less than one growing season.

Also, I would never, ever try to have garden beds with bermuda grass in between them. It just doesn't work with a creeping kind of grass like bermuda. The grass creeps up underneath the wood you use to build raised beds and gets into your beds. There is a reason we always say bermuda grass is evil, and this is it. With bermuda grass, the battle never ends and you always, for as long as you live, will have to fight it because even if you remove it all from your property, seeds will blow in or wash in from elsewhere.

There are many ways to fight bermuda grass. The best way is to rent a sod cutter and cut out all the sod down to a good-enough depth that you're getting out as much of the stolons as you can. Then, you put down a barrier like metal edging to attempt to keep it from creeping back and then you can build your beds. After all that, you still know that it will keep trying to come back non-stop and without ceasing every growing season and you'll have to dig it out, spray it with Round-up, etc. It is a never-ending war.

There are two ways I have had some success in controlling bermuda.

In Fort Worth, we planted 'Raleigh' St. Augustine grass in our somewhat shaded front yard and it quickly shaded out all the bermuda grass so that I didn't have to deal with the bermuda getting into my flower beds. As the yard got shadier over the years as the trees grew, I did have to replace some of the St. Augustine with ground covers in heavily shaded areas, but I didn't care because it had done its job and crowded out the bermuda.

The only other way I have had luck with getting rid of bermuda is by shading it out with lots of trees and shrubs. This works in a yard-type area, but not someplace where you need the sunlight for vegetable production.

In sunny areas that are sunny enough to grow veggies, you'll always have to fight bermuda unless you move far enough north like Diane did that bermuda grass cannot survive the cold.

You can add any sort of organic matter to the soil to improve it and to raise the grade level of the soil in your raised beds. Leaves should be shredded and partially decomposed or they'll tie up oxygen in your beds as they decompose. You can add compost (homemade or purchased), composted animal manure (cow, horse, chicken, rabbit, etc.), composted cottonhulls or cottonseed meal, old rotted, partially decomposed hay or straw, etc. I like to add a product sold in bags and often called "soil conditioner" that is partially composted pine bark fines and humus, but I'll add just about any sort of organic matter I can get my hands on and in this case "organic" merely means "once living", not organic in the sense of non-synthetic stuff.

One of the best soil conditioners is the stuff we clean out of the chicken coop a few times a year, mostly composed of bedding and chicken manure/urine that's soaked into the bedding. I don't add it directly to beds though, preferring to compost it first.

If I wanted any sort of pathway in-between beds other than dirt covered with mulchcloth covered with hay, straw, grass clippings, etc., I'd put down a nice flagstone pathway or a poured concrete pathway. That would deter bermuda better than anything else.

Dawn

Oh, yeah, you should have much nicer, as in REALLY good soil, Diane, up there in Missouri! I was reading the other day that the area of the country with the best soils for farming and gardening, is the Midwest, which you are now a part of. Lucky girl......

Susan

What I have been doing that has really helped was to make my gardens like borderless raised beds. I have a counter rotating tine tiller, when pressing down on the handles it tries to push the soil in front of it because I have the rear too close to the soil. It will only go a few feet before it spins and just wont pull its self. I do this all around the out side. I then shovel the loose soil toward the inside of the garden. I wind up with a bed a few inches above grade and a drainage ditch all around the garden. The drainage ditch is about 2 or 3 inched deep and the width of a shovel. When I mow I drop the two left mower wheels and the two left gauge wheels into the ditch and drop the deck as low as it will go. It slings grass dirt and any thing else in the way out away from garden.

I also use a small hoe that is much like the "Ken Ho Weeder" to under cut the bermuda on the out side of the ditch.

Because I have back problems I am unable to lift much. By maintaining the garden in this fashion plus mulching I have very little trouble with grass of any kind and I can drive my mower and trailer anywhere in and around the garden. I do have to invest in extra mower blades, but I change every year anyway.

Larry

if you have access to decomposed leaf litter,like what is on the ground under trees in a densely forested area, is there any reason not to add it to beds?it smells so rich and fertile.

leava

Leava, decomposed leaf litter makes great addition to beds. We even used leaves on our asparagus bed which prefers a more alkaline environment, by topdressing with woodashes. It is a bit on the acid side which makes azaleas and ferns very happy all by itself.

Thank you Paula for initiating very important thread! this is what I was looking for...

