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How do I prepare soil for a raised garden bed?
Remove all rocks, old roots, and plant debris. Dig down a little further with the shovel (a few more inches) to just loosen up the soil. Mix the soil with organic matter such as compost. We recommend that the compost make up about 25% of your soil.
What do you fill the bottom of a raised bed with?
To take up *some* space at the bottom of a deep empty bed, you could choose to add a few inches of small branches, leaves, mulch, pine needles, or other woody organic matter, and then add the other recommended raised bed soil and compost on top.
Can You Make Your Own raised bed soil?
You have chosen to garden in raised beds. The frames are set and it is time to fill them with fertile soil that will serve as a good growing medium for your garden plants. One option is to buy a good grade of commercial soil, but that can easily break the bank. The best solution is to make your own.
What should I use to make my own soil for my Garden?
A basic recipe for making your own soil is to use equal volumes of peat moss, coarse vermiculite and compost. A garden bed that is 4-feet by 4-feet square will need eight cubic feet of the mixture. This mixture will be high in nutrients and should promote good plant growth. The compost helps keep the soil loose.
What to put in a raised bed for plants?
If you want to grow plants that love good drainage (such as alpines), fill the base with builders’ rubble or chippings. Fill the bed up nearly to the top with topsoil and compost.
Do you get what you pay for in raised garden soil?
The truth is that you get what you pay for. If you invest in quality soil, you will reap a better harvest. One year I did a test. I had different soil in each of my two raised beds with Roma tomatoes. The bed with the better soil produced 5 times as many pounds of tomatoes as the bed with soil that wasn’t as great.