Wicking beds

Has anyone tried creating wicking beds yet?

I'm just constructing my first one after stumbling on the concept a few days ago. I'm renovating a bed I constructed last year. This bed only gets a few hours of direct sun during the middle of the day but last year the lettuce failed to develop because every day they would wilt until the outer leaves clung to the inner and prevented the heart from developing properly. This was despite being watered every day. I'm hoping the wicking bed will prevent this problem.

interesting. I hadn't heard of that before. I have a gravity-fed drip irrigation system in some of my beds. This system looks like it would require a total renovation of my raised beds, though, and I don't think I'm up for it at the moment :)

Yeah, it's a fair bit of work but I'm hoping the payoff will be worthwhile. I was already planning on rebuilding one of the beds but now I've dug it out deeper and hit the layer of clay and rubble the builder covered up when the house was built, I've had to spend some time sieving out the rubble to get a good tilth again. I'm hoping the extra clay in the mix will improve the water retention and the wickibility.