> What have you found to be the best ways to prevent/get rid of > weeds organically? My husband bought a weed claw grabber thingy but > something more preventative might be nice too. The claw grabber thingy would be for big weeds that have escaped notice until they're hard to pull. I would also recommend getting a tool designed to cut tiny weed seedlings off when they sprout - the idea is that you cut the weeds off and barely disturb the soil. Possibilities include: - A "hula hoe" - A collinear hoe - A "wire weeder" like the one they have at Johnny's. This is a short-handled tool and might work better for your raised beds than the above two long-handled tools. You have to crouch down, but you get better precision. A plain old classic "hoe" is not all that good for this job - it's better for chopping out bigger weeds and various soil-arranging tasks. If I were assigned to manage your garden, I would use the wire weeder to weed around the plants, and hand-pluck weeds that are dangerously close to the plant stems. This is another reason for avoiding the hexagonal spacing - with hexagonally spaced plants, it's harder to weed with a tool without accidentally cutting off the plants. Weeding-with-a-tool is also a reason for _spaced_ plants rather than scattering seed. For example, if you're willing to kneel down and hand-pluck a lot of weeds, scattering lettuce seed works just fine. If you're going to lose patience with that, as I would (and if you're not quite sure you can distinguish between lettuce and weed seedlings), then you're better off sprinkling your seed in little rows or, most formally, growing seedlings elsewhere or buying seedlings and then placing each lettuce plant in a specific place. To clarify, I'm not suggesting old-style "row farming" where you might have one row of lettuce and two feet of path that you walk in. (Not that that's necessarily wrong if you have the space - it has non-obvious advantages - but that's not your garden.) I'm just talking about simplifying the spaces between plants so that they're easier to weed. And you might want to increase the spacing just a little this first year, again to make the weeding easier. This past year, in fact, I grew my beans about six inches apart in the "row", and exactly eighteen inches apart between the "rows", though that was all in a bed and I never ever stepped between the rows. It was much easier to weed between the "rows" when the plants were young, and the plants ended up growing quite large, I think reflecting the larger underground space available to them. Easier work and, I think, not significantly fewer beans. Now, I had all the space I could possibly work, so I'm not really recommending that you use a space as big as eighteen inches, but maybe just a little extra space. Mulch is dandy, though for some reason it doesn't control weeds well for me - it makes the soil moist and soft and happy, and the weeds as well as the plants love that. So many people swear by mulch for weed control that I'm confident that I'm doing something wrong, but I (1) don't know what that is and (2) have too large a garden last year and this year to be able to thickly mulch it all. So I'm controlling weeds other ways. This year I'm also trying out biodegradable landscape paper; I don't know yet if I recommend it. The only thing that I know is that it has to be very firmly secured or you'll come back the next day to find it blown to the other end of the garden. :) Maybe biodegradable landscape paper _under_ mulch will be the magic. > I do not know if I should trust the hardware store brand though. I am > looking at "Evergreen" brand top soil and manure. My apologies for asking, but when comparing prices, you are accounting for a cubic yard being twenty-seven cubic feet, not nine cubic feet, right? I just want to make sure; when doing the math fast in the past I did once forget to add that third dimension. In any case, this is where I'm not a great deal of help. I don't use raised beds, so most of my soil is just the ground. :) For amending, I most often use Gardner & Bloome products. Their bags say "Organic", but I don't see "certified organic", so does that really mean organic in an organic gardening sense, or just in a dictionary word sense? I don't know. :) Anyway, I use the Farmyard Blend and the Soil Building Compost. But now that we have a bigger garden, I think that I also need to find a trustworthy by-the-partial-truckload source. I have more than once seen a big blob of soil dumped onto a tarp in front of a neighbor's home, so I think that it's not all that unusual to have it delivered that way and then frantically wheelbarrow it back to your garden. But that assumes that you've found the trustworthy source in the first place.

First, start a list of wants and needs. Consider how you want to use your space and let you imagination go wild. Plan big - you can always start small. Then draw your yard on paper. Make special note of the sun angles in winter and summer. How does water move off your property? Leave open space for pathways so you can move through your yard. Decide on a main theme or focal point. You have your Japanese theme, but maybe you need a focal point like a fountain, small water feature or pond with Koi. You may draw several variations on you want to use your space, but this is the design process. If you hire a landscape designer they will ask you these same questions. Collect pages from magazines that show the landscape you are visioning. Take photos of landscapes you like. If you email me, I can send you a template for the wants and needs list and a few tips to get you started.

Justgotabme - Ha ha! Sadly I wasn't much better before I had kids. At least not about getting organized and staying that way. But I did have more energy to just stay up an extra half hour and tidy up so it didn't get quite so crazy. The good news is that after I wrote my pity-party posting last night I did get up and pick up the scattered mail, any trash on the floor, DD's books and got the toys back to her zone. Some of the stuff is gone off the couch too, mostly just the trash stuff though. Looking at what I just wrote about not being able to get organized and stay that way... I'm not sure that's true. I don't think I have EVER been organized. I have gotten my house neat and clean, but I think I can't keep it that way precisely because it is not organized. On the other hand, I think my kitchen is fairly organized and everything there that belongs there has a home... but it doesn't stay neat because other things like to camp out on the kitchen counter and table. I don't think most of my house is unorganized because I have too much unloved stuff (though that's certainly true of the garage), we do haul stuff to Goodwill several times a year and there's an ongoing goodwill pile in the garage. But I'm sure if I started digging through my closets I could find more to haul away.

That's a bed with some potential. "Plain dirt" can mean anything. Your best strategy would be to get a (low cost) lab test done to see what chemical problems it might have and at least get an experienced vegetable gardener to have a look at it and see what the texture looks like. Big difference between a mass of sandy clay and one of loam with good tilth. Winter is a good time to make these assessments, so you can be ready by spring. Does it drain well? That is, if you stick a hose on it, do you end up with a big puddle on top? Is the soil uniform? That is, if you dig down in it, does the the soil look the same all the way down? I've seen beds where the previous owner put a few inches of good looking soil on top of a foot or two of really trashy soil. When you dig down, do you hit any masses of roots that come, perhaps, from your neighbor on the other side of the wall? These are simple things to check that can save you a lot of grief later.