Better soil with lots of carbon material. Also, my beds don't have bottoms, so any water that drains out the bottom goes into the soil where it's still available to deep-rooted veggies.

When I built the raised beds, I gathered up a lot of rotting wood to put in the bottom, then covered it all with rich compost. When the beds get a deep soaking, the rotting wood draws in a lot of that moisture like a sponge. Rotting wood is no obstacle to plant roots and they go in after it.

It's part of hugelkultur. http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

Works like a champ for me.

I have them also. I have cr@p for soil so it is a must out here in Calicheville if you want to grow vegetables. Good tip on the rotten wood.

Raised beds for me too with lots of my own compost

Mine are really too shallow. I went 2' deep. When I put in more next year, I am going to use the backhoe to dig trenches 5' deep and then fill them up with compost and rotted wood. I love, love, love pulling up my plants after the first hard frost and measuring the taproot. A two foot tomato plant can have a 6' deep taproot if the soil allows for it. Deep roots means drought tolerant and healthy plants. I want plants that have the gumption to go after their own needs rather than waiting on me to show up.

I just did a green manure over winter and then double dug the mass of Austrian peas and crownvetch deep into the bed this spring right before planting. They told me to wait 2 weeks but I didn't because I was already late. I figured it would be two weeks before any roots got down there.. GOD, everything is loving it. It could be all the rain too. I have never seen green beans so happy or cucumbers so quick out of the gate and fruiting so quickly too.. I will be doing green manure to half my garden next year. I missed having my winter garden last year.

About the draining water. My raised beds are big enough and high enough so I plant in ditches around tomatoes and build hollows around my cages of beans. Everything gets a bit of a ditch in the summertime. When I water the ditches and walls direct the water to the roots. It does not spread out. I learned that from someone who gardens in New Mexico. I have been thinking of using some ollahs too as an experiment. There are ways to make them with clay pots and a plastic gallon jug with holes in the bottom variation.

I used those methods as well. Inverted Gatorade bottles with the bottom cut out buried at the base of the plants.

The problem I ran into was that the plants use water to move nutrients up into their root system and then through the plant. Unless you water all around the plant, then it can only get the nutrients right there at the base and those are quickly exhausted. When I did some experiments, I could quickly see the difference between plants who had their entire beds watered versus plants that had received drip irrigation.

And which did better miradus? I'm not quite sure I understand your Gatorade bottle method. Are the open bottom of the bottles above soil level?

I just had a lot of Gatorade bottles so that's what I used. Any plastic bottle would work. Take the top off, bury it upside down, cut out the bottom. You basically have a funnel. The plants which received water outside of the funnel had more foliage, grew larger, and produced more.

With the pond, I have 1.85 million gallons of water available to my 1800 square foot of garden space, so there's no reason for me to be stingy.

I DO use buckets, however, for my fruit trees during the driest part of the year. A 5 gallon bucket placed at the base of the tree and filled up with water. I drilled a 1/8th hole in the bottom (not the direct bottom, but at the base so it shoots outwards). That lets me put a decent amount of water directly at the base of the tree. Takes about 10 minutes for 5 gallons to be dispersed.

Ok, to expand on this a little more ... most of the plants in our vegetable gardens are dicotyledon. They've got 2 leaves when they first emerge. And most dicots have a taproot system. That's one long, deep root which branches off into secondary roots. The taproot does most of the work in finding water and nutrients.

So the THEORY was that, since the taproot grows straight down, putting water directly at the base and having it soak downwards would be the most beneficial for the dicot vegetable structures.

The REALITY was that soon the taproot will grow deeper than you can reliably get water down to it and it's the secondary roots and their greater vascular mass which are pulling in more nutrients and water than the taproot is finding once it leaves the 2' of garden bed.

This is why I feel that these experiments are important for each gardener, instead of relying on the wisdom of others. Steve Solomon may have developed good techniques for minimizing water usage, but he doesn't have my 105 degree days with a 30 mph wind whipping away transpiration.

So the bottles didn't work as well as just watering. I put a soaker hose down the row and plant the seeds or plants right beside it. I used to to put the soaker hose between two rows planted close together but had to use more water and the plants still began to wilt before I could rotate back to those rows. I use less water with a hose down each row and the plants there can go 3 or 4 days between water, even on our hottest days.