best source of earth / compost for filling up raised beds?

[nmayhew]

hi

i have a large plot with 3 raised beds already filled and up and running from last year. they are about 9m in length and a metre across so took a lot of compost.

this year we are devoting another tennis court sized piece of land to our veggy attempts, so will need A LOT of compost / earth if we are going to nake a lot more raised beds.

the wood i am happy to source from timber merchants / Travis P, but any mega cheap sources for compost?
eg if i ordered 50-150 bags of about 70litres each?
the local garedn centre matches B&Q etc, but it's still £3 a bag, and a bit time consuming going to pick it up, self loading etc etc

thanks,

Nick

[zazen999]

Do you have to fill them now? Why not make the beds, have the soil lower this year and they will build up over time from home made compost, mulching every year, plus digging them over will help to aerate the soil and bulk them up.

If not, try the local council and find out what they do with all the compost they make from the brown bins...

[Pumpkin Becki]

Hi Nick,

Have a look at WyeCycle - Recycling in Wye Brook and Hinxhill, they are in Wye on the way to Canterbury. We are ordering some for the new house near Ashford we're building. They do 2 cubic metres for £30 which is the best price I've seen locally, and they deliver.

[pjmt]

Lets see if my maths is correct, 100 x 70 litre bags = 7000 litres = 7 cubic metres? I think ordering from a bulk delivery firm maybe easier...

[nmayhew]

Hi Nick,

Have a look at WyeCycle - Recycling in Wye Brook and Hinxhill, they are in Wye on the way to Canterbury. We are ordering some for the new house near Ashford we're building. They do 2 cubic metres for £30 which is the best price I've seen locally, and they deliver.

thanks for this - that i s BLOODY cheap!

seems £100 per m3 is pretty standard from what i can see on the net

however, they can't deliver more than v locally as they have only a tractor (spoke to them just now), but i'll see if i can get a trailer...

[taff]

You could ask your local council/recycle center how much their compost is.
You can buy Warrior compost form ours at a good price, bagging your own makes it £1 a bag(bag size isn't fixed obviously, you bring your own), but I know it's also delivered in bulk.

[Peter]

Why does everyone seem to assume that you have to buy in (basically potting) compost for raised beds?

You have stuff called topsoil sitting there, so if you want a raised bed dig out your paths and put the soil in the beds and use woodchip or gravel for the paths.

The original raised bit of beds came from cultivating them and adding manure, but not walking on them. Digging bulks soil out by 30% and adding manure each year adds more.

[Demeter]

Or do you have a local city farm or riding stables?
Our city farm recently delivered a huge truckload of manure to a neighbouring allotmenteer - it was a bit fresh and I was downwind of it, but on the upside it was free!

(I also agree with previous posters who suggested you don't bother adding compost and just grow in the soil. It does bulk up a lot when you dig it. And add manure / soil improver year by year too.)

[Lazgaot]

Well put Peter. Also may I ask what the obsession is with raised beds? What ever happened to just digging the soil, planting in it and having permanent pathways. The beds would become raised over time by the digging and addition of manure each year. It just seems awfully expensive.

[Peter]

Lo I rejoice, for I am not a lonely voice crying out in the wilderness.

S many people seem convinced that raised beds are THE way to grow veg and that the first thing they must do is construct expensive wooden above ground containers, then they wonder how to fill them up and end up buying in potting compost.

Now a raised bed is fine, but what is the carbon footprint of the instant raised bed as opposed to the naturally evolving, timberless, not walked on bed?

[teakdesk]

Lo I rejoice, for I am not a lonely voice crying out in the wilderness.

Another follower here!!

With my poorly back my OH does ALL my digging and two years ago she asked for a raised bed and another followed quickly after but we've never bought any compost, top soil etc specifically for them. They are now both full to the top with the lowered paths between formed of bricks and stones from various projects over the years - covered in membrane and bark.

Just made another one by pinching another bit of lawn; the turf was removed and stacked so the level was very low but once the remaining soil was dug and the contents of the compost bin added along with old turf stacked in previous years the level is now 5 inches higher than the old lawn!!

Total cost? Nowt - wood came from old pantry shelving


Oh... and I should say that they no longer need digging and are in perfect condition for the new season!!!!

[Hazel at the Hill]

Now a raised bed is fine, but what is the carbon footprint of the instant raised bed as opposed to the naturally evolving, timberless, not walked on bed?

I'm half with you here, Pierre.

You'll see from my pic of 'permanent paths - no timber demarked beds' that these have not been great for me. The soil bed bit spills onto the path bit, and the path bit is still muddy to walk on. If I'd have put bark on the paths without boundaries, it would whizz into the beds at the first clumsy fork, and vice versa.

'Timber demarked beds but not raised yet' is where I am, and by the time that the soil is fully fluffed up and not walked on and has had home compo/horse muck bunged on, they will be proper raised beds with associated advantages.

Although I'm with you on the carbon footprint (and cost) of making the beds - my beds work out about £22 each (20' by 4') but I reckon that they will last some years, and that this investment would be about equivalent of buying a shed, one of which I had given to me.

Still getting to grips with the fact that I don't have to leave room to stick my clod hopper, so can plant closer together with my not-quite-raised beds.

[GardeningMike]

Raised beds - bags of compost... you're wasting your £

hi
but any mega cheap sources for compost? eg if i ordered 50-150 bags of about 70litres each? the local garedn centre matches B&Q etc, but it's still £3 a bag, and a bit time consuming going to pick it up, self loading etc etc
Nick

Okay, let me try and help. First of all you are ripping yourself off going to a garden centre and bying by the bag for the huge amount of soil you need to purchase. I was in this situation once and ordered by the tonne. You can buy different grades of soil from the following company either in 1 tonne (1000Kg) bags or in lorry loads from about 2 to 20 tonnes. The same website has a soil calculator so you can work out how much (weight) you need using the L x B x H of your raised bed. Google 'onlineturf' and on their UK map will key you in to a local distributor.

[Pumpkin Becki]

thanks for this - that i s BLOODY cheap!

You're very welcome Nick, Wyecycle do a lot of worthwhile work locally and I think its great to be able to support them.

[Eyren]

Well put Peter. Also may I ask what the obsession is with raised beds? What ever happened to just digging the soil, planting in it and having permanent pathways. The beds would become raised over time by the digging and addition of manure each year. It just seems awfully expensive.

Depends why you are doing it. I have raised beds in my back garden because the soil is just dreadful (typical compacted modern housing estate stuff), so even 6-inch-deep beds have made an enormous difference to the crops I can grow. Plus they are a lot tidier than unedged beds - I let my bantams onto the beds in winter to forage for bugs and weeds, and they would make an terrible mess scratching around if the soil wasn't physically confined!

On the lottie however the soil is fine, so we just have fixed paths and dump manure/compost on the permanent beds to build them up. Both compost and manure are free - we got the manure via Freecycle, and our local recycling depot allows you to help yourself from the big heap out front (just bring some sacks and a spade)