So I learned alot when posting about the fruit trees. This next spring I want to put in some raised beds. What are some ideas that ya'll have tried and had success with? I'm only looking to plant tomatoes, peppers, a couple of squash plants. What are your dimensions you used? Where did you get your soil and did you put any gravel in the bottom, I'm thinking about making my bed height around 36", good idea or bad? Have you ever covered them with plastic during the winter and grown anything?

That depends on the amount of room you have. Thirty six inches is more like planter boxes. I'd go with landscape timbers and only go 8 inches. You don't need more than about 6 inches of store bought potting soil mixed in with what you now have. Home Depot had potting soil for $2 a bag in the spring. I'd leave the ends open to allow for better use of a tiller. You can plant your squash on the corners. A hard freeze will kill under plastic.

With only tomatoes, peppers, squash you might be better going with large pots, patio style.

we used the landscaping timbers that are about 5 inch diameter that is planed top & bottom, makes it about 3.5 inches tall, use 4-4.5 inch deck screws while overlapping/alternating ends, the picture is 3 high but I added one more layer to be 4 high (~12-13 inches deep). We bought 9 full length (8') to make a 4'x8' x 3 high bed (but again, added one more layer the following year). Pick up at Home Depot and get enough cut in half there (free) for the 4' cross pieces.

We typically can plant 4-5 tomato plants and 3-4 squash in one 4x8 bed. We had 6 tomato and 3 squash this year but it was pretty crowded. I took a small trailer to a garden center to buy bulk garden soil, got about 1/2 yard worth, backed trailer up to bed and shoveled in to almost the top. once I got all plants planted, I covered the top with hardwood mulch to keep weeds down. This worked very well and the following year, I took a spade to it and mixed the composting mulch into the soil along with a couple bags heavily composted soil.

the second picture is one I did for my daughter down in Katy but she has soil underneath, so the 3 high worked well. She planted 4 tomato down one side, 2 yellow squash, several strawberry, several jalapeno with a small row of okra. it was pretty well laid out for maximum usage. you can tell a lot more in the second picture what I was talking about with the alternating/overlapping the ends of the timbers.