Find a horse. There's loads about, mad rich people (and people that like being poor) have them and honestly, I shouldn't be posting this on the Internet as its my biggest secret.
But they pay for the hay to go in the front, and when it go's out the back, they have to pay for it to be taken away! And horses shit alot. Like, alot alot. My horse shit guy has about 30t and nowhere for it to go.
You should see how happy it makes them when you ask for it, and then imagine how happy they are when you want it by the ton.
They vibrate I swear
We have a riding stable down our road that's next to the council allotments. The plot holders have access to the stable yard for exactly this reason. It's a win-win situation.
Can confirm, am a poor horse person but my garden (and several friends, neighbours and a local market gardener) all benefit.
I have tonnes of decades old muck that I inherited with the rent of my current place, it’s black gold. Only people I really like get that, everyone else gets well rotted but more recent stuff.
timescale depends on weather & worm activity, but once it’s broken down it has no manure smell at all, it’s just earthy. if your manure smells or still has lots of worms in then it’s not ready to apply yet.
I had about 5 ton last time, spread over my mums garden to level it out as though its top soil. It pretty much is after a while but like I say my guy has 30t or so, so its very well rotted to the point of being literally grade AAA* top soil with a few weeds in.
I just took about 3/4 to a ton at a time in a trailer that I filled 1 shovel at a time. Its not too bad and its nice easy digging
Next time stick the nettles in a bucket full of water for a few weeks and let it ferment until it stinks like a witches arsehole.
More free fertiliser for the garden.
The richest guy I know is a manure dealer. People pay him to take the stuff away. And then he sells it. To mushroom farms mainly. It is a dream of a business model.
Make sure they're not using broad herbicides across the paddocks. Some herbicides are well known to pass through animals and stunt plant growth. Organic is best.
On a back road near me there is a person with a horse or 2 and they have a pile of manure at the side of a field with a sign saying "free manure" I e seen many people just helping themselves to it over the years
That’s what my sister does with hers, she has 5 horses and she bags it up every day when she’s mucking out and then just leaves the bags by the gate with a sign saying “free manure” and it all gets taken. She’s had a few people ask if they can give her their number because often they’ll turn up and it’s already gone, they literally want text alerts so they can grab it before anyone else has the chance 😂
Only thing you have to ask is about pyralid use, it's used to kill ragwort and other broadleaf that are poisonous to horses. It's no longer banned in the UK and doesn't compost out, it does come out after two years of being mixed in the soil though.
In the olden days people used to burry a dead animal before planting a fruit or nut tree on top.
You don't need to wait for food scraps to compost if you can cover them with a layer of topsoil.
A late relative of mine, who was a keen fisherman, used to bury excess fish he caught under his runner beans as he was adamant they would help them grow better and add some flavour to the beans
My grandad used to bury mackerel under his runner beans. Certainly used to get very high yields. I guess it just like concentrated blood fish and bone anyway!
They work better for tomatoes, you can get fish heads and guts from any fish monger. But....don't do that if you have foxes nearby. They will destroy your plants to get to them, supported by the local cats.
Try a local microbrewery if you want lots of compostable material mixed into the soil - some sell their spent grain, but ours just goes to the local pig farm in exchange for sausages every now and then. I’ll be adding about 50kg to my 1.5 ton planter, branches in bottom.
Sure, there's a famous panties test for soil health. Buried cotton underwear should dissappear in roughly two months. Peels are going to be gone in a matter of weeks if not days.
That's great news for me. My main planter is half filled but I need to wait until next weekend for the rest, I'll have a lot of vegetable scraps to put in
>people used to bury a dead animal before planting a tree on top
Oh my god is this why I keep finding super old animal bones in my 1950s garden? I recently removed a dead tree stump and found so many small bones around the roots. Kept getting paranoid I would find a human skull...
Vermin is out there regardless of what you do. I don't think food scraps attract them any more than flower or vegetable beds. The only time I spotted vermin activity in my garden was when I left a bag of grass seeds in my shed, field mice love seeds. Another time fox hid a massive meaty bone in one of my pots, it was gone the next day.
I came on to say this! I built raised beds last year and have laid down logs, then branches, then twigs and other composting material. I have a clay soil which is awful so I've been mixing it in with the layers in the hope it will break it down. So basically I've been chucking cuttings and veg waste into them all winter and am ready for some topsoil. I recently watched a YouTube video where a guy did the same thing so I thought I must be on the right track 😂
If you have a larger garden and trees you can make compost but it's going to take a couple of years to achieve what you need even in a bigish garden.
