Okay, it looks like I can only upload one image at a time? That's what happened last time I was here. Very frustrating.

Anyway . . .

We built the garden beds in 4' deep trenches, about 4' wide, and filled them with wood (mostly alder in varying stages of decay), grass, sand, year-old broom chips, year-old grass/leaves/weeds mixed with some sand and a bit of clay. The plants are thrilled so far. No bug pressures yet - I figure it'll take them a while to find the garden. :) And it's a slow slug year, so haven't had any problems with them yet, either.

The reason we went with the buried wood beds is because we don't acually have any soil. Just sand. And rocks. And some more sand. So the wood beds made sense. But I didn't want them above ground, as we generally get very hot dry summers. So, we'll see how that all works out. So far so good!

I don't know how to test the soil in the beds, as there really isn't any 'soil' in them, other than what went in with the transplants - handful or two that got thrown in when transplanting. It's basically a 2-3' thick bed of mulch on top. There are worms in there - happy to see THAT - and I have top dressed with some compost, but basically, yeah, mulch. And a very alive and sweet smelling mulch it is - lots of mycelium, bugs, worms, and such. I'm curious to know when this mulch can be rightly called soil, and be 'tested' as such. Interesting to ponder . . .

It's been a very rainy June, and the beds are staying nice and moist. Looking forward to seeing how they do in the hot days of summer. But in the mean time, they're soaking up lots of water, so they should make it through the hot times ahead well. That's the plan, anyway. I'll let ya know how it goes. :)

I'll come back with a more detailed write up, and some more photos, once I figure out what size images can be uploaded here. 

Cheers

Tracy