Thanks for your vote of confidence! I'm thinking I'll plot my strategy over the winter. Maybe buy some rocks to add some visual interest and then plant some large sedums next spring. My Black Jack did not do well in the planter (very disappointing) but my stonecrops are thriving. I guess it has something to do with the root depth of the larger plants? I've heard that sedums do not like their "feet" to be wet. We've been very, very dry this summer. When it does rain, though, it's torrential and I think that's what waterlogged my planter. The ground plantings have to be the way to go! Would love to see pictures of your plants!

I'm thinking that gardening here would have been a lot easier if only we had poured a concrete slab first and then built raised beds atop the concrete slab. We might have had bermuda grass sprout in the raised beds, but at least it couldn't have also popped up in the pathways. Bermuda grass is evil and I hate it. Also on the hate list? Lambsquarters, Johnson grass, any and all wild amaranths but especially Palmer's amaranth, wild carrots, wild bidens, crab grass, greenbrier and poison ivy. Other than that, I love practically everything else that grows here. This actually is my best bermuda grass year in a very long time. I worked long and hard this year to try to keep it out of the garden. Was I 100% successful? Heck no, but I think I can say I was 95% successful and I'd been working hard to dig out and get rid of any that sprouts or creeps into the garden. I put down a commercial grade of landscape fabric in every pathway but one and covered it with a 4" thick layer of mulch. Prior to putting down the fabric, I rototilled each path and raked out all the weeds and plant roots I could find. The one path that didn't get the landscape fabric was the control path for comparison. Within 2 weeks, I had bermuda grass and other weeds sprouting in the control bed and have been fighting them there ever since. In the pathways where I put the landscape fabric, occasionally something sprouts in the mulch, but I always pull it out, no matter what it is, before the roots can grow down through the landscape fabric. When you use landscape fabric, you have to use a heavy, woven one that does NOT have those little holes punched in it to allow water (lol, and weed seeds and everything else) to flow through the fabric. You have to have the ground clean and bare when you put the fabric down and immediately put down a thick layer of mulch so it is so dark that nothing can sprout beneath the fabric and grow upward. And, you have to pull out every single weed that sprouts in the mulch the very moment you first spot it. Using all the above techniques keeps my garden pathways clear, clean and weed-free, but I have to be very persistent about keeping the weeds out. If you let weeds grow up through the landscape fabric from underneath it or grow down through it from above, you'll have a big mess that is almost impossible to clean out. Finding the right landscape fabric is important. I was really stupid our first year here and bought the one sold at Sam's and Wal-mart (still sold there all these years later too) that has all those millions of little pre-punched holes in it that are supposed to let water through. Well, weeds and grass grew up through every little hole. It was the biggest mess I'd ever seen. Then I found a really heavy-duty one at CostCo. I buy it on rolls that are about 220' or 230' long and 4' wide. It is woven and tough---the bottom is almost like felt. As long as I am careful to install it as described above, it reduces my weed-pulling time to almost nothing. I would love to find the same fabric 8' wide. If I did, I'd put it on all sides of the garden outside the garden fence and cover it with gravel....and dare the bermuda grass to find a way to get under, over or through that and creep into the garden. It would be a perfect solution.

UPDATED PICS: Things are coming along well and I'm gradually adding things here and there. It's really cool how it's all just "fitting" together. What you cant see well in the pictures are seedlings that have been planted just to the left of the bush beans between the beans and the large pavers. I started lettuce (which will like a bit of shade that the beans will give in our hot summer sun) also beets (ditto for a bit of shade) raddish & carrots all in about 2 or 3 foot sections. In the left corner of the first picture are potatoes which are growing well, hope they actually get taters on them!! I Also just added marigolds all around where the tomatoes are and in front of the blocks that border that area. More recent (not in photos) is some various herbs, parsley just inside the gate that faces west, and a thyme plant in front of the other gate. One last change, I had to dig up and move a whole section of day lilies, who knew that they were a cat magnet!! Of course this one section is where my cats insisted on laying everytime they are out there...so I figured if you cant beat em, outsmart em?

Azura, last year was my first real veggie garden, and I learned a lot. There were successes and failures, but I enjoyed it so much. Skybird is right about you wanting to make it bigger next year. I created a separate bed for the herbs this year, just so I could plant more veggies in veggie garden. So far, I planted onion sets and peas (twice). I also have five kinds of lettuce, and broccoli sprouts that were wintersown, that I might plant out as soon as the crazy winds die down. Plus there are tomatoes and peppers in my kitchen windowsill, and tomatoes that were wintersown but haven't germinated yet. I'm also direct sowing carrots maybe this week, but the cucumbers, canteloupes, and beans won't get planted for another month or so. My goal is for as much variety as possible, even if it means just one or two plants of each - 5 kinds of beans, 4 kinds of canteloupe, 5 kinds of carrots, 4 kinds of cukes, 7 kinds of peppers, and as many different tomatoes as I can cram into the space that's left, and the Earthbox I just bought. I'd rather have too many plants and have to give some away, than to realize I have empty space in the garden, and not enough time to start something else before the end of the season. The bed and soil look great, and I wish you a bountiful harvest. Bonnie