How to fill a raised seed bed - opinions/advice please!

[GreaterMarrow]

Due to having clay soil on my plot I have opted to use a raised bed (approx 6" deep) for my seedlings, hoping that it will give them a better start (as yet I have no greenhouse/cold frame etc so anything that can be started outdoors will be).

How would you go about filling it?

I have a good supply of manure (some well rotted, some not so much) but I wasn't sure whether it should go in a seed bed. I don't have any home-made compost but do have a lot of multipurpose I could use.

Any advice appreciated! Thanks.

[Jungle Jane]

I put top soil in mine,I think it's cheaper than compost,not sure?

[Jay22]

I filled mine with a mixture of topsoil and multi purpose compost.

[Kristen]

I filled mine by lowering the path and putting the soil into the bed. I also use a lot of manure on my beds, to improve the soil rather than to raise the soil level, but it obviously does that somewhat too - but as it rots down it reduces, so something like manure needs to be an ongoing process. A compost heap would help too.

[libbyloulou]

Fill up with manure, then add an inch or two of your multipurpose compost, then plant your seedlings ? or seeds in that, Charles Dowding has done it for years.

[KevinM67]

Somebody posted the link below in another thread a wee while ago.

It might be useful to follow the same principles of making a hotbed if your manure is not fully rotted down and you have plenty of mpc.

Although you probably won't get the temperature as high.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lqKmAp0t1SY

[Kirk]

I filled mine with anything. As long as it look reasonable it went in or on. Suppose topsoil, compost, manure was primary but bark chips, composted bark, shredded tree, used compost from containers, grass cutting left on it, leaves left on.

[daviddevantnhisspiritwife]

Do your council offer free compost? One of our local recycling sites did - you just had to pick a dry day to rock up with a shovel and some sacks.

I've built mine up with spent growbag compost and as I grow my toms / peppers etc in flower buckets that sometimes ends up topping up beds.

[nat'n'lou]

Hi
last year I made 2 raised beds from recycled pallets and filled them with old growbags, new top soil, mpc, sharp sand and some blocks of coir that were really cheap at our local 'Swedish furniture store'

nat