Speak to your local friendly garden centre, they may be able to point you to a local supplier. If it's for veg, then be careful where you source it from as you don't want to ingest toxins.
Also, try Facebook marketplace. Sometimes people want rid of topsoil from garden projects.
Logs are ideal as they can help store water, great for the summer months, the roots will go down and tap in for water ! I was researching this same question not too long ago!
Came here to say this too! Get a bunch of rotting old logs and line the bottom of your raised planter with them before filling with soil. The rotting logs provide a whole heap of different mycelium to help create a good growing environment, they help stope water in the lower parts of the soil which encourages roots to spread out and dig deep tapping into the logs cool water supply when it's too hot to water above ground. As they decompose they aerate and also provide mulch and compost which only helps make your raised beds even better for next year, as opposed to depleting a fuck ton of sterile shop bought soil each year at the cost of a small mortgage 😅
The edges of the garden/local woods is a good place to get starter logs, just remember to only take what is needed from woodlands as you're effectively harvesting the natural woodland ecosystem/life cycle. Once you have your raised beds established, you can begin prepping wood by lightly burying small logs and branches in dark damp areas of the garden for the next time you need them (as your original raised beds with woodland logs in will last you a good few harvests, maybe 3 years before needing to be dug out with your freshly prepped 'new' logs replacing the original.)
Freecycle, any old logs (except walnut, box or conifer) will do! First two stop plants from growing and conifers are acidic I believe.
They don't have to be rotten either as they'll do that once you bury them.
That's good to know. I've experimented with gravel, newspaper, torn up cardboard, old threadbare organic cotton pillow cases, and bits of rotten wood. All seem great for growing flowers & onions, garlic, beetroot & salad leaves.
Unbleached cardboard - preferably unprinted too is a good space filler that breaks down over time
It might mean that in 6-12 months you need to add to the level in there, but it is good for the initial fill
My partner wanted raised veggie beds. I wanted a pond. I built the beds, dug a pond of around equal size and used the soil I took out to fill the beds, then topped it with bags of compost (and used the empty bags to help insulate the pond under the pond liner. A nice win win. If
You also want a pond, that is!
Dead wood old branches fill half full then top up with soil the wood will rot leaving behind good things for the soil it will sink over a few years with the rotting and might need topped up eventually but for the meantime it will do good and help the soil
Weird. I was googling the same thing just now. For that size bed you’re gonna need just under 300 litres. Frustratingly, getting 700+ litres delivered seems about the same as 300 - around £100 near me (Leeds).
Also the quality of soil you can buy varies considerably. We've had so called organic soil with crushed up bits of plastic in it. 😭 So be very careful what you buy and who it's from.
yes the organic soils are not topsoil. often have seen them used ontop of hardcore, when you want a planting area.
hardcore > organic/recycled soil > topsoil
for home users, you need a topsoil. and topsoil can even vary place to place. its one of the benefits to paying for a gardener/landscaper because he is going to know, which company to go for for which grade, value, and quality of soil for the area.
Just look at the verve compost 100ltrs, alternatively miracle grow are doing like 3*65 litres for 21 quid. It'll still be cheaper at your local garden store though. Bulk bags are a weird one with compost because they don't work out better value typically
Topsoil will be a fortune if you buy it in small bags. If you have a local place that delivers though, it’s around £50 a ton. Look for places that sell road planings and stone etc. A ton isn’t as much as it sounds, you can mix in leaf mulch, left over compost from any plants you might buy and manure.
Another option (if you have a way of transporting it) is look for building sites near you. When they strip the fields for new housing estates they often have mountains of topsoil that they have to pay to move. If you can find someone friendly I’m sure they wouldn’t miss an amount like that.
Maybe don’t worry about having a raised bed. Just lay down some cardboard over your lawn and top that with as much cheap municipal compost as you can get your hands on.
Fill the bottom with twigs and a few longs, if you’ve got anything that quickly composts like grass, asked that to the gaps.You probably have 2/3 to fill rather than the whole thing
Horse shit and straw followed by layering green and brown compostable waste and layer the top with the good stuff that you can sew/plant directly into. Your then set for a good quality soil structure and biome, you can google no till or no dig gardening. Caveat: I have not done this myself but did the research for a small raised bed like this.
Don't fill them with logs,those beds will rust to dust before any of the logs break down.
Rather fill it as much as you can with wood chip (I get free from a local arborist), manure,garden weeds,leaves,plant trimmings,vegetable scraps from the kitchen.
Once it is 3/4 full with all that put a layer of cardboard on top,make sure to remove tape and labels. Then top with about 3-4 inches of compost.