I am going to construct about 14 raised beds (#10*4'x16'; #2*8'x8'; #2*8'x4'). I explored few options for wall materials. here are those options;

1. RAW-WOOD: Non treated pine wood wall of 12inch high would cost about $589.91 plus 8% tax;

Here is an itemized cost for your perusal;
1. 2"x12"x16' Pine (32*14.68)=$469.76
2. Sad Cutter Rental (4hr$60; 1day$85)=$85
3. Linseed Oil 1Gal= $22.49
4. 4"Chip Brush=$3.97
5. Exterior Wood Screws+$8.69

I did not aware about the new treated lumber is garden safe (thank you Diane for letting us know about it, will do little more search). If that is correct, then i would go with option2;

Option2: PRESSURE TREATED: same dimensions as above will cost about $887.15. as treated wood cost more (32*23.97=$767.04 plus accessories)

Option3: LANDSCAPE TIMBER: 4"x8'@ $4.25 per piece would cost $622 plus tax and more labor! But it may look as good as plain wooden flanks.

I was thinking to retain Bermuda between each, now little bit concerned after reading Dawns post. I will use Sod cutter to get rid of top 3" Bermuda turf, then use roto-tiller to till soil profile about 12" and add plenty of compost and sand to improve the red clay soil.

I have measured width of our lawnmower (26") and Garden Cart (24"), so decided to keep beds 28" apart (path).

For last years beds, I did follow more or less similar to Larry's approach of #5 3'x15' border-less raised beds with in 16'x26' large wooden wall broader. You can see that picture in other post with brown color border line. Only worrying component so far is evil Bermuda. Cheers -Chandra

Chandra, beware the "garden safe" treated lumber. I just mentioned that as that's what it's touted to be. But I've done no research into myself and it would take a lot to convince me to use it rather than untreated. So many things are labeled "garden safe" and then, years down the road, we find it's just not true.

It may be completely safe, I've no idea. I doubt it, though, and will do more reading before I decide.

By the way, I've done humped rows (what I call the borderless raised beds) before, too, and loved them. I'll be doing some of my raised bed areas like that here as well. The main concern with them is partial washing away in heavy downpours, most especially when they're fresh.

Diane

Thank you ALL! Knowledge is power...and there's a LOT of knowledge aka power in the previous posts on this thread!

Diane - on filling the raised beds...Seedmama led me to search a good recipe source for Mel's mix. Google it. May be helpful. And thanks for thinking out loud with me. This whole idea with the thoughts and planning have consumed most of my day, not to mention parts of several others previously. I should have been doing laundry...and work (yes, I sometimes bring it home ....ugh!) but I just couldn't focus on anything else. Miles may separate us, but our hearts and thoughts are still in the same region.

Leava - yes!!!! I've used it for top dressing for my strawberries & blueberries! It's WONDERFUL!! Thanks, Dorothy! Didn't think about the asparagus!

With all the deductions and analyzing...I think I'm going to use cedar boards. They're reliable and no worries about leaching chemicals. I will dig out as much of the evil bermuda as I can underneath the beds, but scalping the whole area just isn't an option right now. I'll have to resort to the politically incorrect spraying, at least for now. (Dawn - I did take note, but DH would shoot me if I take that approach this year! He already worked so hard last year!) Last year, Chandra, we rented a sod-cutter and cut the top 6" off a 28' x 63' area. It STILL didn't deter the bermuda. Your soil might be different, but I swear when pulling it out of the garden last year I wouldn't have been surprise to find a little asian person hanging on to the roots because it was that deep. I'm about 1 mile north and about 6 miles east of you. We have lots & lots of sand out here.

I'm still waiting for our goodies from the swap before I determine the length of these beds. No matter what, I'm reserving one set of CRW cages just so I can prove that I'm REALLY NOT going to use them all!!!!! (How's that for covering my backside on the "denial" issue?? "Hello, my name is Paula....and I'm a garden-seedaholic.")

Paula

I've found notably better prices on 2x12s at Lumber 2. Chandra, the closest one to you is at I-240 and Sooner.

Bermuda grass is not from Bermuda, yet I must mention that the Bermuda Triangle also goes by the name Devil's Triangle. Coincidence? I think not. :)

Thanks for the Mel's mix idea, Paula, but it's not doable for us. I need something a bit more hillbilly/free -- a Jethro Mix!

You know, if you have your garden there on the side of your house, you can stick a few "ornamental" tomatoes along the front. Purely for decoration so they don't count. Plus, of course, some back by the pool for quick nutrition should someone get a case of the vapors from overexertion. And what kind of homemaker would you be if you didn't also have some sort of decorative planting, say... cherry tomatoes by mailbox.

None of those count toward your garden tomato totals.

