If you have cedar or redwood in your area, you can use that, and they will prevent bugs. Or you could use that composite stuff that is a mix of plastic and sawdust ? it?s expensive, but it will problem last longer than you. You can use fir or pine, but it won?t last more than a few years. Or, like Gardenman said, concrete blocks. If you can get free compost, mix it with your soil. The plants need the minerals in the soil, as well as the compost. That?s a small bed for all those plants. Again, Gardenman has a good idea about using buckets (with drain holes), or make smaller beds just for the larger plants, so they can stick their roots into the ground if they want to. The cat litter buckets might be okay (only one plant per bucket), but don?t forget to make several drainage holes (about ?" diameter), and fill them with the same compost/soil mix. Insert a tomato cage into the buckets while the plants are still small. If you live near a Harbor Freight tool store, get a small electric soldering iron (about $5) (see link below ? push it in so it makes the larger hole, not the little one). They are GREAT for melting drainage holes in plastic! But do it outdoors, as the stink will knock you down (and burning plastic isn?t good to inhale, either). Keep away from children -- they're HOT! I would trellis the cucumbers (?cukes?) on the north side of the bed, both to save space and to keep them off the ground, which will produce straighter, less damaged fruits. Then you can plant the lettuce and carrots in front of them (on the sunny side). I would start the tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers inside, but sow the carrots and lettuce directly where you want them to grow. The carrots should grow about 2" apart from each other, so be sure to thin them when they?re a few inches tall, or you won't have a crop. Water the carrot bed first, then sow the seeds and cover, then cover the bed with cardboard. Check under it every few days, so you'll know when the carrots sprout, then remove the cardboard. They usually take about 2 or 3 weeks to stick their heads out (look closely, they're hard to see). Note: it's hard to believe a forum like this doesn't understand what an apostrophe or quotation marks are, but that is what goes in all those places that show a ? Sue Here is a link that might be useful: Small soldering iron

I have been protecting tomatoes from fall frost for many years. You can do down to the low twenties, for decades. One thing is wet ground helps prevent frost, so if my hose is still hooked up I will soak the area around the plants I am trying to save. (I do this also for roses but do not cover roses in the late fall.) Simply stay away from plastic unless you have a portable greenhouse, period. The heavier the blanket or what ever you you use the better. Do not let the cover crush the plants if they are small but I have covered potted flowers and simply throw the cover over them with no support and they survived just fine. Mattress pads and car covers for me have been the most efficient, but I have used thin cloth sheets in layer if I am expecting sub 25 degrre temps. Be wary of low spot frosts, i.e. cold air sinks into low areas and I have gotten up in the moring to see frost covering only small areas. Now spring frosts are different from fall frosts and in spring frost there is little ground heat to offset frosts, i.e. it is the rising heat under the covers in the fall that actually defeats the frost. If there is little warm air under the covers the heavier the cover to hold the heat in the better. Remember heating-cooling only works by tranfer, addition or removal, of heat, not by transfer of cold. Depending on how large your garden is, land scape fabric which can be purchased in rolls many feet wide, will work also. Use the most flexible available. You could put stakes in the ground to keep it off of the plants. Just buy some wide enough so it droop over the edge along the sides. Then you can pull it off, roll it up and save it for future use.

those dang flea beetles! I was on my porch one day looking at my beets and thought I saw a color change! I got up to take a close look and saw a mass of of them, I swear to god that in the 20 min from when I first looked at the beets from the porch and when I got up to take a closer look; the beet greens went from deep green to dull with a huge amount of damage, I sprayed poison to kill the Ba$%^*!@ and tossed everything in to the trash! What a waste.

Spacing is a number that varies from person to person. It also depends on how you grow and care for them. I grow indeterminate toms with 18 inch spacing in my raised bed. But I cage and prune them. I try to grow more for variety than quantity. Some wouldn't consider going this close while others may go with 12 inch spacing. I've only grown Roma once, but 18 inch spacing was doable. The plant didn't get very big for me so maybe I got lucky. I'd say a 2 foot spacing is more than adequate.