Filling Raised Garden Beds With Soil

Raised beds give you an immediate advantage over a regular garden because when you fill your raised bed you can fill it with a blend of soil that s superior to the native soil in your yard.

Filling raised garden beds with soil.

This raised bed is almost 6 inches above grade and was filled with existing soil and compost. So lets talk about how to fill a raised garden bed while saving money and soil. If you ve filled your raised garden bed with only potting soil or compost the following things will occur. 6 cheap ways to fill raised beds.

Unbordered raised beds in a community garden plot. Scenario 4 if your raised bed is on a non permeable surface. To sum it all up the list below are how you can fill your raised beds efficiently and cheaply. In my example shown below i am calculating a 4 x4 or 48 x48 raised bed that is 6 deep.

There is a bonus to this because the items you use in the bottom will eventually turn into amazingly mulched compost that will feed your raised garden beds for years. As i think we have already established soil health and quality is everything when it comes to a bountiful healthy productive garden so we don t mess around here using a combination of quality organic soil compost and an aeration addition will create the. You should use native soil from your yard if possible since this will be best for your plants. Soil that s loose and rich with nutrients and organic matter will allow the roots of your plants to grow freely and ensure that they have access to the.

The biggest mistake is when you fill your raised garden boxes with only potting soil or compost. As you can see in the picture above for my 4 x4 bed that is 6 deep i will need 8 cubic feet of soil. Also known as lasagne gardening or sheet mulching this will help create healthy fertile soil that drains well and is adequately aerated plants need air in the soil to thrive. Your plants will starve.

Since there are many ways to build that soil try using the different methods in this post and experiment to find one that works for you. It s a big no no my friend. So now we. The perfect raised bed soil what kind of soil do you fill your raised garden beds with i get asked this question all.

If you can t use native soil purchase a nutrient rich mixture from your local gardening store. To fill a raised garden bed you ll need enough soil to fill the bed and some organic compost. You will be sad. The most popular way to fill a raised garden bed is to layer it with a combination of soil organic materials including hay compost and manure.