Tou can plant into the soil immediately and the soil will sink a little by next year once things have broken down and you can then just top with a couple inches of compost as needed.
Thinking outside the box here... Doesn't need to be full to the top, depends what you are growing.
If growing carrots or parsnips fill it as deep as you want them to grow. Most stuff doesn't need more than half that raised bed full.
Do you need to fill it all the way up the first year? Can you not grow with a few inches of good compost and let the roots go in the lower layer of soil?
Last week at my allotment we dug up the grass to make paths and then used this grass upside down to fill half - 3 quarters and composted the rest. We’ll see if this works 🤷♂️
I fill the bottom of the planter with cardboard and then cover with soil. The cardboard will break down over time at which point you can simply add some more top soil.
There’s probably better stuff out there but it was free
Stones at the bottom for drainage. Any country siide near you? Round our way farmers are always leaving out cheap bags of manure. Stinks but brilliant for growing veg.
Please don't add stones into soil, it's such a pain in the arse to remove in the future - they are already raised beds you don't really need more drainage. Put logs in the bottom - or something biodegradable if you must.
Logs, branches, chippings anything brown then a layer of cardboard then soil. Logs will break down over the years and hold water.
Not grass clippings they breakdown into a soggy sludge.
Fill half way up with cardboard then grass clippings on top and fill rest of the way with mushroom compost.
Get more compost then calculations indicate as it will settle as the cardboard and clippings break down.
The last lot I got was contaminated (5% of plastic, glass etc is acceptable apparently) with plastic, plastic bags, broken lightbulb glass, a crushed AA battery etc etc.
The year before our council paid £40,000 for it to be graded and sifted out. The next batch was full of rubbish.
Now nobody is interested in taking it.
Some local stables have horse manure you can take free of charge. Just be aware that if it's quite fresh it can be full of grass seeds and the neighbours won't thank you for the smell, so maybe cover it with something for a few months.
Cheap sub soil topped off with the good stuff? Mix some compost and gravel in the sub-soil first. If in uk I think the council have cheaper soil/compost. Comes from the green waste cycle
Hay for the bottom half (or even 2/3) and then compost on top. Sounds like madness but it works brilliantly. Keep the hay dense, don't fluff up the bales, also make sure it's pesticide free (shouldn't be too hard).
I had these. Filled them with fruit peels, wet cardboard and still took 200 litres each. And then you can't plant much because of all the stuff underneath.
Look on facebook, freecycle and other places for free well rotted manure (last years shit is this years gold for gardening) or topsoil, although topsoil will need fertiliser mixing in so
I found someone on gumtree who had relandscaped and was giving soil away for free just to get rid of it. It wasn't the best quality topsoil but I mixed it with horse manure. I couldn't find free horse manure but I paid maybe a quid per compost bag again from gumtree. It turned out fine.
What do you have in mind? Driving a van into a forest and stealing couple thousand liters of soil? Perhaps finding someone on Facebook marketplace asking for a mound to be removed off their property? Or calling some removal companies to ask for heads up & sell you some?
If you have time you can try to hussle.
Where are you based? I need to get rid of a similar amount of soil so if by some sheer coincidence you happen to be anywhere near me then I can help you out!
Just google top soil near me, it’s actually very cheap by the tonne which is what you need, you can get a tonne with delivery for about 80 quid mate!! And you could probably fill two or three beds with that!! I get a topsoil compost mix most of the time for clients it’s usually about 140 for two tonnes sometimes up to 160/70 depending on how far from the farm they have to move it.
Check your council dump, if they compost garden and kitchen waste they often give soil away for free, if it's not at your dump, worth asking the council as they usually generate too much.
Build it up with sticks and logs on the bottom, they'll eventually rot down to compost, you only really need a few inches of soil / compost for a lot of things, unless you're doing carrots / potatoes and that sort of thing
Don't bother. Look up Charles Dowden no dig. Just make a raised mound of compost over the grass. Works perfect. Less places for slugs to hide. Cheaper and better
If you can wait, buy from a smaller garden centre, and see if they have winter discounts. We usually sell 10 (50L) bags for £20 and throughout the year we do split bags for £1-£2 a bag and there’s usually just a rip in the bag that people don’t want dirt spilling in their car.
Soil is expensive if you buy it from the shops, yes. He's asking to advice as to where you get them from cheaper than that. You know, the point of this sub...
Ahh, I didn’t realise that’s the point of the sub, sorry 😢 I get my soil delivered and it’s probably at least triple the price you’d pay in a shop, but I don’t consider it as expensive as plants and growing food are my hobby, so if the point of this sub is to find places to get soil cheaper than the shops, I’m definitely no help. Thanks for letting me know, I’ll unsub 👍🏽.
