[Paul R.]

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?)

[Qiviut]

The wood for raised beds would be pretty expensive.

My first raised beds were made out of 'regular' wood - dad paid & built them for me. They were 4x8 & 4x10. This was probably 15 years ago. Maybe 5 years ago, I supplemented with galvanized metal beds (3'x6' & about 12" deep). I caught them on sale at Northern Tool.

We moved last year. The wooden beds are rotting out & not movable. The metal beds will be moved when I have time to dig them out (remove fill dirt).

In the meanwhile, my brother, an avid raised bed gardener, told me about cedar fence planks. They are 6' long. A bed 3 planks high is about 16.5" tall. It takes 9 planks for one 6x3' bed plus you need corners. I had some 4x4 fence posts left over from a project & used those. I believe I paid $3.43 or thereabouts for each plank. The cedar wood holds up well as far as rot is concerned & you don't have to worry about preservatives in the wood. One end of the plank has the corners beveled off - I leave them rather than cutting the end off flush. I also lined my beds with weed barrier (reused some old barrier in addition to buying some) to keep dirt from seeping through any cracks between boards. I checked every board for warping, knots etc. & you still end up with a bit of space between boards in places.

If you want wood raised beds, the cedar fence planks are a nice alternative. The metal beds can also be a good alternative - Amazon has a selection & you can often find them on sale locally like I did.

Pictures - one 3x3 bed & 2 that are 3x6:

[Qiviut]

PS - you could certainly make your beds 2 cedar planks tall - I think the bed would be about 11 inches tall. This would require only 6 boards & corners.