Stop WASTING MONEY Filling Raised Beds! Fill Them Like This.

What's growing on, gardeners? It's Sunday, March 24th, and we are getting our garden beds ready for spring here on the southeastern coast of North Carolina. I'm noticing a ton of people adding raised garden beds to their yards this season, which is beyond awesome to hear, but there is a problem. I'm also noticing a ton of people throwing away their hard-earned money filling their raised beds with unnecessarily expensive soils. On today's video, we are going to talk about how you should really fill your raised garden beds. Stop wasting money and do this instead. If you're new to the channel, please subscribe and hit the bell to receive new video notifications and check out our Amazon store and spread shop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom designed apparel and other gear. Your support is greatly appreciated. Now, if you follow my channel, you know that I have an extensive container garden. I love, oh, hey, Dale. How you doing, buddy? You little camera hog. Take two. If you follow my channel, you know that I have an extensive container garden. I love growing in containers, but it is very important that when you build yourself a container garden, you use a premium potting mix or you make your own premium high quality potting mix like I've showed you how to do in the past. I will link to a video above and down below in the video description that will teach you how to make premium potting soil for a fraction of the cost of the stuff that's pre-made in a bag. Now, the reason why it is so important to have high quality container mix rich in things like peat moss or coco coir is because your plants can only obtain nutrients from this little area. The roots are confined. So you need a mix that both retains moisture and retains the nutrients so they don't wash out every single time it rains or you over irrigate. So for that reason, when you're building a container garden, it is very important that you make the highest quality mix possible. Now, a typical recipe for container garden mix that I've shared with you before is usually one part peat moss or coco coir. They're interchangeable. One part compost and one part a blend of vermiculite and perlite. Now, whether you want to use more vermiculite or more perlite is going to depend on what you want out of the mix. Vermiculite is made to retain moisture and nutrients. Perlite is made to increase drainage. Most mixes usually have a 50-50 blend, but if you need a faster draining mix, you'd want to use more perlite. If you want a mix that is slower draining, you'd want to use more vermiculite. The problem that I'm noticing is many gardeners are making these expensive container mixes for their raised bed gardens. And this just doesn't make any sense. Raised bed gardens are not containers. They have open bottoms. The purpose of a raised garden bed isn't to confine your plant's roots to a container, but to compensate for weaknesses in your native soil or in the layout of your backyard. Raised garden beds compensate for drainage problems, soil problems, washout problems, and space problems. For example, if you have drainage problems because your native soil is a heavy clay that retains water, building raised beds is the answer because it gets your growing medium above grade. That way it drains really quickly and the roots of your plants don't sit in mucky soil and rot. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you're like me and you have very sandy soil that's poor to grow in and contains root-knot nematodes, the raised beds are also the solution because they hold all of that organic matter above ground in place so it doesn't wash away and you can grow all your plants in that. Similarly, if you live in a climate like mine where I have torrential thunderstorms in the summer and we can get 40 to 50 inches of rain on average in a single summer season and it's not unusual to have rainstorms just in the afternoon deliver four to five inches of rain a storm, when we get rainfall like that, if I planted my stuff in ground, it would all wash away. So these raised beds actually lock the soil in place. So when we get those heavy torrential rains, I don't lose my plants. The water just rushes around the raised beds and nothing is harmed. And finally, if you have a smaller backyard, you may not be able to grow in ground because you can't just till up a big portion of your backyard. These raised beds lock your garden into a small confined area that's really convenient. So you don't have to tear up your backyard to have a garden. So like I said, your raised garden beds shouldn't be treated like containers. They should be treated like real earth gardens that just compensate for all of the problems I just mentioned. And for that reason, we shouldn't be filling them with container mix. We should be filling them with actual soil, stuff that approximates what farmers would grow their crops in if you had 50 to 100 acres of beautiful earth and soil. So what actually is soil? Well, if you were a farmer and you were tilling up the ground