Diane

I use Trex decking. I built my beds 18 inches high (3 boards) that way I don't bend over too much. I surround my beds with landscape bricks. I removed the bermuda put down cardboard then filled in with compost and garden soil. I wouldn't put down landscape fabric on the bottom because the earthworms would not be able to get up into the beds and it wont stop bermuda anyway. I did put down landscape fabric under the bricks and up the sides of the beds, that way my soil doesn't run out the sides between the boards. So all I have to do is weed eat the bricks.

Note: if you build beds 4' wide then make sure you can get around both sides because you can only reach so far from one side.

Seedmama - maybe I'll run into Chandra at Lumber 2. We've already been pricing them and that's the best price so far.

and Diane - absolutely mahhhvelous suggestions that I think I should adhere to...you little enabler YOU! LMBO!!!
and I could use a Jethro mix myself. DH's contract job runs out in May. =( Keep me posted on anything you find or learn?

See ya on the lumber aisle, Chandra!

Here is a pic.

{{gwi:1076870}}

I found lots of posts in GW/Google discussing about the treated timber in vegetable gardening. It looks like timber industry no more using copper, arsenic, chromium for treatment. Those elements has replaced (?) with ammonium. But again not sure about how safe it would be?

Paula, I can see your 28*63' bed (may be I am wrong), you are in pretty nice location.

Thank you Dana, Lumber2 prices seems to be little lighter!

Hey Boomer!!!! Where ya been? Good to have you back! or have I been missing you?

I've seriously considered the Trek boards, but it's going to depend on how much of my money that I've been letting Uncle Sam use (all year interest free) actually gets returned to me. Were the box stores in our area your source or did you find them in a neighboring community?

The Samuel Roberts Nobel Foundation in Ardmore has conducted all kinds of research on raised beds the last 10 or 12 years or more. Their research is generally aimed at serious home gardeners or market growers.

I've linked their "Permanent Raised Bed" handbook below. It is worth viewing just for the photos alone. They show several of the newer ways they have built and tested raised beds in recent years, using some materials you may never have considered before.

Based on the material used in one of those types of beds (rubber tire "lumber"), I don't think they're especially focused on organic gardening, but I concede that not everyone is focused on using organic techniques.

This is a long "article" and you can arrow through using the arrows at the left and right of each page.

The Noble Foundation is a leader worldwide in all kinds of agricultural research, but using their website can require a lot of patience because it is not necessarily easy to find what you're searching for there, even when you know it is there.

I've watched their research on the galvanized metal beds for years, but the other two are more recent research projects and I haven't read about them before.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Raised Bed Gardening Guide from The Noble Foundation

Most of my beds are 16' by 4' with 4-high landscape timbers, but 3-high would work. Lowes marks the 8' timbers down to $1.97 a few times each summer, so it makes it very economical. The timber ties are expensive, though. Some of my beds are made with cinder blocks, but I am vary anal about securing them well to make it look neat. It is not easy.

My beds are about 3' apart, just wide enough to put down two cap blocks between the beds to keep the soil from pushing the wood out on the sides of the beds. This is not wide enough for some indeterminant tomatoes, but works for most situations. I wouldn't mind them bring a bit further apart, but this is probably most productive.

I don't understand the bermudagrass issues. Glyphosate will knock it out easily and it will not come back any more than it can spread during the season, which is 3' or 4' in my case. I just spray the edges of my garden twice per year. Now nutsedge is a different story!

My beds are mostly 4' by 4' and 6" deep. Some are longer and narrower. In order to reach every area easily, I wouldn't go bigger than 4' long if 4' is your width. For a 2' wide bed you can make it as long as you want.

I use cheap untreated wood. So far my older beds are 3 years old and still perfect. When/if I build new beds I will make them 12" tall. They don't have to be super deep because veggies will grow beyond the raised portion into the soil below.

I originally lined everything with landscape fabric. MISTAKE. Like Dawn said, it makes weeds impossible to pull. Cardboard is much better and it's free. I put an ad on freecycle and lined EVERYTHING (paths, beds) with carboard. 6000 feet worth of cardboard. Six minivan loads full. I then mulched the paths. I started out with wood mulch but that got too expensive so now I use straw. In the future when budget allows, or if I ever design a new garden, I'd love pea gravel.

My IDEAL would be a kind of paotager with low stone walls and 24" stone beds and brick paths and fountains and stepping stones and sundials....So if anyone has a spare 200k or so burning a hole in their pocket, give me a shout. ;)

Jo

Paula, I got my trex boards at the lowes in Norman.

Dawn, thank you for your suggestion. Here are some pics of completed grow light system;

Cheers -Chandra