Hi, I'm not sure where you are located. Here in Florida, I have my tomatos in a place that gets about the same amount of direct sunlight. So far, the tomato plants are growing and look good. I have also grown under lights, and while it is OK, my choice would be to try the sunlighted area first, even with reduced direct sunlight. I found 10 gallon tote boxes at wal-mart and other places selling for around $4 dollars each, and have put together some grow boxes using them. I think that 5 gallon pails would work fine, but with the 10 gallon tote boxes, I was able to add an inner liner that holds the potting mix a few inches above the bottom of the tote box. This provides a resivoir space. The idea is to have a self watering grower. I only have to water the plants every 3 to 4 days. The inner liner is made from a good brand of landscape fabric. I guess some landscape fabric is very thin and cheap, but the stuff I am using is tough. The fabric is attached around the top edge of the tote box so that when filled with potting mix (not dirt), the bottom sits in several inches of water. An over-flow hole prevents overfilling, so you just add water until it starts to come out of the over-flow hole that is cut into the tub several inches above the lowest point of the inner fabric liner. The idea came from reviewing construction of homemade earth boxes which have become pretty popular. The commercialy made earthbox growers can cost roughly $35 to $45 dollars or so, and I figured I would need a dozen or so because I live in a retirement park and can not have a regular garden, but can have as many potted plants as I wish. Cost of the grower I buit is about $5 dollars when you add the cost of the liner material. It came in a roll of 3 ft X 50 ft for $10 bucks. A 3ft X 3ft size is plenty for each box, so I have made 7 grow boxes so far, and still have plenty for future use. Well, if you care to take a peek at the grow box I am describing, just follow the link below. Good luck, and let me know if you like the idea. chuck Here is a link that might be useful: An option to using 5 gal buckets

Well, the SFG and SWCs will all be placed on concrete. We have a huge expanse of concrete on one side of our house (the previous owner ran a taxi company out of the house). Its great because we build and race cars, so we have plenty of room to store and work on them. We do still have plenty of yard, but most of it is shaded, so I'm doing the containers on the side of the house that has the most sun and it happens to be paved. So I'd imagine that would make a difference on the Nematodes. I'm starting some seeds this week, and my parents will be down MLK weekend to help me build the containers... I'm hoping to get an early start on some of the things that can't take our heat. Plus, the 5 gallon SWCs should be movable if needed so I can protect them if it gets too cold. I will also be companion planting as much as possible with the SFG so I can use the least amount of chemicals for pest control etc. Thanks for all the responses!

