For us with the frequent rains and heavy dews, you can add roots in water 3" down. Not good. Only my potted plants are doing well. Maybe I should have built raised beds, but God knows how I'd afford the good draining soil. Go dig sand over at the river, if I can get away with it, maybe.
Ugh. One more dry day. Then NWS is predicting 6 days with moderate to high chances of rain for us. My poor garden...
I may try digging up a few plants and putting them in pots: Most of my plants left in pots are doing well. (The roots aren’t drowning!)
The wood for raised beds would be pretty expensive. But, long term, I wonder about raising and contouring the entire garden area(s). I do have so-so quality topsoil in qty.* sufficient IF I want to kill a couple nice sycamore trees growing there. And, I could slowly mix in gravel and river sand, with some of same as underlayment. Hmmm...
*SOME of that soil is from my old “worm bed”. It probably has some juglone in it, but if such soil is at least a foot down, maybe that won’t matter so much, esp. if away from the hickory trees, the juglone levels should be diminished by microbial action (which I can perhaps spur along a bit?)