As to clay soil- I started out trying raised beds, but each bed took so many days to break thru the (so called) soil, then removing the small rocks and weeds/blueberry roots etc. Because I live on a mountain top, the soil was only about 2 inches deep before hitting the hard shale that needed to be broken up with a pickaxe. So, by the time I got down to at least a foot and one half deep (and loosened the shale at the bottom), the problem I had, was there was not much in the way of natural growing medium left to fill the beds. So then I had to add to each bed -bales of growing mix, or peat moss & vermiculite/perlite, & bagged topsoil (for the sand and soil mix), lots of bagged humus and homemade leaf compost (no such thing as enough compost) and various fertilizers like bone meal etc. The point is, I ended up needing to make ALL the soil to go in those darn dug beds. So I then just started putting it on a weeded/destoned and barely dug at all sections of ground. Eventually tho, the problems of surface weeds and drainage led me to my last and very successful method of not digging in that soil at all. I spent many pennies and bought (and got free from landscapers who toss them away) many huge and smaller plastic pots-gotten expressly for the vegetables they were meant to grow. The largest hold 2 or 3 large tomatoes/zucchini/cukes etc, on down thru various sizes, that correspond with the root system of each plant. (Even a carrot needs a foot or more for it's root depending on variety). With stakes (tree branches even) in each pot, or old fencing etc, each pot top can be covered with whatever you need to keep your variety of critter out of it. Eg- bird netting off blueberries or strawberries or ripening tomatoes etc. Or window screening to keep moths and thus worms out of your squash. When the pots are grouped together according to climatic needs and small pots with herbs surround them, to encourage or discourage good/bad bugs, the larger pests like deer don't usually like to come so close. I however, had to eventually surround large groupings of pots with 'walls' of PVC pipe and chicken wire which finally kept out the deer. Watering can be done the old fashioned way or inexpensively with small drip emitters in each pot, connected to feeder tubing that goes from pot to pot. The pots by the way, mostly sit on used black plastic sheeting which stops things like pill bugs, weeds and soilborne viruses from migrating up thru the pot's many drainage holes in their bottoms.
There are so many pluses to this system of pots...including a wonderful system to be able to rotate the crops (learn your groups of plants that are susceptable to similar diseases and growing conditions)- tomatoes never have to grow in the same pot more than once every 3 years etc.- Each pot is labeled by number and I keep track in a journal (REALLY a good idea from year to year). Each pot is very easy to seed and thin- no waste. Also, each pot gets exactly what the vegetable/fruit you grow in it that year needs, from sun/shade, watering, insect & pest protection, root and spread requirements of each plant etc. Trellises by the way, can be set along a row of pots using metal fenceposts in the ground between the pots, with the trellis attached at whatever height is needed, for peas for example, or can be on both sides of a single pot, like for tomatoes or cukes. Using the soiless mixes has virtually eliminated all the many soilborne viruses I used to have. If a tomato plant in a pot gets a blight, I can pull just that pot's plants, (cover with black plastic to solar disinfect that pot's soil for a few weeks), and the other pots are usually fine since they don't share the infected soil.
The minuses include mainly the initial expense if you purchase the pots or having to scrub and sterilize well the pots if you aquire them from the landscape trade (tree planters have the biggest pots). Also the expense of the huge bales of Gro-Mix type soiless growing medium if you go that route, but again- I had to go that route anyway since I HAD no soil.
Deer- what can I say. I live in the woods in the mountains. Over the last 30 years I have tried it all and all to some small measure of success. But nothing gave total success except to pen them out but only when pants are panted in small groups. If they can jump over and in they will. If a group of plants is only about 12 feet wide, surrounded by any kind of cheap fencing (even plastic) and they can't see a way to move around if they jump in, to be able to jump back out, then they won't. Same thing works for raised beds or even plants right in the ground. The trick is always that the distance between the front/back/side fencing has to be close enough to discourage jumping in and out again. Also, they'll go under if they can, before they'll jump over, especially the young ones.
I've had some success for the ornamentals around my house (they come up the stairs and onto my deck) using coyote urine- comes in a squeeze bottle mail order) a few drops about 10 feet apart, (peeing yourself to 'mark your territory' yourself helps too), also stinkey deodorant soap tied with string and hung from larger bushes. The commercial products work to some degree, but they are very very expensive and really doesn't work as well for your veggies/fruit.
Really, for your eating gardens- in some way.... fence them out.
By the way, if you have raccoons- all bets are off.
If you need, I can tell you the extra steps you need to take, if you go with either pots or raised beds, to thwart off raccoons, possoms, chipmonks, (chipmonks and moles/voles LOVE raised beds) etc. (I have these and many more to deal with here.)
Well I hope I've helped. If anyone wants to go the pot route I can tell you also what amounts and sizes etc. that I use to grow all my garden.
Good luck with yours= it's a labor of love no matter how you grow your own.
