My husband just made my first raised bed three days ago using cement bricks we already had. It looks really good and though it was backbreaking work to carry the bricks, husband said it was very easy. Lacking easy access to many of the materials in the sq foot book, we used black silage plastic for the bottom and covered it first with straw seeped in horse manure then a layer of garden grit followed by four bags of compost mixed with grit. The depth is about 12 inches which should let us grow almost anything if it works. My family is very found of American veggies that take up a great deal of space and or grow vertically. So I'm working out ways to get our Three foot by Nine food bed with as many things going up as possible. I'm only 4'8" so the child sized width works perfect for me, but we made the bed longer to conserve bricks. I used old rusted steel beams for the horizontal makers and bamboo stuck under to mark the vertical squares. No link yet as we are just starting - good luck with your bed! Disaster Cat - ex-patriot Californian living in rural Ireland with husband, dogs, new garden plot and many, many cats...

Smoking affect the voice...oh yeah Kiss of a smoker....blechhhh Know what I find really gross? Women who have smoked since their teens, and then when they get to be, oh, say 35...they get these thin vertical lines on their upper lips and all their lipstick gets up those lines.....nasty

WOW what great pictures!! Looks like everyone had a great time! AND...I'm really amazed that Sharon's husband Ernie looks so good! I remember her posting about him being diagnosed with cancer (not long after MY husband died) and my heart just broke for him! He looks wonderful!!!

If you can come up with an old piece of chain link fence and a couple logs you can make a drag to pull behind the mower. Basically the chain link will scrape a little dirt off of the high spots and drop it in the low spots. It may take a little while but as long as it's not too bad this will work wonders for smoothing out the bumps. If it were me, I would hold off doing anything that will leave you with bare dirt for now. Otherwise you will end up with more weeds to deal with and there's a good chance you could have some soil erosion from storms or heavy rains during the summer. Leaving the weeds alone will allow them to hold the soil in place. From there, get started with the "destruction" process in mid to late July. About 1 week prior spray everything with RoundUp to kill off all of the weeds. Once the destruction is complete and the lawn area has been smoothed and ready for seed begin watering lightly 3 times per day for a couple of weeks to germinate any weed seeds that were left behind. By lightly I mean just enough to keep the very top layer of soil damp. Spray anything green again with RoundUp. By this time all this is done you will be into your ideal time for seeding which should be mid to late August for you. In the meantime, use the search feature here to learn proper seeding, watering, fertilizing, and all the other stuff involved in maintaining the new lawn as all this is important if you want the lawn to be successful. It's really not too hard but you don't want to spend all this money to have it go wrong. You've got a good group of folks here on the forums to help you through it and answer any questions that come up along the way.