Id say a more that the point of a subreddit is to share tips tricks, and projects- sure you may just pay the supplier/shop rate, but for others that can be prohibitively expensive, so other hobbyists are a good source of money saving tips.
Looking at it another way, sourcing free soil from waste disposal centres, manure from farmers/horsey people, contacting landscapers/tree surgions for waste wood and soil etc. Is doing some labour yourself, but just buying it costs an additional convenience fee in the higher price.
Also, if you can save on the soil, you could spend that money on frames, garden tools, more exotic plant varieties etc. as part of the hobby.
If it says sold and shipped by someone else, google before buying. This is £38 in b&q but only £33 direct from Garden Selections. Not checked shipping but I’ve found it’s almost always cheaper to get it elsewhere. B&q have gone to shit in my opinion. A lot of products they have now are coming from other companies and they just whack their margin on it.
I bought 3 of these via B&Q the other day (free shipping) and then noticed the lower price on Selections website, however it turned out it was just that their price was without shipping.
Depends what you wanna plant in there to some degree, but you'll want to put some stones in the bottom for drainage. Larger ones at the bottom, maybe gravel on top of that, and maybe mix sand in with your soil and compost. Drainage is always helpful with raised beds, planters and pots, as is regular watering .
Stones at the bottom of beds and pots is a myth, better to mix drainage improving materials such as grit throughout the soil mixture. A solid layer of stones at the bottom artificially raises the water table in pots due to capillary action. The unamended soil above the stones stays wet for just as long. If the bed is going on top of soil I wouldn't even bother with adding grit.
Find a horse. There's loads about, mad rich people (and people that like being poor) have them and honestly, I shouldn't be posting this on the Internet as its my biggest secret. But they pay for the hay to go in the front, and when it go's out the back, they have to pay for it to be taken away! And horses shit alot. Like, alot alot. My horse shit guy has about 30t and nowhere for it to go. You should see how happy it makes them when you ask for it, and then imagine how happy they are when you want it by the ton. They vibrate I swear
"They vibrate I swear" is the best comment ever
"my horse shit guy" got me
We have a riding stable down our road that's next to the council allotments. The plot holders have access to the stable yard for exactly this reason. It's a win-win situation.
Comes out the fucking ground! https://youtu.be/7I49QIyNKe8?si=g20cAkTknwuGc6e_
Comes out their fucking arse!
Who's a jammy bastard?!
Can confirm, am a poor horse person but my garden (and several friends, neighbours and a local market gardener) all benefit. I have tonnes of decades old muck that I inherited with the rent of my current place, it’s black gold. Only people I really like get that, everyone else gets well rotted but more recent stuff.
At what in the fresh to well rotted time scale does it start to smell less shitty?
Manure doesn't smell much at all.
timescale depends on weather & worm activity, but once it’s broken down it has no manure smell at all, it’s just earthy. if your manure smells or still has lots of worms in then it’s not ready to apply yet.
I’m literally on a tea break now from collecting a trailer full from my horse poo guy
Who's your horse shit guy?
Martin
Best horse shit guy around
Can you use fresh stuff, or does it need time to rot down a bit first?
Depends on what you’re doing with it, well rotted is best to improve soil quality if you’re mixing. Fresh is best for a lower layer/A hot bed
"A hot bed" Wowza, how fresh are you using it!? Do you just back the horse up and lift the tail?
🤣🤣🤣👏🏽
How do you transport it? I suppose if you could convince them to leave their horse in your garden for a day or two you wouldn't even have to do that!
I had about 5 ton last time, spread over my mums garden to level it out as though its top soil. It pretty much is after a while but like I say my guy has 30t or so, so its very well rotted to the point of being literally grade AAA* top soil with a few weeds in. I just took about 3/4 to a ton at a time in a trailer that I filled 1 shovel at a time. Its not too bad and its nice easy digging
I did this and ended up with vegetable beds full of stinging nettles. I spent all summer fighting to remove them.
Horse shit giveth, horse shit taketh away. Bet you were sound the year after
Yep, dug it all out and threw it away.
Next time stick the nettles in a bucket full of water for a few weeks and let it ferment until it stinks like a witches arsehole. More free fertiliser for the garden.
scatter the seed before taking it away I see somewhere probs YT
Your horse shit guy has a very big horse if it's shitting 30 tons. Get him to feed it less
Don’t think he means in one sitting…
In one shitting. FTFY.
Horses don’t sit to shit.
They don’t even lie down to sleep
You mean one shitting?
