One more question - do smart pots require more water?

First thing that comes to mind is what size of each are you considering? It is impossible to compare the amount of care required (feeding and watering etc.) of a raised bed of any normal size to a Smart Pot. The pot, even if it was comparable in size to the largest SP available, would require substantially more care and attention, especially in your climate, regardless of the crop.

Second consideration is that SP's have a limited life span. Much shorter than any raised bed would have regardless of the materials used to construct it.

On the other hand, the pots can be moved at needed and while they would need a somewhat level spot to sit, if scattered around as the ground allows you wouldn't have to do the work of leveling out the spot for the raised beds. In ground beds on uneven ground can have some real problems with drainage and maintaining consistent soil moisture levels. Bed inclines create pockets of too wet and overly dry soil thanks to gravity. :)

Dave

Just saw your follow up post - more water than what? Other types of containers? IME, no, just more frequent watering. Than raised beds? Yes. In general a raised bed will dry out faster than an in-ground bed but most any container will dry out faster than even a raised bed will.

Have you considered sunken beds? They supposedly work fairly well in dry climates.

Edit: Nevermind. Your last comment about rocky soil wasn't there when I was typing.

Rodney

Can understand why you can't have in-ground beds but if there is an area you can level out, nothing would prevent you building open-bottom raised beds for better results than using Smart Pots. But if you do decide to go the pot route do some more research as there are many better fabric pot choices available - some less expensive ones too.

Dave

Ask your city if any recycling is done there. We have a place we can get recycled mulch and we have a sanitation depot that takes paper and cardboard and a hot tumbler and makes compost, cost is $10 a yard. Makes eeverything grow great, just watch my matters.

I did thr rasid beds and it cost about $200 to fill 4x10 with top soil and I'm getting to old to haul around now. I haven't tried grow bags but will this year as I'm gona ggrow lot's of matters. Yum mm

LAR

The pots do dry fast and requires lots of water.they are expensive. I have root pouches the brown ones i n 25 and 30 gals. I just got 2 smart pot big bag beds but I haven't used them yet. They are thinner than root pouches. Have to b careful with them I damaged some with the lawn mower just going close by the pots, I think the carb burned them but I don't know how. When you add pots dirt water and ferts, you May be better off with the raised beds. That being said it still is expensive. Make sure your beds are deep enough and no matter what you read dont put alot of peat otherwise you will never get it wet enough.

I tried to research the pots to see if other ppl had experience with them cuz every where I read the life of the pots very. That is another thing to consider. A raised bed should put last these pots.

I would use something to hold the most water. A soil less mix usually contains a ton of peat. So I feel I have good results from a soil mix for a raised bed. Topsoil or garden soil mixed with lots of compost and vermiculite and bio char and greensand, whatever else you like to add. Your compost should be very diverse made up of several types of manures, and leaf and veg wastes. If you have cottonseed meal and alfalfa meals that's good to add. A bit of pine bark mulch may also help to hold moisture. You will prob have better results from mixing your own since I don't know of any one bagged mix that doesn't require any additional inputs.

I started out with container growing about 4 years ago...and I have gotten pretty good at it. There is much to learn....and as dig says...they is a lot more watering/feeding work. Plant support can be more challenging here. Analyze your commitment. With containers, a free-draining mix is paramount. Never use anything like garden soil or "moisture control" for containers. Now, I have installed a nice raised bed to compliment my containers. There is stuff to learn about them too. Am I straddling the fence??? haha

How deep do you need a raised bed to be for tomatoes, veggies and spices. I have extra 6" wide Trex from our deck so I could stack two high with 4x4 posts to give me about 10" of growing medium.

10 inch is min. Deeper is better but gets more expensive as you go. Tomato roots will extend as far as they can grow more than two feet. Some crops have shallow root systems though.

It is true that tomato roots can grow more than 2 feet but won't necessarily go vertically down. If they cannot go down will grow bushy and side way at angle and shallow. My raised beds are about 11 inches deep but I have loosened the native soil underneath. But they stay within that 11 inches fluffy soil.

Sey

After my first year of raised beds (11 1/2" deep)...I found what sey just said to be totally true.

I'd suggest on a raised bed. Much less watering. Planting veggies in pots will consume more time for tending. Soon you'll get stressed by having to allocate more time for watering/fertilizing. You wont have earth worms running around under the soil to enrich/aerate the soil as raised beds will. On raised bed just let it auto pilot.