Pacific Northwest Gardening: Bamboo ?, 0 by RickCorey_WA

RickCorey_WA wrote:
Thank you!

They're paving stones made from concrete. That photo has 8" x 16" x 3/4". Laid the long way, they give 16" of length for around $1.15 or 89 cents on sale. But 8" isn't very deep, and often soil subsides after you fork it up and sow seeds. I tend to put the 8" walls around a bed that goes down below grade at least 4". Then I make sure to cut a slit trench through the clay, downslope from the deepest point in the bed that I dug up and amended.

My whole yard drains so poorly that I have to run that trench until the grade of the clay soil surface runs down to meet the floor of my trench. Then I know that the deepest part of my raised bed can drain downhill and won't flood and drown roots.

Otherwise, I've built a mud wallow.

Here's my most ambitious trench, long and wide. I used a perforasted corrugated platic pipe, becuase I never guessed how heavy and expensive gravel could be!

I also included a photo showing my "Square Yard Bed" when bulbs are coming up (it's around 40" x 40"). It needs a lot of trimming before it will look pretty. Eventually I'll replace the odd-ball scraps and bricks with cut-to-size pieces of paving stone.
The soil sank a lot after the compost decomposed, but I'll keep adding more compost and more soil until it's 16" deep.