Organic raised beds

What soil should I use to fill up my raised beds?

 

Are your beds open to the soil below, Sash? If so, dig that over, and dig in plenty of organic matter, from your local recycling facility if you have one, or garden centre, B+Q, etc. If you feel you need more, you can get top soil from GC and B+Q too. For bulk you could get it by googling for local suppliers, but I wouldn't have thought you'd need all that much, if any.

If you have a look on the bags, they say how much of an area a bag will cover.

Hope that helps.

 

Hi Dendrobium,
I have four beds, 2 x 210 x 16 and 2 x 160 x 160. The beds are about 30cm high? whats the best option here?

 

Opps should read 210 x 160 and yes they are open to soil!

 

If you have access to the recycling centre, and they let you take away the recycled stuff, usually called soil improver, then that's best for a start. I'd get a load of that, and dig it in and add top soil if you need more. But the soil improver is the best stuff, as it opens up your soil, helping drainage, whatever soil type you have.

I'm not great at visualising quantities, so I always look at the labels.... if you work out how many cubic metres your raised bed will contain, that should help, but the bags of compost and topsoil at the GCs tell you how much of an area it will cover, not the volume.... From a purely female viewpoint, if in doubt, I'd visualise the bags themselves in my raised bed, and see how many I reckoned would fit in it! Hopelessly unscientific, I know - but it works!!

 

Thank you so much for your information, I shall start contacting my local recycling centres. Happy New Year to you!

 

Same to you, Sash!

It'll be run by your local council, so that's the first point of contact, if you don't know where your local one is.

 

I too visualised the bags in my beds but found that 80 lites covered 1 - 2 inches high of a 6ft x 4ft bed. As I was putting manure underneath as a filler, this is adequate for certain crops, but root veg will obviously need much more depth of soil without the manure mattress.

 

If you are organic, and you are using manure, make sure you know your source.

 

Hi Sally
Yes, does the soil have to be organic?

 

I didn't get organic soil, cos, I couldn't afford it and it depends on how organic you want to be. I am happy just not using pesticides and using natural fertilizers.
The RHS book on organic gardening will be helpful to you. I think you can buy it of amazon for 4 or 5 pounds (or even cheaper of eBay if one is going).

Good Luck

 

I might have to make the raised beds a little less deep, I can see it costing a fortune to fill them! Also Im going to buy seedlings as I dont have the space or know-how of growing from seed yet, if you buy seedlings can you plant them out at different times to gather a longer crop?

 

I think that would be difficult, Sash. If you're sowing seeds, you just sow them at intervals, which keeps a succession of veg coming - if you get them as seedlings, they'll all be at the same stage at the same time, and I don't see how you could slow them down very much.

Lots of veg you can sow direct into the soil, though, rather than bringing on in advance - you could do that, couldn't you, since you wouldn't need more space, just somewhere to keep the spare seeds in their packet!

Just look up info on the veg you're thinking of growing, on any of the seeds producers sites, and that will tell you how to grow them, and you could make your final selection of what to grow baseed on whether you can sow them directly nto the soil or not, and maybe get seedlings for the ones you can't.

Hope that helps a bit.

 

Hi Sash,

How you getting on with your raised beds?

Mine are going well now, let me know if you need any advice.