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

Without knowing his setup and dirt content, he very well could be getting great results. My guess is that his soil is draining too quickly...or quickly enough to warrant that frequent of a watering schedule. If that is the case then I am willing to bet he is having to fertilize frequently too due to the nutrients being washed out of the soil. Again, just a guess. For your vegetables, you want moist, but well drained soil. If your beds are still waterlogged after a couple days of not watering then you have a drainage problem with your soil. There are organic (read "non-toxic") soil amendments you can purchase at your local nursery to help this. However, I suspect you are just over-watering. As you are doing, let the beds dry out and then replant. Your neighbor's plan suggest building "wells" around your plants. This is good if your soil drains too fast, as it helps direct water straight to the roots of the plants. If your soil is not draining fast, then in my opinion the wells are not necessary. About the mulch, knowing I use hay, I pile up about 6 inches of hay in my beds. So, a couple three inches of mulch should do fine. I would start on the smaller scale and see how fast your soil dries out with backing of the watering. You want the soil moist, but not bone dry, and not sopping wet. Keep the mulch away from the base of your plants by a couple inches minimum. For the mulch type, my rule of thumb is to not use anything that has been treated with chemicals/pesticides, as over time those chemical remnants will leach out of the mulch and into your soil where your plants will suck it up with the water and it could be present in your vegetables. My last thought about your setup is about pollination. I noticed that some of your plants have flowers on it. Have you noticed any pollinators around the beds? Bees are the first and usually the best pollinators. If not, this is another contributing factor to not bearing any fruit. Your plants should have male and female flowers on it, but sometimes that is not always the case. For example, look up pollination of a watermelon vine. There is a female flower (with a tiny watermelon) and a male flower (without). The pollen from the male flower has to be rubbed into the pollen of the female flower and if nature takes it's course, the tiny watermelon swells and then it takes off growing. Yeah, just like a human. So, you might look at planting some flowers mixed in to attract pollinating insects and such. Otherwise, you might have to do what I had to do with a couple watermelons- give them a "helping hand" :o) Anyways, I'm not an expert in any way, shape, or form. This is just based on my experience and also growing up helping an elderly neighbor who was a retired horticulturalist for Travis County. I say "was" in that he has passed on. But his half-acre garden produced a ton of vegetables all year long. Keep posting your progress- pics, story, ect. There are plenty of people on here that have had different experiences and tried different things to have successful gardens. You should also look at the square foot garden forum of the website. Many different ideas in there too.

I bought my first home this year, in Snohomish, WA, and I couldn't wait to plant my first clematis, to grow around an arch as you enter from the sidewalk. I picked 2 beautiful pink champagne, hoping they would grow quickly and meet in the middle. I carefully planted them and removed them from the arch they were growing on. They seemed happy, as I checked their progress every day. I planted them maybe 2 months ago, but one stalk that was seemingly doing well, is not looking well at all. It appears to be dying, but I'm wondering why all of a sudden? I'm heartbroken. I've been totally babying these plants. I water and feed regularly (with miracle grow for roses). Can anybody tell me what I did wrong? Please tell me the darkness on those leaves is normal, and the wilting new shoot is just from lack of water, because I was gone for a couple days. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! Before I dig it up and start all over!

I will take pics...Been sick for a few days... I am beginning to think that for some of us growing 'roses' is an ALL season project..Not only do I have to protect them but I also have to watch out they don't desiccate in the winter too..If the snow should not fall and the bare ground is exposed to sub 0 temps or higher with whipping winds, the ground can go bone dry even in winter..So here I am watering all my roses deeply on the first given warm day above 40.....I know that many die just to a lack of moisture in the dead of winter... Thanks for the encouragement.. It does fell like I want to garden out there too since my temp is a balmy 60 degrees right now! Back to the low 20's by day and single digits by Saturday night with a bare ground again..My bulbs are starting to pop up...lol