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I have got my new raised beds in place, the problem I now have is filling them. I was going to use some of the soil from the surrounding walkways to help fill them along with compost. However the soil has got a lot of junk in it, roots, large stones and rubble, glass etc. So I just went to B&G and got some 150lt sacks of compost. They only had topsoil in little tiny bags. Am I okay to just fill the beds with ther compost entirly or should I track down some top soil or anything else to mix with it?

I have raised beds,it is a problem to fill them.

A lot of people dig out the path,I won't do that as we have heavy clay soil and I am trying to get away from that.

I have put lots of compost in mixed with some topsoil.

Do you know anyone who has a compost heap they do not use?

If all else fails you could try sieving your surrounding soil.

It is an expensive business buying it in.

Some of the none gardening members of my family have started compost heaps for me,very useful extra.

blimey soil is very expensive I have just been looking. compost is pretty cheap so I can fill them with compost, I just dont know if that will be any good for the veg, and if they would rather have a compost/soil mix?

We haven't tried to fill our raised beds straight away. I suppose they're still more 'framed' beds than raised ones :)

We just dug over the existing soil and forked in compost then a layer of multi on top. The soil height gradually increases over the years as you add compost and manure each season.

For my first one, i dug about a spade and a half then added manure then filled with the clay soil mixed with B&Q home brand compost. It's supprising how much it was raised.

Neil

The raised beds on my plot were made from compacted clay soil that had not been worked for ? years. I bought in mushroom compost and dug in three bags per bed, and a ton of cow manure from a local farm which I either dug in or used as a mulch where I grew potatoes the first year. I did the same the next year, and this year have enough in my compost heaps to top the beds up, and some will only need a top up of a few bags of mushroom compost which I have bought for my other plots that is still being sorted out. Doing it that way will probably work out cheaper than buying in top soil, and will make an immediate impact on the quality of your soil structure. I would still get rid of the 'junk' in your beds though....leaving large stones and big roots will affect what you grow, and if the roots are couch grass they will take over your beds!

You will find that after growing crops the level of the soil will drop when they are finished, you will need to keep topping them up in future years to keep growing successfully... ;D

Hi Inky, i went down the raised bed route and spent a lot of time using the soil from the paths that i created, and also added manure . If you want to buy in soil, i would have a look in the phone book for a topsoil provider, if your buying it in multiples of a tonne, it doesn't work out too expensive. Personally speaking, i dug the paths really deep so the beds were almost overflowing, and put bark chippings down on a membrane which look pleasing to the eye. And cheaper than topsoil or compost. :)

Quote from: Barnowl on February 25, 2009, 15:33:39The soil height gradually increases over the years as you add compost and manure each season.

I'll second that. I've got raised beds but they're just beds, nothing retaining them. They all started the same level as my paths. Another years worth of compost and manure and I'll have to start boxing them in. The level soon rises.

This image shows how much they've risen in just two seasons.

Fill new beds with:
straw
grass clippings
newspaper
cardboard
garden compost
horse/cow manure

in fact any organic material you can beg, steal or borrow.

OK, so it won't be the best medium to grow in to start with, but give it twelve months and it will all rot down.
In the mean time, you can top it off with bags of cheap  general purpose compost mixed with soil and sand/grit.
Try Googling 'Lasagne gardening'.
 ;)

If you've got a way of transporting, ask on your local freecycle site - we sometimes get people offering top soil or contents of their compost bins!!
Becky

One guy on our plots drives round to see who is having their drives done and asks the blokes doing the work where they are dumping to excess soil.

So far he has managed to get several loads delivered to our site. Granted, it is not all great stuff, but it helps fill in the base of new beds trenched in with manure, mixed with a spread of Growmore. Hard work of course but as you have found out, decent top soil is expensive.

I have had a small raised bed, (stripped of soil down to the clay, the top soil was all used to spread it on to other raised beds) I put three feet of fresh horse manure in that bed so it was high, two years ago. Covered it with black plastic and used the top to balance pots of herbs on (so I was still using the space). It now has about four inches or nice fine compost from the manure.

Beds will always need to have more substance added every year, they always manage to drop down.

Trenching and adding anything already suggested, is an on going job. Instant gardening is restricted to the magic of TV and the megga rich.

Last year I decided to make 1 of my plots a raised bed area only and yeh I scratched my head as to what to fill the beds with but this is what I did and it worked for me. My raised beds (15 of 'em) are 24 inches high 4 ft by 3ft so you see its a lot of area to fill.

