Scott, I remembered your advice. Yesterday I finally constructed my first raised bed, a modest 3 x 5 footer. I used 1 x 6 x 8ft cedar, double around for 12" height, cut at Lowes into 3' and 5' pieces. It was my first real wood construction project, and I should have waited for my sweetie, but I wanted to see if I could do it myself. Made a few rookie mistakes, but I still have all ten fingers and got a few splinters out.
I used your 6-7 layers of newsprint, considering I had been saving up the "community paper" they toss for free and pulling out the glossy, it took a while to accumulate that much but I don't take the paper. On top of that I spread some dry leaves from my pile, then spread out the contents of my 55-gal garbage can of compost. It wasn't perfect, but very dark and loamy, a few sticks and bits which aren't yet decomposed fully.
I then added store-bought mushroom compost, peat moss, garden soil, the last of my coarse vermiculite and some perlite, some dolomite, a small bit of organic fertilizer, the last of my Black Kow (not much), and mixed it with a shovel, and then by hand, breaking up the clumps. Put a tiny bit of water on the top and then some bucket-steeped compost tea, then threw a plastic 'tarp' over it as I saw Pixie the longhair cat think about climbing in there. (Wanting to save each from the other, and me from a grumpy-cat grooming session when she came back inside.)
Next step is buying earthworms.
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