How To Fill A Raised Garden Bed

You’ve built your raised garden beds and now you need to fill them. In this blog, I discuss how I fill a raised garden bed without breaking the budget.

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Let’s Get Ready To Grow!

Filling a raised garden bed can be quite daunting, especially when you are staring down at several large, deep beds. Successfully achieving a quality filled bed can be achieved by following these simple steps:

Gather Materials

Here’s a list of materials you will need:

• Landscape Fabric: Optional, but I like to set my raised beds on weed barrier then remove the inner area. This keeps weeds from seeping into your beds from around the base.
• Cardboard: Excellent for killing weeds/grass at the base of your raided garden bed and provides an excellent compost over time. Remove all plastic/taping from the cardboard.
• Dried sticks, leaves, straw, or other organic material: This provides an excellent base to your beds as well as compost material over time.
• Organic soil: A raised bed should have at least 6-8 inches of soil on top to provide a great growing medium for plants. For a large amount of beds, you may need to purchase garden soil from a landscape supply and have it delivered. For smaller projects, purchase bagged soil.
• Tools: Shovels, rakes, wheelbarrow, and gloves provide easier handling of materials.

A Note About Soil

Check with your local landscape supply to see if they supply garden soil and what it is comprised of. You want to look for a mix of top soil, compost, and other organic materials like peat moss or coconut coir. When I filled my first garden beds I purchased a load of both screened top soil and mushroom compost. This provided a nice mix of material for growing healthy plants.

For bagged soils, many stores offer a “garden soil” or “raised bed soil”. Save some money and purchase good old potting soil. Trust me, it’s the same stuff and a lot easier on the pocket book. With that soil, mix in a bag or two of compost. You will have an excellent growing medium ready to plant.

Prepare Your Raised Garden Bed For Filling

Some people prefer to use weed fabric to completely cover the bottom of their raised garden bed, and that’s perfectly ok. If you have great water drainage in your area then weed fabric works excellent. I prefer to use weed fabric under and surrounding my bed, BUT I remove the fabric from the center of the bed to provide drainage. The fabric surrounding the inside and outside frame of the bed provides a barrier to prevent weeds from creeping into the bed.

For the center and base of the raised garden bed, I like to place a thick layer of cardboard on the bottom. Be sure the carboard is removed of any plastic or tape and is not made of shiny plastic material. Cardboard is used in the classic “lasagna” method of gardening whereas you place a layer of cardboard over the area you want to turn into a garden, then layer compost material on top. The cardboard will smother existing weeds and will decompose over time providing an organic compost material.

Let’s Fill That Raised Garden Bed!

• Start by wetting down the cardboard with water. Get it nice and saturated.
• Cover the bottom of the raised garden bed with a good layer of sticks and small logs if desired. Use only dried sticks. Green stems from trees could lead to a tree growing in your raised garden bed in the future!
• Add organic matter such as leaves, straw, or other compostable material. This is a great time to clean out your chicken coop! I use industrial hemp bedding in my coop and hemp is an excellent compost material. You can also use things like pine shavings and shredded newspaper. The chicken manure is an added bonus. Organic matter should make up at least half the raised garden bed fill, or leave 6-8 inches of space for soil. Water this layer thoroughly.
• Lastly, add the soil. As mentioned earlier, I use simple bagged potting mix combined with bagged compost. Mix together thoroughly. Fill the raised garden bed to the top and water thoroughly.

Maintaining Your Raised Garden Bed

After you have planted your raised garden bed with all your plants that you started from seed this spring, cover the soil with a layer of compost such as straw (not hay) or dried leaves. This layer acts as a moisture barrier and helps to keep weeds at bay. Fertilize your plants often with a good organic fertilizer.

More Gardening Ideas

• Don’t have raised garden beds? Take a look at how I made beautiful raised beds on the cheap here. I also recently added to my beds and purchased a few galvanized ones like these.
• Learn how to make your own seed tapes and save on wasting expensive seeds like carrots, radish, spinach, and beets here.
• Save a TON of money by starting your own garden plants from seed. I show you how to set up an inexpensive but effective indoor grow system here.

By following these steps, you’ll be well on your way to filling a raised garden bed that provides the perfect growing environment for your plants. Happy gardening!