haliwa01: I'm in zone 7, too, here in northern DE. There's so much all of us here can tell you. To start, with raised beds, check out the Square Foot Gardening forum. I did this last year for the first time with veggies and the results were terrific.

As to the beds, generally speaking, I would add peat and vermiculite to make a loose, friable soil structure. Make sure the manure is "done"--not fresh--but fully composted. If so, you have good start.

As for what to plant, you can do just about anything in a raised bed. I have toms, peppers, eggplants, loads of lettuce, cabbage, herbs, cucs, melons--you name it. You didn't mention specific veggies, but that would be helpful for us provide advice.

Finally, check out the Wintersowing forum. It's a great complement for growing veggies by any method. I'm doing that this year in addition to growing uder lights.

Good luck and congrats on your recent marriage!

Prof

retiredprof,

The Vegetables I am going to be growing are as follows:
Corn
Cucumbers
Squash
Watermelons
Cantaloupe
Zuchini (spelling)
Butter beans
strawberries

The manure/compost that I got this weekend looked like some of it was well composted and some of it was still as my wife says "pasture apples". Can I still use it in my vegetable garden?

How does square foot gardening work exactly?

Personally, I wouldn't do the corn. It takes up a lot of space and to get decent yields, you'll need lots of room.

I like to use bush type cucumbers in raised beds but you can also trellis regular, longer vined cucumbers.

Strawberries are a perennial crop, so better if you give them their own little raised bed.

Any idea of how long the manure had been out? Had it been turned? Some of it may be more composted if it was just piled and never turned. Do you have a compost pile yet? :) I'd throw the lesser composted, "more whole" pieces into the compost pile and let it finish a bit more.

I don't know if I'm doing it right, but I'm making raised beds this year for the first time and I'll tell you what I did. Last fall I bought a dump truck load of leaf compost and a dump truck load of sandy loam topsoil. This spring I got a couple pickup truck loads of fairly fresh horse manure and bedding. I got free railroad ties that were well weathered and cut them to make two 8x4' beds, 18" high. So a couple big boxes. I covered the bottom with cardboard and put the ties on that.

I covered the cardboard with an inch or two of sandy topsoil and then I put in about 4 to 6 inches of leaves (again, free stuff!) I suppose that compressed down, but I don't know how much. Probably one inch tops after compressing. On top of that I put a layer of horse manure and then a layer of leaf compost and another layer of sandy topsoil. Then I mixed them up and watered it real good so the leaves would compact. Now I've got about 12-15" of stuff in there and I will be getting some clay-ish (black gumbo clay) top soil from my father's field down the street in a day or two. I'll put in 3-4" of that and mix it and water it in again.

Then I'll let it settle until the last average frost date (mid-April) and plant stuff in it then. I've surrounded my raised beds with roofing shingles. They're non-slip, totally opaque and weed-proof, free (I'm using discarded shingles off a construction site nearby) and they don't blow away in this terrible Oklahoma wind we have every dang day.

My horse manure isn't fully composted, but I'm using it anyway. Guess I'll just hope for the best. I have two raised beds now and I intend to make a couple dozen more over the next couple years. I was aiming at a mix of 1/4 leaf compost, 1/4 horse manure, 1/4 sandy topsoil and 1/4 clay topsoil. So about 1/2 organics and 1/2 topsoils. That might not be the right mix, but it's what I'm going with. I don't have the money to be out buying lots of vermiculite or soil additives, as I was laid off in January. (Now as a separate deal my father is paying for all the stuff for me to start plants for his garden, but that's not "my" stuff.)

A raised bed is sort of wasted on most of the veggies you have listed here. Corn - you'll want at least a 4x4' square of corn for each planting.

Cucumbers - good in a raised bed, but don't take much soil area at all - a few plants growing up a trellis will give you tons of cukes.

Squash - a big space hog that is, IMO, best grown in "hills" (a small enriched spot for the root zone, with area around for the vines to sprawl.

Watermelon and cantaloupe - same as squash

Zuchini - same as squash, though is is more of a bush type, so doesn't sprawl as much.

Butter beans - since they are nitrogen fixers, they won't need a lot of horse manure - maybe some vermiculite and compost mixed with your native soil. Growing arrangement depends on whether these are pole or bush type. Either kind can do well in a raised bed.

Strawberries - raised bed is good, but as mentioned, they should have their own space since they're perennial.

Hope that helps!

If you are up to digging, I'd double dig the raised bed plot, adding the composted horse manure to the mix. Get the stuff that's already well broken down and not recognizable as horse manure. As someone already mentioned, put the "apples" in the compost pile and let them break down a lot more before you use them.

How much manure to add to your own soil depends on what you're soil's like. Grab a handful of it when it's damp (not wet or moist, just damp) and squeeze it into a ball. If it holds together fairly well when you open your hand, but falls apart easily when you poke it (is nice and crumbly), I'd only add a couple inches of manure. If it falls apart easily when you open your hand or barely poke it, that's likely very sandy soil, so add twice as much manure. If it holds together in that ball even when you poke it pretty good, that's likely clay soil ~ add twice as much manure.

IMHO, peat is overrated. If it dries out, it's a bugger to get wet again. And if you have a lot of rain, it stays so soggy. I'd just use the manure. It's just as good as the peat if not better for loosening up the soil and retaining moisture. Plus, the manure will act as a slow release fertilizer all season long.

Next season, add another inch or two of composted manure when your plants are a few inches tall ~ use it as a mulch. And that should be all you need in the way of ferts. If your soil is deficient in something, your plants will let you know (Google up images of nutrient deficiencies in plants to familiarize yourself now so you'll recognize it when you see it in your plants). Fish emulsion and seaweed can fix most deficiencies, so Google up some info about them as well and learn what they contain so you'll know when to use them.

About square foot gardening ~ it's a really good system that combines intensive planting and succession planting to make a pretty easy gardening experience. Intensive planting is just planting things closer together than is recommended so that they act as a living mulch, shading out weeds and keeping the soil moist (no sun hitting the ground helps keep it from drying out). Succession planting is planting the same type of plant a few days or weeks apart so you'll have staggered harvest times. It's really a nifty way of doing things. There's a SFG forum here with an info-filled FAQ section. If you read that section and check out some of the threads in the forum, you'll have a better understanding of it, much better than I can explain here.

Good luck! :)

You might want to look up lasagna gardening online. easy to do with what is available to you. I'm doing this with all my new beds I put in, raised or otherwise