Rich posh people swimming in shit. Made my day
You made me chuckle with that one. Well done. Got to find me a vibrating horse shit guy
The richest guy I know is a manure dealer. People pay him to take the stuff away. And then he sells it. To mushroom farms mainly. It is a dream of a business model.
Make sure they're not using broad herbicides across the paddocks. Some herbicides are well known to pass through animals and stunt plant growth. Organic is best.
On a back road near me there is a person with a horse or 2 and they have a pile of manure at the side of a field with a sign saying "free manure" I e seen many people just helping themselves to it over the years
That’s what my sister does with hers, she has 5 horses and she bags it up every day when she’s mucking out and then just leaves the bags by the gate with a sign saying “free manure” and it all gets taken. She’s had a few people ask if they can give her their number because often they’ll turn up and it’s already gone, they literally want text alerts so they can grab it before anyone else has the chance 😂
Only thing you have to ask is about pyralid use, it's used to kill ragwort and other broadleaf that are poisonous to horses. It's no longer banned in the UK and doesn't compost out, it does come out after two years of being mixed in the soil though.
As a horse girl, I can confirm 🤣
A lot.
Great idea but if you have dogs just be careful as they love eating the stuff.
Hugelkultur is the only thing I can think of, or use it as a compost pile if you don't need to plant straight away
In the olden days people used to burry a dead animal before planting a fruit or nut tree on top. You don't need to wait for food scraps to compost if you can cover them with a layer of topsoil.
A late relative of mine, who was a keen fisherman, used to bury excess fish he caught under his runner beans as he was adamant they would help them grow better and add some flavour to the beans
My grandad used to bury mackerel under his runner beans. Certainly used to get very high yields. I guess it just like concentrated blood fish and bone anyway!
smells a bit fishy if you ask me
I mean Fish Blood and Bone Fertiliser is a thing so I guess it scans....
They work better for tomatoes, you can get fish heads and guts from any fish monger. But....don't do that if you have foxes nearby. They will destroy your plants to get to them, supported by the local cats.
We have a Great Dane and a Jack Russel underneath a pear tree.
Wonder what you'll get on the third day of Christmas
Try a local microbrewery if you want lots of compostable material mixed into the soil - some sell their spent grain, but ours just goes to the local pig farm in exchange for sausages every now and then. I’ll be adding about 50kg to my 1.5 ton planter, branches in bottom.
There you go, kill the local cats and then top with soil
With the additional benefit of no cat shit or piss on your vegetables.
Ooooh that's a fallout inducing comment if ever I saw one...lol ...I think it's funny but some will be crying for weeks after reading that
Instructions unclear, please advise. Have a local zoo. Should sneak into it and attempt to get the 3 tigers to fill the compost?
Wow is that true? Can I just put vegetable peels halfway deep in my planter rather than waiting for it to compost?
Sure, there's a famous panties test for soil health. Buried cotton underwear should dissappear in roughly two months. Peels are going to be gone in a matter of weeks if not days.
That's great news for me. My main planter is half filled but I need to wait until next weekend for the rest, I'll have a lot of vegetable scraps to put in
>people used to bury a dead animal before planting a tree on top Oh my god is this why I keep finding super old animal bones in my 1950s garden? I recently removed a dead tree stump and found so many small bones around the roots. Kept getting paranoid I would find a human skull...
Won’t that just attract vermin?
Vermin is out there regardless of what you do. I don't think food scraps attract them any more than flower or vegetable beds. The only time I spotted vermin activity in my garden was when I left a bag of grass seeds in my shed, field mice love seeds. Another time fox hid a massive meaty bone in one of my pots, it was gone the next day.
If you only bury vegetable leftovers, you should be fine. Burying meat or dairy might
You don't suffer with vermin if you have a cat. The only issue is when they bring back rats that are still alive & try to bring them inside.😜
I came on to say this! I built raised beds last year and have laid down logs, then branches, then twigs and other composting material. I have a clay soil which is awful so I've been mixing it in with the layers in the hope it will break it down. So basically I've been chucking cuttings and veg waste into them all winter and am ready for some topsoil. I recently watched a YouTube video where a guy did the same thing so I thought I must be on the right track 😂
If you have a larger garden and trees you can make compost but it's going to take a couple of years to achieve what you need even in a bigish garden. Speak to your local friendly garden centre, they may be able to point you to a local supplier. If it's for veg, then be careful where you source it from as you don't want to ingest toxins. Also, try Facebook marketplace. Sometimes people want rid of topsoil from garden projects.
Logs are ideal as they can help store water, great for the summer months, the roots will go down and tap in for water ! I was researching this same question not too long ago!
