Filling Tall Raised Garden Beds

Filling your raised garden bed.

Filling tall raised garden beds.

You can purchase a kit that comes with pre cut lumber and hardware or build your own raised bed in any size you need. To fill a raised garden bed you ll need enough soil to fill the bed and some organic compost. Aside from sometimes adding bulk soil to the bottom of our deepest beds there is no other fillers at the bottom. A raised garden bed is a freestanding structure usually constructed of wood sides about 1 to 2 feet above the ground and can vary greatly in area.

Build a trench around 8 12 inches deep and about 1 2 feet down the middle of the raised bed. Just how the roots. It s a simple volume math equation of 4ft x 8ft x 1 2ft. A raised bed is available in the trade alternatively it can be built by yourself it even works with pallets.

A raised bed looks beautiful on the balcony or in the garden. To give a comparison between that and other raised beds my square 4 5 x 4 5 x 24 beds take 40 5 cubic feet of soil or 1 5 cubic yards to fill. You should use native soil from your yard if possible since this will be best for your plants. However if grass is growing in between.

The volume of soil you need is 12 feet times 4 feet times 1 5 feet length times width times depth. Preparations for the raised bed. Now that we have a better idea of the types of materials we want to add to our raised beds it is time to fill them up. 1 yard of compost is the equivalent of 27 cubic feet so we know we can divide that out and reach 59 yards of compost.

All you need is a level spot in your landscape some plants or seeds and enough good quality soil and compost to fill the bed. We re building hugelkultur raised beds which means we re filling 1 3 of them with rotting wood. Regardless of size multiple raised gardens should be spaced at least 18 inches apart to make it easier to walk in between beds. Growing plants in a raised garden bed is easy.

If an existing raised bed is being utilized just push the soil to the sides or temporarily remove the soil. Not only is this beneficial in more than one way it helps u. But to ensure that vegetables and varieties can thrive in it a few things should be taken into account when filling it. Yep our beds are 100 full of all this good stuff.

If you can t use native soil purchase a nutrient rich mixture from your local gardening store. The cost to fill a raised bed with bagged fertile soil planting mix adds up quickly. The birdies beds aren t just sturdy but they provide great surface square footage with lower soil requirements than the standard home built wood garden beds. If a 4 ft x 8 ft garden bed is 6 inches tall we can calculate how much compost will be needed to fill it.