and planting your crops traditionally, you're growing in the topsoil. So all that real garden soil is, is topsoil that you have amended and worked over years with organic matter, constantly making it better and better as that organic matter is incorporated and breaks down. So over time, a real garden soil gets better with age. So really, all you should be filling your raised beds in is what farmers farm in, which is a blend of topsoil and compost. Now, because I am a math-obsessed, number-crunching engineer, I put a cost comparison together just to show you how much money you're throwing away if you're filling your raised garden beds with an expensive container mix instead of just making a 50-50 blend of topsoil and compost, which actually better approximates growing in the earth. So I went out to gather some current pricing. I found that the bales of peat moss at Lowe's are currently $23.98 for a three-cubic-foot bale. And I also was able to gather prices for large bulk quantities of vermiculite, perlite, and I also checked out some locally made bagged topsoil and compost products to get recent pricing. Now, because pricing changes over time, I do not want you to hyper-focus on the pricing, but rather the percentage cost savings, because if you're watching this video years later, obviously things are going to be cheaper than it is now. That's not the point. Look at the cost savings. So what we have right here are, my raised beds are all four feet wide by 10 feet long, and they are made out of two-by-eights, which have a nominal depth of 7.25 inches. And when calculating the volume of soil fill, it's very important that you calculate it to 100% fill. Don't think I'm only gonna fill my raised beds 80 to 90% of the way. You have to calculate 100% fill, because over time the soil is going to compact. So fill them up to the top, and you'll probably have them sink an inch or two on you. So I'm going to follow the classic recipe for making a high-quality potting soil, which is going to be one part peat moss or coco coir. We're going to use peat moss, because it is considerably cheaper than coco coir. We are going to use one part compost, and then one part a 50-50 blend of perlite and vermiculite. So when you calculate the volume of each of these individual raised beds, you will find that each raised bed has a total volume of 24.167 cubic feet. So if you were to follow this typical high-quality potting mix recipe at these current prices, it would cost you $190.79 to fill each individual raised bed, plus tax. That is absolutely insane to spend that much money to fill one raised bed. Now, if I were to go out and buy bags of premium topsoil and compost and mix them 50-50 to fill the exact same raised beds, the same amount of fill would cost me $73.23. That means it is 2.61 times more expensive to fill each raised bed with a potting mix than simply a 50-50 compost blend. And for the record, this isn't necessarily one of those you get what you pay for scenarios where spending so much more money on container mix and filling your beds with that is going to yield a better result. In fact, it may yield a worse result. Peat moss tends to have issues with low pH. Coco coir tends to have issues with retaining too much salt because it comes from coconut husks. When you fill your raised beds with a 50-50 blend of topsoil and compost, you're better approximating real soil conditions for your plants to grow in, and you're actually getting a higher percentage of organic matter with nutrients. So this is actually one of those scenarios where you may actually have better results by spending tremendously less money. Now, there is a third option, and this may be the most commonly selected option amongst most new gardeners, and that is to go to your local big box store and buy those big bags from the garden section by the potting soil that are labeled raised bed mix. They are a pre-made mix that are supposedly suitable for just dumping in your raised bed. So if I go to my local Lowe's, I can go and get 1.5 cubic foot bags. And if I were to buy enough to fill one of my raised beds perfectly, it would cost me $144.68. This is significantly cheaper than making the homemade premium potting mix, but it is still 1.98 times, let's just call an even two times more expensive than using the 50-50 topsoil and compost option. And while this is the most convenient thing to do, it may be the worst of the three options, and I'll tell you why. What raised bed mix is basically just really cheap potting soil. They dramatically reduce the amount of peat moss in there, which is the thing that costs the most amount of money. And then they bulk it with shredded wood or bark in order to increase the drainage and bulk it up for pennies on the dollar. So you're just getting the cheapest made potting mix known to man. And as a result, it basically does nothing well. The moisture retaining and nutrient retaining properties that premium potting mix has because of all that peat moss or cocoa core, you lose those benefits while also losing the benefits of all of that compost mixed into a 