Hello Sharon, About 15 years ago we lived in Dallas (actually Plano). My East Coast wife tells people, "We did time in Texas." We owned one of those 10,000 sf houses built on a 10,000 sf lot, with a 50,000 gallon pool, everything fenced in, had to water the foundation of our house in the summertime so that it wouldn't crack and no place to have a garden. Daily weather forecast, high temp today in the triple digits, strong damaging winds, possible hail, lightning & thunder late afternoon storms. Not one single mature tree in the entire subdivision. Streets laid out and mapped all the way from Dallas to the Oklahoma state line. I'm originally from Nebraska, so wide open spaces didn't bother me, but DW was happy to move to Virginia. About hay smell. The smell of hay depends on what type of hay it is. If it is newly cut alfalfa, then yes it will have a strong smell for quite some time, but the smell normally subsides as the hay cures. Many people like the smell of newly cut hay. You may not. Most grass hay does not smell very much at all. I cut and bale fescue with clover and various rye grasses mixed in. It has little or no smell. Spoiled hay most likely won't smell much when it is first ruined. As it decomposes it will often develop internal mold that is not harmful to people or plants. Hay mulch will sometimes develop a good mold where the mulch touches the earth. Don't fret about that mold, its good for the decomposition and the worms and good bugs love it. I think that's why I haven't had any serious bug problems with this garden. My observation is that all the bug action takes place in the lower parts of the mulch and the plants are so healthy that the bugs don't harm them. Very few bad bugs this year. The lady bugs are plentiful here and kill lots of aphids. I was surprised that there were no potato beetles on my cukes this year. After the hay mulch has been in place for a while, it will begin to develop a nice "earthy" smell that is associated with high quality compost and good dirt. My suggestion is to use plain grass hay and not use alfalfa. Some folks use straw (wheat or oat) but my view is that straw does not have the same nutrient content as hay because there is little or no green material in straw. Thus, the nutrient value to the soil isn't there. Just my $.02 worth. Some folks are afraid to use hay mulch because they think there will be too many weed seeds and they will end up with a garden full of weeds. My experience has been that while there may be weed seeds in the hay mulch, by the time it has decomposed and as thick as it is the seeds just don't germinate. Also, I intensively plant and there is little space for weeds and little sunlight for them. If a weed does pop up it is easily pulled. If a bunch of weeds try and grow, I just toss some more hay on top of them and that stops them because they get no sunlight. I've also been known to stomp on weeds now and then. Horse manure. Now that does smell when it is "fresh" or "green." You don't want to use that. Instead, buy composted horse manure which shouldn't have much or any horsey manure smell at all. If you have the space, hubby could have another "dirty" job and make your own composted horse manure. Personally, I'd probably just buy a pickup load of composted horse manure and be done with it. If you don't like the idea of working with horse manure, you might hire someone to work a load into the soil around your roses. Yeah, my teas kinda got out of hand, but I don't smoke, drink, gamble or chase women, so I had to have some kind of a vice. Yes, it was addictive, but DW always had fresh roses in the house and the house smelled great. Let me know what you learn about Ruth Stout and what you think of her ideas. She was one of a kind. Later, Ed

Check out The Square Foot Gardening website. If you click on "Mel's Column" you'll find a link to an article written about wheelchair gardening. Hope that helps. Your son is a good boy, I hope his project turns out well for him :) Pat Here is a link that might be useful: The Official Site of Square Foot Gardening and Mel Bartholomew, Originator and Author

Greetings, I have used variations of the lasagna gardening technique over the past five years. Not only can you install a new garden bed fairly quickly, if you have the helpers, but the reduction in time and energy that you use is amazing.

I do community gardening and there are a few seniors who have problems with bending over to weed their plots. Our solution was to build the plots up to 24 inch height for them. We used 12 inch square timber for them because we were able to get a really good deal on it. The plots are 4 feet wide and up to 16 feet long. The 4 foot width works for them because they can reach it from both sides. If you could only get at one side, like if you were against a wall, you would likely want to keep it at 2 feet wide instead. The women who are using these raised beds can get by with very little digging and since we are outside the drainage is not a big problem. From what I saw the only real problem they had was when they grew taller plants than they could reach easily, so you might want to remember that if you are going to plant on trellisses or grow pole beans. We filled our plots up from the ground to the full height with soil, but if you wanted to you could put containers on strongly built racks instead. The plastic storage bins work well for that, and the racks don't need to be very tall. There are also plans for self watering planters on the internet that look nice so that might also be an option for you to consider.