After reading the latest water retention and movement thread with only 15 replies (I get very intimidated when there are over 100 replies), it seems you are right about a watering problem! I'm going to go out tomorrow and dig int the soil and see what it's like down deep in the containers (1 ft). The neighbors put in a few inches of gravel "for drainage" Luckily I have some ruts out in the field that need to be filled! I'll check out Wheeler Zameroni to replace the soils throughout the winter (already have most of my winter crops planted in lower raised beds that are closer to the house) or maybe I'll just save up some each month to get a couple of yards in the spring. Nancy

If you have a long narrow bed, think about removing just some of the oleanders, but not in a rigid 1-2-3-remove/1-2-3-remove formation. It'll be just as boring. Instead, think about how to incorporate some of them in "clumps" of one to three, removing the plants in between. For 40' I'd use two clumps and then landscape around them. If you have mature oleanders plus a fruit tree or two, your other plants will be living in mostly shade. I live in the Oakland hills but frankly, flax doesn't really like being shaded. Lantana will grow in bright shade, no problem. I like a mix of plants. 5' wide to me is pretty wide, many of my beds are extremely narrow! This is a composite shot of two long narrow beds - the first showing the "bones" in 2002 when we started landscaping and the second what it looks like April 2006. Right behind the tall white-variegated tree on the RH side, which is a variegated rhamnus (buckthorn), is a white oleander trained as a standard. I bought it from HDepot for $30 and it blooms more than half the year. I love them as trees because you can grow a lot of stuff in the "low" and "mid-level" height beneath them: Up here the big box garden centers have to compete with some really good nurseries so they try harder with good plant selections and prices. You're in a warmer zone than I am (I'm Sunset zone 17) so maybe bahia or some of the others who live in warmer areas can help more with plants. If I were you I'd concentrate on getting plants with foliage color and shape different than the oleanders. They have wonderful foliage themselves, but anything in excess is overwhelming, no matter how pretty! For instance, something like this Lavatera olba "Aureum" would contrast - about 4' tall and around, chartreuse foliage, bright purple flowers once a year. BTW, this is a nursery plant, not big-box store: Heucheras will live in partial shade and flower prettily once a year too. This is "Roseda": Maybe your zone is warm enough to keep this plant alive - mine wasn't, it's very tender. Strobilanthes "Persian Shield" on the left, spikey leaves of bearded iris (love their foliage and cool blue-green color, plus mine reflower twice a year) in-between, and a colorful hybrid pelargonium "Skies of Italy" on the right. The pelargoniums are often called geraniums by people, but that is botanically incorrect. See what I mean about shape and color of leaves? There's not a flower in sight but it's just as pretty. BTW, you can pick your lemons easily enough with a fruit-picker. Buy it at any big box garden center. It's a long pole (sometimes breaks down into two halves) with a stiff wire basket. The basket has a few raised "tines" on one half so you can slide it around the fruit, catch it between the tines, and tug it loose into the basket. Works very well. I'm surprised you get so little fruit from your Meyer. They are a heavy-bearing, vigorous hybrid that naturally grows as a bush. If you have a tree it has been grafted. I have one bush and two trees. This tree was planted in 2002 from a 5-gallon can, and the photo was taken in 2006: Citrus are very heavy feeders. I go through one of those big bags of citrus fertilizer annually with 3 lemons and 1 lime. I'm also a proponent of tossing what doesn't work, so regardless of what your mystery fruit is, I'd yank it out and toss it in the greens cart for something more productive!

DH put in 3 raised beds for me 3 years ago. This is our third year and only minimal Bermuda grass coming through. Here is what he did. 1. Scalp the ground with the weed wacker down to dirt. 2. Lay down two layers of 10 year black weed blocker paper (water permeable). The bottom layer north to south and top layer east to west -and- he extended the paper about 3 inches outside the wood box. 3. Fill the beds (all 4x4) with potting mix and peat moss and all the old growing medium from our EarthBoxes. 4. During the summer and fall he regularly weed-wacks all around the raised beds to keep down any weeds in the area. The Bermuda grass has only rarely grown up thru the 10 inches of 'dirt' and I have no mulch around my okra, beans and squash. I plant collard greens in these same beds in fall and they stay until spring - still very, very few weeds. I credit the scalping DH does with weed-wacker for keeping the weeds from growing wild around the beds. I credit the weed-block paper for keeping the weeds almost completely out of the beds. DL

I had in-ground garden beds (made from trex) that were invaded by tree roots. I dug out the beds and sifted the soil to get rid of the roots. I then put down cinder blocks, 9 in a 4'x4' garden bed, with their top surface level with the top of the in-ground beds. I then put down two layers of 1/2" cement backerboard which is supported by the top of the cinder blocks and perimeter of the in-ground garden bed. I drilled drain holes about every 12" in the cement backerboard. Now I have a 16" air gap between the new bottom of the garden bed and the old bottom of the in-ground garden bed. I build a raised garden bed perimeter and set it on top of the cement backerboard. I'm hoping the tree roots won't reach up through that airgap into the new garden bed. We'll see... Don't use the Hardie cement backerboard that has grooves to help you break it to size. I tried that first and it broke at some of those grooves. Dug out beds and used thicker double layer of cement backerboard.