50-50 topsoil blend. So you're basically getting a really low quality potting mix that is low in nutrients. So in my opinion, it isn't worth the few dollars that you're going to save versus a premium potting mix. And it certainly is not nearly as good as that 50-50 topsoil blend. And if you still think that cost of $73 per raised bed is high, well, I have a better solution for you. And this is the big advantage of the 50-50 topsoil and compost blend method. See, when you buy the stuff for potting mix, your peat moss or cocoa core, vermiculite, perlite, I've never found a way to get that stuff delivered in bulk. You have to buy pre-packaged stuff, which costs an arm and a leg at the highest most premium prices possible. However, if you're only filling your raised beds with topsoil and compost, you can get that stuff delivered to your house. Now, I went to the store and I bought bag mix just for a fair comparison, but I could easily call a local landscape company and I can get tri-axle dump truck loads delivered to my door of topsoil and compost, and I can mix it myself at a fraction of the cost of the stuff in bags. Now, that's actually what I did when I filled my raised beds. I went out and I just got pure compost. I had it dumped in my driveway and I just hauled it with wheelbarrows. And at the time, I didn't mind spending the extra money, but I could have cut that cost dramatically by blending it 50-50 with topsoil. At today's prices, I probably would do that personally. But the point I'm trying to make is by doing a home delivery instead, you can further cut that cost maybe even in half or more. So if $73 sounds like a lot to you, well, if you're filling numerous raised beds, it is worth your time to call up a landscaping company and have the stuff delivered to you in bulk. And now you're talking about saving four, five, six times the cost of somehow filling your raised beds with a expensive premium potting mix. So if you're only filling one or two raised beds, it may not be a big deal and it may be more convenient to just go to a store and buying pre-bagged premium topsoil and some type of compost and just mixing it together yourself. However, if you're filling more than that, it really is worth your time and money to have the stuff delivered to your house. In fact, if you call around to local landscape supply companies, a lot of them already have a pre-made raised bed mix. Two different suppliers near me already have a 50-50 blend of screened topsoil and compost that they deliver to you and they'll just dump in your driveway for a couple hundred bucks and then you wheelbarrow it over yourself. You will save a ton of money and then you won't have to go through the manual labor of blending the two items together. So that is a massive win. Please look around, call around. You can save hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars filling your raised beds if you have a large enough garden. One thing I did not cover this video is how to save money if you buy a really deep raised bed that's two to three feet deep and you don't want to fill 100% of that raised bed with a soil mix because it'll cost way too much money. The scope of this video is really only to discuss that topsoil and compost layer that we grow in. However, if you do have really deep raised beds, I would suggest you look at videos about the Hugelkultur method, which usually involves filling the bottom half of your raised bed with things like wooden logs or branches or things like that to add volume that hold onto the moisture just in case your roots eventually tap down and get long enough that they can tap into that moisture layer. It's a great way to hold onto moisture so you have to water less in the heat of the summer. And that right there is how you can save a ton of money filling your raised garden beds. Sometimes the cheaper solution is actually the better solution. So everybody, I sure hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please make sure to hit that like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring that notification bell so you're notified when I release more videos like these. If you're curious about any of the products that I use in real life in my garden, they are all linked down below in the Amazon storefront link in the video description. So expand the video description, click on my Amazon storefront link, you'll see everything I use in real life. And while you're down there, check out my spreadshop for custom merch if you wanna support the channel. Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Dale, what are you doing? Daddy's trying to get some work done and you're standing on top of him. I'm trying to edit a video. Is this, whoa, hey, hey, hey, you're dripping all over my pants. What is this? Oh, I see. Is there something there that you want? Do you maybe want a treat? Dale, I already gave you two. That's my backup treat. Okay, go on your bed. Dale, I'll give you a treat if you go on your bed. On your bed. All right, Mr. Handsome, there you go. Gentle, good boy, good boy. Now let me finish working on my video.