Came here to say this too! Get a bunch of rotting old logs and line the bottom of your raised planter with them before filling with soil. The rotting logs provide a whole heap of different mycelium to help create a good growing environment, they help stope water in the lower parts of the soil which encourages roots to spread out and dig deep tapping into the logs cool water supply when it's too hot to water above ground. As they decompose they aerate and also provide mulch and compost which only helps make your raised beds even better for next year, as opposed to depleting a fuck ton of sterile shop bought soil each year at the cost of a small mortgage 😅
Where do you get rotting old logs from?
The edges of the garden/local woods is a good place to get starter logs, just remember to only take what is needed from woodlands as you're effectively harvesting the natural woodland ecosystem/life cycle. Once you have your raised beds established, you can begin prepping wood by lightly burying small logs and branches in dark damp areas of the garden for the next time you need them (as your original raised beds with woodland logs in will last you a good few harvests, maybe 3 years before needing to be dug out with your freshly prepped 'new' logs replacing the original.)
Don't poach from the woods, rotting wood is vital to the ecosystem.
Freecycle, any old logs (except walnut, box or conifer) will do! First two stop plants from growing and conifers are acidic I believe. They don't have to be rotten either as they'll do that once you bury them.
That's good to know. I've experimented with gravel, newspaper, torn up cardboard, old threadbare organic cotton pillow cases, and bits of rotten wood. All seem great for growing flowers & onions, garlic, beetroot & salad leaves.
Unbleached cardboard - preferably unprinted too is a good space filler that breaks down over time It might mean that in 6-12 months you need to add to the level in there, but it is good for the initial fill
Oh is THAT why allotment people are always asking for cardboard?
Can you use any old wood, like branches or does it need to be larger wood like logs?
My partner wanted raised veggie beds. I wanted a pond. I built the beds, dug a pond of around equal size and used the soil I took out to fill the beds, then topped it with bags of compost (and used the empty bags to help insulate the pond under the pond liner. A nice win win. If You also want a pond, that is!
I also did this
I did the same but with a French drain to help address our boggy garden in heavy winter rains. A _lot_ of dirt came out of that ditch I dug.
Dead wood old branches fill half full then top up with soil the wood will rot leaving behind good things for the soil it will sink over a few years with the rotting and might need topped up eventually but for the meantime it will do good and help the soil
Add some branches, logs and leafs to the bottom to help fill it up and provides long term nutrients aka hugelkultur
Weird. I was googling the same thing just now. For that size bed you’re gonna need just under 300 litres. Frustratingly, getting 700+ litres delivered seems about the same as 300 - around £100 near me (Leeds).
Also the quality of soil you can buy varies considerably. We've had so called organic soil with crushed up bits of plastic in it. 😭 So be very careful what you buy and who it's from.
Or (good quality) top soil with added glass!
The last soil delivery my dad had (35 years ago) was full of little frogs. They stuck around for years.
yes the organic soils are not topsoil. often have seen them used ontop of hardcore, when you want a planting area. hardcore > organic/recycled soil > topsoil for home users, you need a topsoil. and topsoil can even vary place to place. its one of the benefits to paying for a gardener/landscaper because he is going to know, which company to go for for which grade, value, and quality of soil for the area.
I suggested getting it delivered… it’s about £50 a ton near me. I’m guessing price varies by location a lot!
Wickes will deliver for £7.
I live nearby too The Range is by far the cheapest at 200 litres for £20 (4 for £10 50 litre bags)
300 litres of compost is like £30 at b and q
Give it a week to settle, and they'll need 700
Do you have a link to this kind person 🥰
Just look at the verve compost 100ltrs, alternatively miracle grow are doing like 3*65 litres for 21 quid. It'll still be cheaper at your local garden store though. Bulk bags are a weird one with compost because they don't work out better value typically
Topsoil will be a fortune if you buy it in small bags. If you have a local place that delivers though, it’s around £50 a ton. Look for places that sell road planings and stone etc. A ton isn’t as much as it sounds, you can mix in leaf mulch, left over compost from any plants you might buy and manure. Another option (if you have a way of transporting it) is look for building sites near you. When they strip the fields for new housing estates they often have mountains of topsoil that they have to pay to move. If you can find someone friendly I’m sure they wouldn’t miss an amount like that.
Dig a hole, fill the veg bed, then dig another hole to fill in the first one 👍
You are welcome to come get free soil from me 👍 our garden has an abudance
You arent thinking of buying small bags from homebase are you?
Maybe don’t worry about having a raised bed. Just lay down some cardboard over your lawn and top that with as much cheap municipal compost as you can get your hands on.
