Soil to Get Us Started
The thing about raised beds is that once you build them they don’t magically fill up with dirt. It’s a huge disappointment. It isn’t surprising at all but for some reason it slipped my mind a bit that once we got the beds built we’d need to source dirt to fill them.
Turns out, dirt is expensive.
And, evidently, you aren’t supposed to call it dirt it’s soil.
Soil is full of living organisms and supports ecosystems. Dirt is what you get on your clothes when you are outside but it isn’t good for growing. I’ll admit that while I understand that there is a legitimate difference between the two… I’m probably going to call my soil ‘dirt’ a lot.
Sourcing My Soil
Last year to fill out some of my border beds I bought local topsoil in 40lb bags from our nearby Ranch & Home Store. I needed about 10-15 bags, so maybe 20-30$ worth of topsoil.
This year I need 3 cubic yards of soil.
I did the math on that and to buy that in 40lb bags would have been somewhere around the 300$ mark. Ouch. And it wouldn’t have been especially good dirt either. Not a good option.
So alternatives needed to be found – enter my local topsoil retailer.
I didn’t realize some companies exclusively sold dirt and soil, it seems obvious now but if you’d told me a month ago it totally would have blown my mind. If you are looking for a large quantity of soil I’d recommend checking in your area!
For 3 cubic yards of soil, it rang in at half the cost of what I would have paid at a big box store and the company delivered it to my house and it was a garden soil mix specifically for filling raised beds.
A perfect, albeit still pricey, solution.
With the beds installed and my garden soil ordered that only left one question, how was I going to move it from my driveway to my backyard?
Moving 3 Cubic Yards of Dirt
Long answer short… I didn’t. My brother and his girlfriend did. (Thank God for helpful siblings and their partners).
Between being firmly in my third trimester and my recent symphysis pubis dysfunction diagnosis I literally physically could not move all that material. I moved one wheelbarrow full of dirt and that was too much.
I hate not being able to do things!
Luckily my brother works cheap and in exchange for cold drinks and vegan bun cha all the dirt got transported from the front driveway to the backyard.
A Bit More About the Beds
To prep the beds this year I did a layer of cardboard along the bottom and then piled the soil on top. We haven’t noticed any gophers before so we skipped doing a layer of wire mesh underneath the cardboard this go around.
The cardboard should help to kill any grass that was in the beds and to prevent weeds from coming up over the summer. It won’t be 100% foolproof but better than nothing!
I like that as time goes on the cardboard will disintegrate allowing roots to grow deeper and worms to get better access all around.
It’s all about recycling!
On to Planting
My beds are prepped, my dirt is in, and the last frost date has passed…
Y’all it’s time to get some plants in the ground!
But that’s next week’s goal. This week still has a few more things that need doing before I’m ready to plant.
I can’t wait to get started!!
What do you think?
What’s your go-to method for filling raised beds? Do you prefer straight soil or lasagna layering?
Comment below and let me know!
To start at the beginning of our homesteading journey you can go back to the post Starting Our Urban Homestead and to find out what we planted check out my post What We’re Growing: Year One