Faerybutterflye, Please pay careful attention to Dorothy's words. Placing layers of cardboard and newspaper and mulch on top of bermuda grass will not eliminate it. In fact, as the newspaper and cardboard decompose (which occurs VERY quickly in a rainy spring), they will in fact turn into compost and FEED the bermuda grass which then will grow up through the cardboard, newspaper and mulch. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that it is exceptionally hard to build lasagna beds on top of bermuda sod in our climate especially if the bermuda roots are in hard, compacted clay-ey or rocky soil. In very hard clay soil, or soil dense with rocks, it is hard to get the bermuda roots out....I've been working on it for 11 years now with success only in limited areas. I've had much more luck with shading it out and will use George's thickly-planted corn method on new ground I'm breaking this year for a larger vegetable garden. If your soil is not too dense or rocky for a sod cutter, that's the best way to remove bermuda sod...rent a sod cutter, take it out and get it removed completely and totally from your property. If you leave a 1/4" piece of bermuda stolon every square yard, the bermuda grass will spread and take back your beds in a matter of weeks. I have heard Neil Sperry tell people that for many years (oops, decades!) now on his gardening show and folks just never seem to get it. Bermuda comes back and comes back and comes back. Years ago my brother thought he'd eliminate bermuda grass from his future flower beds around his new house. He rototiled, raked out the large pieces of bermuda, added manure to the soil, put down very thick and heavy black plastic (6 mm), cut holes, planted his shrubs and vines, and put a heavy layer of white rock on top of the black plastic. The grass sprouted in every hole where he'd planted and he had to dig it out by hand repeatedly. Five years later he declared the rocks and plastic a failure. He shoveled up all the rocks, lifted the black plastic and found very thick and sturdy bermuda stolons all over the place under that black plastic. He had to either dig it out by hand--very difficult in his thick caliche-clay/white limestone soil near Granbury,Texas, or let the bermuda reclaim the area. He gave up and let the bermuda win. So, my point is that if bermuda can survive for 5 years under heavy black plastic, you aren't going to smother it out with cardboard and paper and mulch. IF you get rid of every possible bit of the bermuda by digging it out or removing it with a sodcutter, you add organic matter to the soil, you plant, and then you put down cardboard and paper around the new plants and then add 3 or 4" of mulch, then you'll be able to mostly prevent the bermuda from infiltrating from grassy areas outside the bed and from stolon pieces you missed, but it will take constant vigilance. I'm not telling you all this to frighten you, but just to make you understand that we've been through this many times with many people. Lasagna gardening is great, and it works well with clumping grasses but not with running grasses like bermuda and St. Augustine grass in our climate. Every year, I watch people here in my county (LOL, and with some of them they do it year after year after year as if they seemingly learn NOTHING from their repeated experience) rototill up a nice big patch of bermuda grass, rake out the large pieces of grass and stolons, plant veggies and water it well. Four to six weeks later they have a garden full of young veggie plants with bermuda grass already reappearing "here and there". By the time their garden is 8 to 12 weeks old, there is more bermuda than veggies. By the time the garden is 4 months old both bermuda grass and Johnson grass have "taken it back", the would-be gardeners have abandoned it, and another unsuccessful veggie harvest of little to no veggies and lots of grass has ruint someone's hopes. I watch this happen year in and year out and don't understand why they fail to figure out that they have to get ALL the grass out first and then work to KEEP it out if they want to grow a garden. So, with your flower beds and veggie beds, get all the bermuda out first, then remain vigilant on a daily, or at least a weekly basis, to keep it out. That is the ONLY way to grow anything here in an area that formerly was bermuda grass. If you go away on vacation for a couple of weeks, you'll likely come back and find the bermuda is winning the war. There is nothing harder in southern OK than fighting the bermuda grass and winning. Since our main rainy months here are April, May and June, the mud and the rapid regrowth of grass stolons/runners make bermuda grass removal difficult during that time frame, and by the time the rainy season is over, the bermuda is stronger than ever. Last year's very heavy spring rains left many gardens here in Love County with grasses and weeds 6' tall by June. If you can't get into the garden to keep the stuff out, it wins. I weed and dig out grass every single day in the spring and still struggle to keep the bermuda grass and Johnson grass out of my veggie and flower gardens. Like George, I find it 'infiltrates' and spreads into places where I had removed it.....that usually happens when I am struggling just to keep up with the veggie harvest from mid-summer on because when the veggie are ready you have to harvest them, and then cook and eat what you can and spend the rest of your time dehydrating, canning, freezing, pickling and jellying the rest. That's when my bermuda grass starts marching back into the garden....it sneaks under the fence and starts spreading through the mulch when I'm spending all those long days in the kitchen putting food by for the non-gardening season. My best success with removing bermuda has been in areas where we have planted oodles and oodles of trees and shrubs. As they grow and get larger, they shade it out (hooray!) and then I can plant shade-loving ground covers and perennials. Unfortunately, trees grow slowly so after 11 years here, I'm just starting to see significant shading out of bermuda. I had black gumbo clay in Fort Worth and I only thought it was hard to garden in it. I've give my left arm to have that black gumbo now because the dense red Oklahoma clay I have now is 1,000 times worse. I miss my St. Augustine grass too. To prepare for your bermuda battles, buy one of those little garden kneeling pads in the spring when they show up in stores. I have three of them, all well-used. Buy a good strong sturdy trowel. With bermuda grass, you don't really pull it out....pulling it out only removes the uppermost part of it and the underground part regrows quickly. You have to dig it out, and be sure you put it into trash bags and dispose of it properly. NEVER put bermuda grass or Johnson grass on the compost pile because if you do, you won't have a compost pile but you will have a lovely new bermuda and Johnson grass garden. We're not trying to scare you....but George, Dorothy and I all have fought and fought and fought bermuda and Johnson grass and we know exactly how hard it is to win each battle with it. For your flower bed under the tree, spread everything you can on the ground under the tree.....those cedar needles, grass clippings, old hay or straw, fine bark mulch, compost, etc. It is even better if you can work those into the soil, but that is hard with compacted soil and tree roots. You can improve the soil from the surface down because the mulch feeds the soil and plants as it decomposes and the earthworms and other critters carry the decomposing matter down into the soil, but it takes years, not months or weeks. Since last year was your first year, I have to warn you that last year's weather was not typical....we tend to have many more dry drought-type years and not many wet, rainy years. For example, here in Love County, we had anout 53" of rain here at our house (including 12.84" of rain in one day in April) in 2009. That is NOT normal. In 2008, we had 23" of rain, which was below-average but much more typical of what we have here most years. I'm going to find and link the Carter County climate page from the Oklahoma Climatological Society for you below. Click on the link to read the data in it and you'll learn a lot about Carter County's climate, including average rainfall, snowfall, average last frost dates in spring, average first freeze dates in fall, etc. Remember, though, that they give 30-year averages and I have found in our 11 years here that we tend to have spring freezes far beyond the 'average' dates. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Carter County Climate Pages

That lawn grass, you have to identify what type it is. If it's a running bermuda you'll be fighting to keep it out of any border and sidewalk edge. That trench alongside the cement walk is a natural for gravel fill which will give people a place to step into when passing on a sidewalk which appears to be one-person wide and with elevation changes. Begin your sidewalk border with a metal edge strip to keep the gravel in the trench and separated from what will become your planting strips. You can put small planters in the gravel area to hold pretty annuals, I've seen that done at historical homes. Beginning about 6 feet from the porch, begin a curve from the gravel strip to shape your front beds which will allow a pretty welcoming area plus make mowing much easier around the curve instead of a corner. Use a garden hose to decide the shape and just spray paint to mark where you want to dig on both sides of the walk. If that's a wood board across the base of your porch you may want to replace it now with something treated. Taking it off will give you the ability to view the condition of the porch piers (supports) and while it's off, consider having a pest control company come do a treatment while they can get access to under the porch. Once you get plantings in you won't want to be tearing them out to check and repair that fascia board that hides the underneath of the porch. At least not for several years. Good luck and have fun.