Allotments 4 All

Have you heard of Lasagna gardening?
Basically make a lasagna of whatever you can get hold of and grow in that!  Which sounds like what you are trying to do with your raised beds!

have a look on Ebay for topsoil and mix that with a peat free compost :)

Quote from: manicscousers on September 08, 2011, 16:54:20
just picked up 9 bags of spent mushroom compost(70ltr) from a farm, cost 18.00, lots cheaper than m.p  ;D

Lots more alkaline than MP too..... bassicas will love it, spuds won't :D We can get compost frmo local recycling place for cheap, top soil is the same price from them so you can mix and match, they even do a 50:50 mix ready made... Load it yourself and it's 26 quid a tonne (or 28, can't remember).... I've got a transit sized vasn and an 8x4 trailer.... if I put three builders dumpy bags in each as load-liners and shovel will I don't really want to lift the shovel any higher I can get about 800Kg in a load, and it's an awful lot of compost...... Will be doing a run later this year once I've pulled out the toms etc in the GH as I will replace the soil on a cycle, what comes out will go onto the veg plots (and I'll put the raised bed collar round the other bed. Not a fan of rasied beds per se but they will happen at mine simply cos I'll want to dig out the GH each winter and replace, plus I could do with the depth, my soil is pretty thin....

chrisc

Our mushroom compost is to top dress the fruit beds and fill up a brassica bed for next year. we also put lots of decaying leaves in the bottom of our parsnip and carrot raised beds with our own compost and then peat free compost over the top to smother the weeds

Husband has a mushroom allergy so have been avoiding that stuff just in case