When I built my first raised bed, I had no idea where to get the soil for it. I had done a bit of reading, but I was clueless about how much soil a 12x4 foot bed could hold. So I drove down to Home Depot, and two trips later I had 24 bag of topsoil and 24 bags of compost.
When I put the rest of the beds together, I worked out that I had around 108 cubic feet, or about 4 cubic yards of volume to fill with soil. Since the first bed I had found out that people would actually deliver soil. Plus, the soil is a LOT cheaper by the cubic yard. When the huge pile got dumped on the drive way, I was ecstatic.
Fast forward a month, and I wasn't so ecstatic about the soil. Here's two photos to explain why:
Young Squash
Young Squash
These are pictures of two different squash plants that I planted from seed the same day. The top one is the first bed I built, full of Home Depot topsoil and compost. The bottom photo is one of the beds filled with supposedly 50-50 amended topsoil. Except all the vegetables in that new soil are small and sickly. The veggies in the old soil are huge.
This weekend I amended one of the beds with compost, and spread a layer of compost in the other beds where I didn't want to rip out had had grown to this point. I'll post a photo of the runt from above later if it all works out.
