The Beds

We live in a rural area of west Texas. The land that we live upon is mostly rock and clay or clay loam where the scant decent soil does exist. So, gardening takes a little effort and much of our gardening effort has been towards creating raised beds. At the current time we have five raised beds for our vegetable growing. All of them are filled with "imported" soils.


The first and oldest raised bed is also the largest. It measures about 35' in length and 8' in width and at its highest is about 2' tall. It is constructed of cement blocks and faced with mortared flagstone and all-in-all is a very attractive bed. It is filled with mixtures of sandy loam, sandy "top soil" and various composted amendments. With my handy-dandy Rapitest pH meter I measure the pH of the mix at around 7.5, which is roughly the same as the native soils in the area, and a little higher than I would ideally like it to be for veggie growing.

The second bed is constructed of a single row of concrete blocks, mortared in place and capped with concrete pavers. We took some leftover concrete floor stain from our house construction and prettied the bed up a little giving it a fair color match to the other raised beds, and to get rid of that plain concrete look. This bed is filled with more of the above described mixture, plus bags of top soil and composted cow manure.

Beds three, four and five and a rocked composting area were built of limestone. They are of various dimension and shapes and probably total 350 to 400 square feet. We filled these beds with a different mix...one that was called "planting mix", purchased from a place that sells stone, mulch, compost and such. It really looked awesome as the two dump trucks were delivering the small mountain to us. But the first growing season was dismal in those beds. Maybe it was still too "green" and needed a year to break down more.

In the works are beds six, seven and maybe eight. These will be outside of our fenced backyard, which is of questionable logic given that deer reside all around us. They will be built with rock taken off of our property and mortared in place. I am thinking they will be something like 8' wide by about 30' in length and will serve to grow the stuff that takes more room, such as melons and beans. I am going to try and use about half native soil/dirt and half "imported" to keep the cost reasonable. But, a lot of work to accomplish between now and filling it with dirt.