Update on "raised raised beds"

10 years ago

Well, I had half a truckload of soil after helping start a school garden, so we started to empty one of the raised containers I bought from a neighbor.
Things started out very nice when I origionaly started these beds, then everything turned yellow and died, so I gave up on them for the year.
Because I had this half truckload, I thought what the heck, I'll pull half the soil from the raised container and mix in this new soil and see what happens during the winter.
Well, we found that the soil in these containers was incredibly compacted under the 4-6 " I tilled with my little tiller! Enough that after digging out about 6" I'm going to try tilling the bottom 4" or so.
Could that compacted soil be the "root" of my problem? I only dug out the one (of three) of the containers for now. The rest we'll decide on through the winter and fix in the spring.
Nancy

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Comments (4)

calistoga_al ca 15 usda 9
10 years ago
Nancy the fact that the soil compacts should be notice that it is not appropriate to use as a container mix. It will NOT be well drained enough for use as a container mix. Every time I see your post as a "raised raised bed" I cringe, as you have a raised container with no connection to the ground, which is required to be a raised bed. It is not just semantics, but a different gardening strategy. Al
nancyjane_gardener
Original Author
10 years ago
I understand it's a container. I just used the raised raised beds heading to refer to the previous post.
Planning on re-doing all 3 "containers" This spring. Nancy
calistoga_al ca 15 usda 9
10 years ago
You are right Nancy, it does attach to previous posts and I should have realized that. Sorry to be snarky, My kids used to call me the fault finder, guess I have not outgrown it. Al
nancyjane_gardener
Original Author
10 years ago
No probs Al. I'll be getting the #1 at WZ in the spring. Nancy