Raised Beds are Filled with Soil

Posted on 21. May, 2009 by Justin in My Garden Diary

As you can see from my previous post I've recently installed raised beds. Building the beds has been the easy part, the hard part has been moving soil in my garden to fill the beds. I've had to buy 8 bags of top soil and 3 bags of compost extra to fill the beds. Each bed is 6 x 4 ft in size with a depth of 1 ft, this means I've had to move half a ton of soil for each bed.

If you are thinking about installing raised beds don't just buy top soil from the garden centre. I've found the bought soil I used is extremely sandy and doesn't hold the moisture very well. I've used a mix of soil from the garden, bought top soil, compost from the garden centre and compost from my bin. Even with this mix of organic matter, the added layer of top soil from the garden centre has meant the beds are extremely free draning and as a result bone dry in no time.

My top tip for filling the beds is to incorporate a mix of well rotted organic matter (compost and manure) to keep the moisture in.

Here are the photos of getting the beds filled, I've even put some paths into between the beds.