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Prepare your spring vegetable garden by amending the soil with compost from the City of Raleigh Yard Waste Center. For the first time, the Yard Waste Center is offering a "buy one load, get one load free" deal on compost. Compost from the center is certified by the Seal of Testing Assurance, a national program for compost quality. The compost is tested by an independent lab to ensure that it's free of harmful chemicals and ready to use on lawns and gardens.
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I'm with Mrs. Rosencranz- lay down a barrier over the current grass/weeds, then start building up. I had good success with this in my raised beds starting with cardboard then various layers of manure from a local stable, raked leaves, kitchen compost, and coffee grounds, plus whatever else looks harmless from the yard. I did buy two truckloads of compost and top soil last year, and have found those beds to be much too heavy. I have ten raised beds in Apex and grow corn, beans, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peppers, strawberries, and various herbs. The earthworms found me; I didn't have to import any.
For someone just starting out, I also rec the Master Gardener program and there are several meetups that focus on gardening.
Sounds like you have gotten some great advice on the soil. As for plants, how shady are you talking? Direct sun part of the day but shade others? Or full shade, under a tree, grass-gets-thin-there kind of shade? Even with the hard-core summers here, there are some things that just get leggy as heck without a good amount of sun. Tomatoes and peppers especially want LIGHT. I have found most herbs, lettuce/greens, root veggies, strawberries, broccoli and asparagus to be more forgiving of shade, but they are still going to want some good morning or afternoon sun. Beans, cucumbers, squash, and melons are kind of in the middle in terms of light requirements. If you have varying amounts of light in your bed, you may want to be strategic about what goes where.
It's a new property so it had some type of great sod put down that seems to have no issues with sun or water, but I think the area has direct sun for the afternoon but not the rest of the day. I've been trying to notice, but the dreary weather the last few weeks hasn't made it easy. Maybe I will forego the peppers/tomatoes and just do strawberries in their place.
I think I have a lot to go on with the soil now, so thanks everyone! Seems like spring is starting this weekend, so I'm going to start shopping!
Lots of good advice in the responses, especially those that recommend buying soil from a dealer by the yard rather than trying to do it with bagged dirt. I learned that lesson the hard way when I built a 2' tall raised bed with bricks I found on the property after we moved in. I used them all, and the bed ended up being 5x25'. Started out doing bags and soon realized it was taking forever, so I had a truckload from Bradsher brought in. That only filled the bed halfway, but it turns out a foot of soil is plenty to grow vegetables in. We added a little more each year and now it's just about full.
The one thing I would do differently is put down a root barrier first. We have trees that are about 20' away, but their roots didn't take long to find the bed, and now we're constantly pulling them out. I put weed control fabric in one of the new beds and haven't had that problem. Happy gardening!
You might want to put your tomatoes in pots, so you can move them for the best sun.
I realized through this thread and subsequent googling that I might have killed off my worm garden family - I used the gardening cloth at the bottom of my garden beds, and maybe the worms couldn't get out if they needed to. I'll find out this weekend.
Also: I found that "indeterminate" tomatoes in my garden bed was a complete nightmare that took over basically everything - they just keep growing higher.
Oh! Forgot to mention. I grew watermelons in my garden bed too. Those REALLY take over. I'd do it again, but not with the Jubilee watermelons (they were gigantic), and only one plant...hard to tell when they're ripe, so I picked some too early.
I prefer raised bed gardens because I find it easier than gardening in the ground, but I have a big yard with plenty of sun virtually all day long. If you have different areas that get sun throughout the day maybe you could make your garden box a little more mobile? If you build it with a more solid bottom and put some big pneumatic swivel casters on the bottom that might work?
Edit: I just re-read your first post and realized how big your garden box is. I was thinking the more traditional 4'x4' square foot gardening boxes, but I doubt my above idea would work for an 8'x10' box. That would be pretty heavy to move around.
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