How Do You Build a Raised Garden Bed?

Experienced gardeners use raised beds to sidestep a long list of gardening challenges. These controlled experiments in plant parenthood are so easy, in fact, that they're also well-suited to novices picking up a shovel for the first time. . . .

A raised bed is most productive and attractive as a bottomless frame set into a shallow trench. The sides can be almost any durable building material, including rock, brick, concrete and interlocking blocks. Watering troughs or claw-foot tubs can work, as long as they have the capacity and drainage. . . .

To prepare the site, get rid of turf and weeds. Outline the bed dimensions on the ground with chalkline or string, then dig with vertical strokes along the outline, just deep enough to bury about half of your first course of lumber. . . .

Level the earth or gravel layer at the bottom of the bed, then put down a layer of weed-suppressing landscape fabric that extends to the outer edge of the wooden frame. . . .

Build each wall separately, then fasten them together and put the bed into position. Raised-bed builders often sink posts into the ground for stability, either at the inside corners of the bed or halfway along the side walls. . . . A cap railing that runs around the top of the bed ties everything together. Plus, it provides a handy place to set down gardening tools while working, or, when you're done, a seat to admire the fruits of your labor. Bed covers ward off insects and keep plants warm in cool weather.

–“How to Build Raised Garden Beds,”
Fiona Gilsenan

Choose the phrase that best answers each question.

What is the primary purpose of the text?

What information in the procedure is missing?

How would a reader synthesize information from this article?

In another country by ernest hemingway (excerpts) excerpt 1 "in the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. it was cold in the fall in milan and the dark came very early. then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. there was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. the deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. it was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains." excerpt 2 "the people hated us because we were officers, and from a wine-shop someone called out, "a basso gli ufficiali! " as we passed. another boy who walked with us sometimes and made us five wore a black silk handkerchief across his face because he had no nose then and his face was to be rebuilt. he had gone out to the front from the military academy and been wounded within an hour after he had gone into the front line for the first time. they rebuilt his face, but he came from a very old family and they could never get the nose exactly right. he went to south america and worked in a bank. but this was a long time ago, and then we did not any of us know how it was going to be afterward. we only knew then that there was always the war, but that we were not going to it any more." 19 select the correct answer. what important fact about the wounded soldiers is reflected by the repetition of the bolded sentences in the excerpts from "in another country" by ernest hemingway? a. it establishes the irony that, although the wounded soldiers have physically left the warfront, the war continues to haunt them psychologically. b. it shows the gradual loss of hope and growing depression of the wounded soldiers and their need for distractions. c. it establishes the wounded soldiers’ determination to shun war and disobey military commands to return to the front after they recover. d. it shows the wounded soldiers’ sadness and disappointment at the lack of gratitude from the people they risked their lives to protect. e. it shows the wounded soldiers’ belief that the war would never end, even as thousands of soldiers were killed or wounded and sent to hospitals. reset next