I have old books. 1)Step-by-step to Organic Vegetable Growing, by Samuel Ogden He talks about soil,double dug trench,tile drainage for wet gardens, garden layout & design,composting,garden tools,weeds,insect & disease control. 2)The Ruth Stout NO-WORK GARDEN BOOK, she has a no till garden in 1971. With lots of tips on most of the plants you will grow. 3)Getting the Most from Your Garden, by Rodale Press. Growing beds,Companion planting,Extending your growing season.Gardening from different Regions 4)Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew This is for small gardens, I have over 1000 square feet, but I like the "Outdoor Planting Schedule" it starts 8 weeks before last Spring frost, though 16 weeks after last frost.The chart alone the worth the price of the book. 5)Garden anywhere, by Alys Fowler, she has a earth worm box for worm composting,seed sowing, weeding, harvest & much more. 6)Grow Vegetables by Alan Buckingham, Location, layout,tools,compost,manure,sowing seeds. Also have a year planner & 8 groups of vegetables, Perennial vegetables-Asparagus,globe, Jerusalem & Chinese artichokes. Herbs is another. Check out your Public Library 7 used book stores. GOOD LUCK.

No, you want high quality New Zea-land Sphagnum moss. I don't know if you can buy a small amount anywhere. Best bet would be an orchid grower who probably has a bunch and would sell you a small amount. If you were in LA I would gladly give you enough for one plant. Check with your local orchid socie. If you do switch to SM, care is totally different than in bark. You don't soak it in the sink once a week, the baster once a week is plenty as the SM retains a tremendous amount of water. At the same time you never want it to get totally dry either so if it's super hot in your area you might need a little more water. Nick

What I'm going to offer is the results of my experience & studies, and is only meant to be helpful, so if you THINK you see anything critical, please take it as constructive - I'd rather be your pal than alienate you, so please keep that in mind. ;o) I've tried many times(experiments) growing with coir and CHCs as replacements for peat and pine bark respectively with loose controls in place & have never had good results - even when coir was only about 15% of the mix, but YMMV. As far as the sustainability issue, I've done some researching on that, and here is a reply I often leave when that point is raised: Sorry, but I'm not buying the non-renewable lament. In Canada alone, there are more than 270 million acres of harvestable peat bogs. If we make the conservative guess that the harvestable portions of these bogs are 10 feet deep, that means there are probably more than 900 billion cu. ft. available for harvest, just in Canada! That doesn't even take into consideration what's available in Europe, Asia, or places like New Zealand where they also mine peat, or those bogs that are NOT considered harvestable. Canada currently has mining/harvesting operations underway on approximately 40 thousand acres or about .014% (that reads 14 one thousandths of 1 percent)." Check the math - it's accurate and conservative. It's more likely that the next ice age will be upon us and glaciers will have covered what's available before we even use a noticeable percentage. Renewable/non-renewable = moot. Water drains well but the area around the plant stem sinks in about 1". When I fill the hole back up and add a bit of water, the water just sits on top all mushy. I think I'm moving in the right direction, but not quite there yet. I'm guessing this is your container soil? From what you said, I'm getting that your soil was 100% saturated - that it was so water retentive that it supported a perched water table at least equal to the depth of the soil. This means that the entire soil mass was probably completely filled with water. To be very direct, I really think you need to take a good look at basing your soil on a very large fraction of larger particulates, instead of the ones that are causing all the water retention. Most soils based on peat/coir/compost will support 3-6" of perched water after you water them a few times, and more as the soil ages. Perched water kills roots, and the more of it you have in the container after watering, the worse it is. By mineral content in RBs, I meant something that remains stable - like topsoil, sand .... or it could be something like a Turface product - just so it doesn't break down and gas-out. I wouldn't be too concerned about a pH of 5.8-6.0 in raised beds at all. I think you'll be just fine with that. Be very careful with the blood meal at soil temperatures below 55* because of ammonium toxicity. I would withhold it until temps are comfortably above that benchmark. Take care, and good luck!!! There's a container gardening forum too (that's where the link I left took you), where you can join in if you need more help with your containers. I really think you could do yourself a LOT of good and skip a whole growth cycle of heartache if you turned your container soil into your raised beds & started afresh with pine bark as the basis for your container soil. Remember, container soils are almost entirely about structure - you can do without the fine black soil, coir, vermiculite (also water-retentive), ash and w-castings. Now that the talking is done, if you were here I'd offer you a blueberry or chocolate tea or a Cran-Grape juice (my fav), while I take in what you have to say. AL

I was just going through the bow calculations and don't think I comprehend just how to do that. With 20 ft of pvc for the bows, on a 7ft wall height, does anyone know how to calculate the center height? Math is my all-time weakest subject.