1.  Hard cardboard laid on the ground, thickly and wetted. (Got this from a supermarket)

2 Several inches of newpaper shredded or torn up and wetted

3  A good 6 inches of straw, wetted.

4 A few buckets of peelings etc. These rot down for compost.

5 Any manure you can get hold of that is 'safe'.

6 Contacted the local skip hire man and asked if he had any soil (they often have soil from customers as people do work at home and dump the soil in the skips) had 3 tons delivered cheaply. Added to that polystyrene broken up and any sand I could get free.

Finally I thoroughly soaked everything a few days before planting and I had a great crop!

Hope this helps

BTW this year Im repeating that lot on top of my excisting raised beds but in much lesser quatities.

As as already been stated, anything organic that you can lay your hands on and will break down.
Disagree with polystyrene. Possibly opens up the soil, but I wouldn't use it.

Very useful thread for me as I'm busy creating beds on my allotment - without wood surrounds yet due to cost - they look much like Plot 69's do. Can I ask what size you made your beds & paths? Mine are 4ft x 8ft with paths 1.5 ft wide. One benefit of not surrounding them yet is that I can see how this size works for me and alter it next year if necessary.

I worked out width of the footpath--enough to get a w/barrow along without too much trouble--18" .
Width of bed, not to wide that I couldn't reach the centre from one side whilst on my knees ---4FT ish.
Length, really depends how far you want to walk to get to the other side, in my case 15-20ft long.
Mine are boarded as I am trying to let grass establish itself on the paths to enable me to stop getting my knees covered in mud when it has been raining. I did use bark chippings but they just disapeared and it was working out to be too costly.
Hope this helps.
You will not regret deepbeds once they are up and running, also so much easier for crop rotation.

I've had uncontained raised beds up until now but it's hard to strim between them as you end up slicing off your vege! I'm about to contain them for this reason.
At the moment I have 2ft grass/weed paths between beds....does anyone have any views on the best/optimum path gap between beds?

I wouldn't worry about filling them to start off Inky, it will happen naturally as you add manure etc Mine have got quite raised just from digging and adding manure.

Im using link-a-bord beds, 12 which are 2 x 1 meter and 2 that are 2 x 2 meter. They are all a third full with shop bought compost at the mo. and I have pathways of 60cm between each and a big unused section at the moment where I will be planting my shrubs and trees and putting my 12' greenhouse.

I will take about 2" of soil off the rest of the plot incl walkways. As Im also putting bark down on all the walkways. On the site there is a huge pile of leaf mulch so I will nab a load of that. And Im also skimming all the top layer off my chicken run so there will be a load of chiken poo going in there.

One other question, a couple of people I work with said to be carefull about the use of manure with some veg like carrots as it makes them go crazy. Is this right? and what veg should I avoid sticking chicken manure in with?

Quote from: Squashmad on February 27, 2009, 11:09:25
Very useful thread for me as I'm busy creating beds on my allotment - without wood surrounds yet due to cost - they look much like Plot 69's do. Can I ask what size you made your beds & paths?

My beds are 5 foot by 16. The width of the paths is about 18 inches.

One reason I don't want fixed beds is rotation. A third of a plot is just one big bed for my potatoes. When they're finished with I just mark them out and walk up and down a few times to create new paths. The beds I want my spuds in next year, I just have to turn over a few paths between them to create next years all in one spud bed. I prefer it that way to having a few rows of spuds in separate little beds.

Just the roots Inky... cabbage and leafy veg will love it.  ;D

My beds are 5 foot by 16. The width of the paths is about 18 inches.

One reason I don't want fixed beds is rotation. A third of a plot is just one big bed for my potatoes. When they're finished with I just mark them out and walk up and down a few times to create new paths. The beds I want my spuds in next year, I just have to turn over a few paths between them to create next years all in one spud bed. I prefer it that way to having a few rows of spuds in separate little beds.
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I use fixed, wood edged beds about 9 foot by half the width of the allotment (minus paths) - about 12 foot in length.  For some crops I shift soil and tread a centre path to give me two raised beds.  For potatoes I can get four rows across a bed.  For sweetcorn I can plant up two thirds of a bed as a block and grow something else in the remaining space.  Each bed gets fully dug over the winter.  Paths between are permanent.