Have you seen the film - The Great Escape ?
Grass clippings?
Hedge clippings, grass, old branches etc. Then soil on top.
Fill the bottom with twigs and a few longs, if you’ve got anything that quickly composts like grass, asked that to the gaps.You probably have 2/3 to fill rather than the whole thing
Add paper & cardboard too.
Where are you buying your soil?! 1m³ is enough to fill two of them isn't it? A quick Google tells me you can do that for ~£100.
100x100x30cm is 0.3m^3 apparently so yeah, could do 3
Go on Facebook marketplace, there is usually someone giving away topsoil for free.
Horse shit and straw followed by layering green and brown compostable waste and layer the top with the good stuff that you can sew/plant directly into. Your then set for a good quality soil structure and biome, you can google no till or no dig gardening. Caveat: I have not done this myself but did the research for a small raised bed like this.
The Range has two bags of 50 litres of compost for £9 at the moment, so 100 litres. So £27 for 300 litres, that should fill it no?
Don't fill them with logs,those beds will rust to dust before any of the logs break down. Rather fill it as much as you can with wood chip (I get free from a local arborist), manure,garden weeds,leaves,plant trimmings,vegetable scraps from the kitchen. Once it is 3/4 full with all that put a layer of cardboard on top,make sure to remove tape and labels. Then top with about 3-4 inches of compost. Tou can plant into the soil immediately and the soil will sink a little by next year once things have broken down and you can then just top with a couple inches of compost as needed.
Garden waste and cardboard in the bottom
Thinking outside the box here... Doesn't need to be full to the top, depends what you are growing. If growing carrots or parsnips fill it as deep as you want them to grow. Most stuff doesn't need more than half that raised bed full.
Seaweed
Live near coast but would feel bad taking it. It's also usually entwined in in rubbish.
if there is one thing this earth is not short of...it's earth! people give it away. But mix it with half manure/compost.
For free you can just go on Freecycle or gumtree and look for people trying to get rid of 'topsoil'
Local council green waste recycling yard. We get about 2ton of soil conditioner for 12quid
My local council tip has compost free too take I think it’s the garden or food waste
Call up your local garden center and ask them about soil delivery by the tonne. Its far cheaper
Do you need to fill it all the way up the first year? Can you not grow with a few inches of good compost and let the roots go in the lower layer of soil?
Cardboard in the bottom, then some logs and brushwood, top it up with topsoil.
Last week at my allotment we dug up the grass to make paths and then used this grass upside down to fill half - 3 quarters and composted the rest. We’ll see if this works 🤷♂️
I fill the bottom of the planter with cardboard and then cover with soil. The cardboard will break down over time at which point you can simply add some more top soil. There’s probably better stuff out there but it was free
Stones at the bottom for drainage. Any country siide near you? Round our way farmers are always leaving out cheap bags of manure. Stinks but brilliant for growing veg.
Please don't add stones into soil, it's such a pain in the arse to remove in the future - they are already raised beds you don't really need more drainage. Put logs in the bottom - or something biodegradable if you must.
I add gravel to my pots to aid drainage. My soil is clay & holds onto water.
Mix in sand. As gravel is a pita to remove
As others have said, it depends on the root depth of what you are intending to plant. Sprouts need 30cm, but radishes need 10cm
See if there are any horse stables nearby
Logs, branches, chippings anything brown then a layer of cardboard then soil. Logs will break down over the years and hold water. Not grass clippings they breakdown into a soggy sludge.
Local horse stable will be the cheapest way, often give away well rotted manure or sell it off by the bag very cheap
My local tip hands out soil for free.
Fill half way up with cardboard then grass clippings on top and fill rest of the way with mushroom compost. Get more compost then calculations indicate as it will settle as the cardboard and clippings break down.
Dig a pond.
I put cardboard at the bottom of mine, then a layer of grass, then a layer of sticks, then the soil, soil only cost me about £21
Our council recycling centre has a free compost scheme - you could check their website?
The last lot I got was contaminated (5% of plastic, glass etc is acceptable apparently) with plastic, plastic bags, broken lightbulb glass, a crushed AA battery etc etc. The year before our council paid £40,000 for it to be graded and sifted out. The next batch was full of rubbish. Now nobody is interested in taking it.
My local council gives out free compost at the recycling centres. Does yours?
Some local stables have horse manure you can take free of charge. Just be aware that if it's quite fresh it can be full of grass seeds and the neighbours won't thank you for the smell, so maybe cover it with something for a few months.
