Adventures In DIY

Mixing Raised Bed Garden Soil

• Tweet
• Email
• Sharebar

• Tweet
• Email

I read that instead of using traditional soil or topsoil for the raised beds it is possible to use something similar to what I believe a green house or nursery would use. The soil is comprised of equal parts of

• Something to aerate the soil
• Compost to feed the plants
• Material to keep the soil moist

At the end is my materials list and what it cost me to make this soil for 4 raised beds.

Before going out and buying the materials the volume of each raised bed was calculated.
Width x Length x Height

For me I used the following:
4 ft x 4 ft x .5 ft = 8 cubic feet

In able to fill all 4 beds I needed:
4 beds x 8 cubic feet = 32 cubic feet

I needed roughly 11 cubic feet of each of the materials listed above. When I bought the soil materials I got as close as possible, but I figured I wasn’t baking a cake so I just had to get close to the ratio.

Raw Materials

Everything was mixed on a tarp because it was too expensive to waste any of these materials.

Mixing The Different Types Of Compost

The peat moss is used to help hold moisture in. A compressed bail will almost double in size when you break it apart.

Breaking Apart Peat Moss

I found it hard to completely break the peat apart. I just break apart the little clumps when I run across them when checking the garden.

It was also helpful shifting the soil to one side and back on the tarp to bring up the material on the bottom of the soil heap.

Mixed Soil

Finally, with some assistance from My Helper the raised beds were filled.

Raised Beds With Soil

Here is what I purchased for the soil project:

Compost Notes

• The Walmart Composted Mulch (1cuft each) was the worst looking compost mix. There was a lot of thick wood fibers in it.
• The Humus Gro Compost (2cuft each) was the best looking mix for the price.
• The steer manure compost (2cuft) was the most affordable, but I had some mushrooms come up. After talking to a more experienced gardener at work, he had a similar experience when using steer manure.
• The ingredients for the Kellog’s Gromulch are similar to the Humus but it also has some fertilizer mixed in.

Other Getting Started With Raised Bed Gardening Posts

• Building the Raised Beds
• Irrigating and Positioning Raised Bed Gardens
• Mixing Raised Bed Garden Soil
• Raised Bed Gardening Ideas
• Removing Grass For Raised Bed Gardening