Joy Stefoni Fisher

David, thanks for the links!

Brad, I am happy to hear the raised beds are working for you! Maybe they would work for me too...

Thanks for your input, Rebecca!

So I understand that I shouldn't do raised beds because they will increase the loss of moisture, but I have a crazy gopher problem. I had been considering wire beneath raised beds for the annuals, putting my trees in wire baskets and even putting wire below hugelkultur. We've also played around with the idea of digging a trench around our annual beds and filling it with concrete. Lots of initial work, but maybe it'd be worth it long term. What do you think?

Thank you so much, B Ward! That was very clear (for a beginner like me) and helpful! Your recommendations sound similar to what I've read in Steve Solomon's Gardening When It Counts. Do you know/like him? Any book recommendations?

R Scott wrote:If you want garden beds for zone 1 gardens, you would do best to do growbox or Aussie-style wicking beds. Big cattle tanks with solid bottoms to hold in water and keep OUT gophers.

Wicking beds! WOW!

Does anyone have book recommendations for my sandy, dry situation? I was planning on doing hugelkultur because we have a ton of wood laying around, so I will do it below ground and look into the clay bottom.

I had another question about a soil test I did. My husband dug a post hole so we could see the layers of soil and about 30" down it was so hard, he couldn't go any farther. I think it may be sandstone. Apparently our house is built on solid sandstone. When we were digging a trench near our house, we had to use a jackhammer for part of it because it was solid rock. Is that going to be good because it may hold the rain or bad because it will just run away. What does that mean for roots? We do have trees (live oak, cedar, acacia) around our house, but not in the area where we dug the post hole. Any ideas/advice?

This is all so helpful! Thank you! Lots of food for thought.

Thank you everyone!

John, thank you so much! That really makes sense about the evapotranspiration. We do get fog every night. On a hot day it burns off early, but often stay until 11am or later. I had just been thinking about the seaweed when someone complained about how expensive kelpmeal is. I thought, "Hey, I can get kelp for free!" Should I dry it out or bury it or what? I'll look into the biochar as well! However, I have a gopher problem to deal with before I start our garden, and I want to get our fruit trees in first, so for now I am shooting for the vegetable garden in spring. Thanks for your advice! It was really helpful!

Dale, we also have deer, so we're planning on doing a deer fence to enclose a berry patch and vegetable garden. Walking in won't be an option. Alder, how long have your raised beds lasted? Too bad I have really sandy soil and don't need aeration or perc help! Thanks!

So we just moved to this land from the city. Yay! And it is crazy infested with gophers though I have never actually seen one. There are holes every where. So we are trying to figure out what to do. First thought was raised beds with galvanized mesh under, but I've heard that that only lasts 10 years. We really don't want to have to redo all this in ten years, so now we're thinking about digging a deep trench all around our gardening area and filling it with concrete or someone reccomended black landscaping fabric or maybe plastic for root barriers. We'd also trap, of course. Does anyone have experience/advice with this? Thanks!