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Pastimes : Gardening and Especially Tomato Growing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (577)	5/27/1999 2:17:00 PM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 3496

I think that if it were my garden, I would use some of that compost and make a raised bed for the tomatoes. I suppose it might just be my own preference because I use raised beds for all of the vegetable gardens and a couple of the flower gardens at my farm. Raised beds give better drainage if your soil is heavy or if you happen to get a lot of rain or water run-off from some source. They also warm up more quickly in the springtime...particularly the ones at my farm because the edges are made of stone. These "sides" are quite nice to sit on when you are weeding the garden. Other advantages of raised beds are that you usually don't have as much trouble with invasive weeds like twitch grass growing into the garden from adjacent lawn areas... and you will probably have less trouble with soil compaction because you usually don't need to step into the beds when weeding them. I think that the idea of using boards for the sides is good, especially if you are just renting. I don't actually think you would need 12" wide boards. I would think that 10" would be wide enough. If possible, I would turn over the sod in the place where you want the beds to be before adding any soil or compost on top. If that's not possible, I've "cheated" and put landscape fabric over the grass and then just heaped soil and compost over it. That seems to be enough to keep the worst of the invasive weeds from coming up through the soil. Anyhow, those are just some thoughts. Most likely Tomato or a couple of other people on the thread might have some ideas too. Croc...;-}>