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Need more soil in my raised garden bed. what kind how much?
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Posted by
turaloora z10Cal. (
My Page) on
Sun, Apr 15, 12 at 18:19
| It seems my raised garden bed needs more soil added to it cause of removing weeds and such a few years back. It looks lower like it needs 7 inches more soil added to the exhisting soil and clay and rocks soil. I wonder what i should add to fill in. I want to do this on the cheap but i like to garden organically if possible even though it will just be flower beds in this area. the area i need to fill in is about 12 inches long by 4 inches wide and 7 inches deep. How much will i need? Im looking into see if my town has free compost to add. Would this work? |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Need more soil in my raised garden bed. what kind how much?
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| Adding just compost is fine, if the bulk of what you already have is soil of some variety. Are you sure those dimensions are correct? That's a very small area and not a even a cubic foot in volume. I'm guessing you may mean 12' long by 4' wide and 7 inches deep - that's approximately 1 cubic yard of soil volume needed. |
RE: Need more soil in my raised garden bed. what kind how much?
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| What to add depends on what is there and what you want to do in that space. Adding organic matter could fill that space enough, for a while. Adding a soil mix thazt contains about 45 percent sand, 25 percent silt, 25 percent clay, and 5 percent organic matter will fill it and last longer as long as the organic matter is replaced annually. |
RE: Need more soil in my raised garden bed. what kind how much?
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| I'm trying to fill or raise my bed about 10" to plant tomatoes, and a friend reccomended a mix based on the Tapla formula. Any thoughts? |
RE: Need more soil in my raised garden bed. what kind how much?
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| I'm pretty sure Al's mix is for container gardening and it would probably be cheaper to buy soil in bulk. Not sure how big your garden is. |
RE: Need more soil in my raised garden bed. what kind how much?
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My garden is 4x8
Would a mix of pine mulch, humis, manure, and top soil work? |
RE: Need more soil in my raised garden bed. what kind how much?
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firegrip
Pine mulch and manure are humus. Humus is simply the residual organic matter, the OM that has not been digested by the Soil Food Web, yet. "Topsoil" is simply the top 4 to 6 inches of soil from someplace and it might be worth the price or it might not be.
What do you expect that "topsoil" to be? Never accept what the seller of "topsoil" says what they are selling is but define what you want and look for that. |
RE: Need more soil in my raised garden bed. what kind how much?
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Tura-
If you have enough soil in your bins to plant right now and you are just trying to top them off I would suggest adding 3"-4" of compost this year and mixing it in. Then next year doing the same thing. If every year you add compost or other soil amendments to an already full garden bed you will quickly run out of room. Also, if you add it a bit this year and a bit next, then it will also spread out the cost. |
RE: Need more soil in my raised garden bed. what kind how much?
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| Also, don't dig in pine mulch, it is meant to sit on top of the ground as mulch. Any wood product will deplete soil nitrogen if it's dug in, until it decomposes. Left on top it will draw it from the air and won't hurt the soil. Mulch is for mulching, compost/humus/manure are for soil amending. |
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