1000 Plant Heirloom Container Grow

[Petronius_II]

Obviously we do have a communication problem here

Yeah, we do, but I find it more comical than frustrating. These things tend to work out over time...

In principle, the most significant difference between what you're doing and what I've done on my own (not in the meetinghouse garden,) isn't the "raised/not raised" part, nor the "drip/not drip" part, it's the "ridge (or dyke) made out of topsoil/made out of heavy clay subsoil" part. The same kind of clay used to make adobe bricks does a better job of containing water than topsoil can.

Some interesting things happen when you flood an entire bed in a dry climate, early in the season, but after the plants you want to grow are already established. Even tender little radish and pea sprouts can survive having their heads under water for an hour or so. About 2/3 of the weed seeds will "drown," and never see the light of day. The other 1/3 will sprout as soon as they can, which makes them ridiculously easy to uproot and toss onto the surface of the bed. Now they're mulch. More mulch can be added at any time, and usually should be.

Making your barriers out of topsoil works fine for you, as I noted. If your climate were hotter and drier, it wouldn't work as well.

I'm not at all sure what Milehighguy's weather will be like, so I'm trying to concentrate on parameters, rather than detailed strategies. Albuquerque, or "The Other Mile High City" as I like to call us, goes from around 4800 feet above sea level at the Rio Grande, to around 7000 in the Sandia foothills. And we're also several hundred miles south of central Colorado, so... From what I can figure out from the net, Montrose, CO also has more than one microclimate, but they're not the same as our microclimates. Hence, my trying, perhaps not all that successfully, to concentrate on some of the parameters.