Have to say congrats on your succes and good to hear you're enjoying your garden!

I have to completely agree. I also have been using the standard in the dirt/row system and found that 80% of gardening (and 100% of the grief) is all about battling clay, weeds, more weeds, encroaching grass, etc.

I made a few small raised beds with mel's mix (short of vermiculite) and all I can remember doing this year is planting, pulling 15-20 weed sprouts with the tips of fingers (with ease), and harvesting vegetables. Not having to bend all the way down is a great bonus too. I'm a young guy in great health and really could empathize when the older folks would admit "their backs couldn't take it as well as they used to". Too much time in a garden in the spring will make a strapping lad into an old man soon enough!

Anyone who has had their fill of digging holes, tilling, weeding and weeding and weeding... should really give this a shot! Though I do need to admit that were my garden is was essentially an untamed weed factory for what I understand was about 15 years. The amount of things that sprout there is nearly psychotic!

To say again, I am absolutely impressed with this style of gardening. Knowing there is another option and to do it the old way to me seems as backwards as using a stone tablet and chisel to send a message!

Congratulations on your successes. Loved your pics. I started square foot gardening in 80s whenever I first got a hold of Mel's book. Life got too busy and the yard too shady so I ended up just growing a few tomatoes and cucumbers. In 2007 we moved to a place with plenty of space and sun but the garden didn't get planted until 2008. I don't have raised beds built using the lasagna method but I don't have the sides edged. They are just mounded. I no longer use Mel's mix but I still use the spacing rules. As long as you don't walk on the beds, they stay nice and loose and easy to weed. This morning it was a joy to look at the tomato bed, pull a few weeds and admire the first blossoms (also to look for signs of any critter damage).

I had one bed that got planted before it got topped with new composted horse manure (the source adds wood ashes and kitchen scraps during the winter and keeps turning the pile). The veggies did fine but the same spinach seeds planted in a different bed (to space out the harvest) did spectacular. Adjacent sugar snap peas are 7 feet tall. Two 4 foot rows produced an amazing amount.

Fantastic garden!

You've had much better luck than I. :)

Thanks, all. Yeah, I'm just loving it. Been eating my fill of veggies every single day. There's always something to harvest right now.

I've really learned how important soil quality is, as much (if not more) than the other elements. I'm taking care of mine fanatically so that it keeps producing the results.

This year has been good in this part of the country too just because it has stayed cool much longer ... nothing is bolting, and there has been plenty plenty plenty of rain to keep it all green. I haven't watered much AT ALL!

Have a good weekend, everyone -