Review: Excellent information
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 24, 2014
I started using raised beds about 10 years ago and this book has all the information that you'll need to get started. Great overview on plants, etc as well. To the person who complained about it not giving more specifics regarding each plant, that would be another book unto itself. Read the back of your seed packets or look online for specific information on specific plants. This book does go into how to plant and when to start different veggies as it pertains to raised beds. The book covers all bases.There are a couple of things that I wanted to add from my experiences that you might find helpful.Soil:Filling large raised beds with good soil can be very expensive. I was buying it in bags from nurseries and big box home improvement stores until my neighbor told me about getting truck loads and half truck loads (pick up truck loads not massive loads) at a fraction of the cost. Many of these companies are providing soil and compost to the companies who put it into the bags and to professional landscapers. You can locate these sources of soil through asking at nurseries, landscapers, at feed stores, online, phone books, classified ads, etcI'm an organic gardener so I rotate using one raised bed as my composter for one year then go back to planting. He mentions this in the book and I highly recommend it! Free organic fertilizer is awesome. If you only use raw veggies & leaves the compost never stinks. If you live in the desert like I do, there aren't any earth worms in your yard to transplant into the raised beds so be sure to buy worms at your local organic gardening centers or online to help breakdown organic matter and keep your soil light and fluffy. By the way, tell your kids to find earthworms in the yard and put them in the raised beds and they'll feel more connected to the process of growing veggies & flowers plus your beds will stay healthier.I used cinder blocks for the largest beds but just stacked them dry until I was sure where I wanted them. It was a lot of extra work but I was glad since I ended up moving them and making them deeper (taller so they double as walls to sit on). I used all natural mortar which was more like a cement. Also, I added a chemical free natural stucco on the outside to match the house. The capstones on one are gorgeous stones but the unevenness makes them a little uncomfortable to sit on very long without a pillow. So the other one that we frequently use for extra seating I opted for a smoother manmade stone capstones. That's the other beauty of raised beds, you can use the walls for extra seating outdoors plus they help to define your outdoor room/space. Rosemary (evergreen) shrubs grow into a fragrant & edible privacy hedge.The man-made stone wall type are my new favorite raised bed material. They're gorgeous, come in many colors, styles and shapes, all made to interlock so that they stack in either straight or curved designs quickly. The cost is more but you never have to replace them like wood and they're so easy to install with no maintenance. I made two 8X3 raised beds in one day complete with plants! The only reason it took so long is that instead of having the stones delivered I had to make several trips in my car since they're so heavy (live and learn). All the big box stores with a garden center carry these ranging from $2-6 each. They are by far the fastest and easiest to use. Currently we have 4 made out of them and I plan on only using these from now on. Because they interlock the weight of the soil locks them into place and you don't have to use mortar like with bricks or natural stone and so you can move your raised beds anytime you wish.  I have several tumbled stone and brick raised beds but because they're mortared in place we can't move them without a major demo project.This book contains information that took me several years of trial and error to learn. If you're interested in raised bed gardening, I highly recommend this book!