Specialty Gardening: Container Soils - Water Movement and Retention III , 2 by RickCorey_WA

RickCorey_WA wrote:
>> Now all I gotta do is build some raised beds

If you already have decent soil, concrete paving stones have to be the fastest and easiest wall material.

You can make a 4 foot-wide bed by throwing in 5" of topsoil from a 2 foot band to the right, and a 2 foot band to the left. If you add another 5" of compost, manure, bark, grit or Turface, you have 10" of amended soil on top of whatever was there before, and an extra 5" of drainage into the sunken bands. If you broke up the surface and amended it 5" deep before adding soil from the sides, you might have a 15" root zone.

If your subsoil doesn't drain well, those side-bands ahd better slope or drain somewhere, so you can use them as walkways and still have dry feet.