Raised beds have upsides and downsides. On the upside, raised beds are tidy-looking, easier to work with hand tools, and correct drainage problems if you have heavy soil. On the downside, raised beds for a whole garden are EXPENSIVE -- you have to buy soil (which may be the exact, same lousy ground in need of amendment that you would have had anyway), as well as building material (free only works if you either luck into a large amount of matching building materials or don't care what the beds look like) -- they heat the roots excessively in areas with blistering hot summers, and they are hard to keep watered if the soil is sandy or the local climate is dry. Raised beds are very fashionable right now, but they aren't magic. Essentially, they are very large containers and subject to the advantages and disadvantages of container gardening. As I continue to experiment, I think that I will be wanting to use some raised beds for specific purposes -- mainly keeping invasive things like bramble fruit and mints under control -- while doing most of the gardening in the ground. But I'm in a hot climate with very sandy soil that is so hard to keep watered that I'm considering putting some of the water hogs into sunken beds next year. Raised beds may meed your needs perfectly. And if you're gardening for just one or two people or as a hobby rather than expecting to provide a significant contribution to a family's meals the cost won't be as much of an issue for a couple 2x8 or 3x10 beds as if I were to put my 1600+sq feet (and expanding), garden into them.

I should put two plants per raised bed then - the drawers are not that big.. I feel bad for the rest of the seeds.don't want to throw them away..i might give them to friends along with the info that I have collected about carring for them. I got greedy and planted all seeds from one melon and now I have lots of little plants growing :) I am not sure what kind of melon is, but I grew up eating them(in Romania)... They are very sweet and juicy have a great smell to them.It was almost the size of a football, but they also grow smaller than that too.The skin is yellow and lots of ridges(looks like a mesh) on it..but not as many as a american cantaloupe has , and the shape is oval. I took few pics of the piece I have left(flesh and skin) , but can't figuere how to post pictures here. Anyway..thank you for your help! Adi

I'm not sure that you could find risers that are that short. Another solution could be to make a tuck in the platform of the bedskirt (the part that is under the mattress). I would make a 2" tuck down the center of the platform, and secure with safety pins. Depending on the style of skirt, you could pull it up closer to the headboard to shorten the foot end, or if that would interfere with the corners, you could safety pin up the foot end on the platform a bit also. Hope this description makes sense!

I do 3 foot spacing, but tomatoes only get REALLY big for me about 1/3 of the time. Most of the time our short growing season and typically sub-optimal climate conditions (combined with a healthy dose of "user error," I'm sure) make them pretty puny compared to the "tomato hedges" that everyone else gets. My beds are also 3 foot wide, even at 6' tall (with proportionate arm length) I find any more requires a bit too much leaning and bending and then I end up getting my knees buried in the beds (plus sometimes I like to "hop" over the beds instead of walking all the way down a row because I'm lazy). But, bed size is mostly a matter of personal preference combined with available space. I have had beds that were 2 foot wide, 3 foot wide, and 4 foot wide depending on where I was gardening at at the time.