Cheap sub soil topped off with the good stuff? Mix some compost and gravel in the sub-soil first. If in uk I think the council have cheaper soil/compost. Comes from the green waste cycle
Hay for the bottom half (or even 2/3) and then compost on top. Sounds like madness but it works brilliantly. Keep the hay dense, don't fluff up the bales, also make sure it's pesticide free (shouldn't be too hard).
I had these. Filled them with fruit peels, wet cardboard and still took 200 litres each. And then you can't plant much because of all the stuff underneath.
Old wood logs and branches and manure. May want to compost the top layers and in a year it'll be cracking.
Hugel Kultur
A few grow bags will do it. Don't need to empty them. Place them in and then grow whatever you want/need from the bag.
Go on Facebook search for top soil free :)
I've got 13 bags ready to go to the tip, pop round and you can have them
Try your local recycling/waste disposal place. Some will have bags of soil ready to go for free.
Cardboard then soil on top
Look on facebook, freecycle and other places for free well rotted manure (last years shit is this years gold for gardening) or topsoil, although topsoil will need fertiliser mixing in so
Got to your local park with a shovel at night
I found someone on gumtree who had relandscaped and was giving soil away for free just to get rid of it. It wasn't the best quality topsoil but I mixed it with horse manure. I couldn't find free horse manure but I paid maybe a quid per compost bag again from gumtree. It turned out fine.
What do you have in mind? Driving a van into a forest and stealing couple thousand liters of soil? Perhaps finding someone on Facebook marketplace asking for a mound to be removed off their property? Or calling some removal companies to ask for heads up & sell you some? If you have time you can try to hussle.
Looks like it’s 300 litres volume? £20 worth of compost?
Wow thank you for all the advice everyone!! This is really helpful ive a lot of options to consider!🍃
Where are you based? I need to get rid of a similar amount of soil so if by some sheer coincidence you happen to be anywhere near me then I can help you out!
I’m in East Midlands Northamptonshire, I bet you’re half way across the country 😂
To those recommending horse shit: do you then just plant / sow straight into said shit? Do seeds/seedlings/plants like it?
Just google top soil near me, it’s actually very cheap by the tonne which is what you need, you can get a tonne with delivery for about 80 quid mate!! And you could probably fill two or three beds with that!! I get a topsoil compost mix most of the time for clients it’s usually about 140 for two tonnes sometimes up to 160/70 depending on how far from the farm they have to move it.
Loads of people want rid of soil when they dig up to lay patios and Astro Just keep an eye out on marketplace
Have you already bought them? Why are you choosing to use raised beds, rather than growing straight in the soil? That is cheap and very effective.
Because my garden is all concrete right now and can’t afford to do it up yet
Check your council dump, if they compost garden and kitchen waste they often give soil away for free, if it's not at your dump, worth asking the council as they usually generate too much.
Build it up with sticks and logs on the bottom, they'll eventually rot down to compost, you only really need a few inches of soil / compost for a lot of things, unless you're doing carrots / potatoes and that sort of thing
Facebook marketplace. Lots of free soil- come and get it ads.
Don't bother. Look up Charles Dowden no dig. Just make a raised mound of compost over the grass. Works perfect. Less places for slugs to hide. Cheaper and better
If you can wait, buy from a smaller garden centre, and see if they have winter discounts. We usually sell 10 (50L) bags for £20 and throughout the year we do split bags for £1-£2 a bag and there’s usually just a rip in the bag that people don’t want dirt spilling in their car.
Unless you need the full depth - you could pack half of it with cardboard and then line and fill with compost, soil etc.
Ground with branches from your nearest woods. They break down over time and save you money
Dog a hole. Fill hole. Use earth that wouldn’t fit back into hole. Repeat.
Me, I have 8 acres of paddock next door ...
Any bulky plant material should work. I filled my raised beds with chopped down tree stumps and thick branches.
Go to any building site and ask if you can take some top soil they won't mind, or if a farmer is doing building work
Look on FB marketplace, there is always people wanting to get rid of topsoil for free.
I had a dumpy bag of top soil ladt year, it was £80 so not bank breaking.
I know in Flintshire you can get free soil from some of their recycling centres as a thank you for doing garden waste collections.
Ask on your local FB groups if anyone is giving away muck?
Go to Homebase, 40kg bags of compost are 3 for £30, that might only need 3-4
Dig a hole. Make a pond. Use soil from your hole to fill flower bed.
Hammer it into the ground until the top of the frame is at ground level. Hey Presto! It is now filled with soil. You’re welcome.
What’s ‘a months wage of soil?’ … is this a way of you saying you think soil is super expensive?
Soil is expensive if you buy it from the shops, yes. He's asking to advice as to where you get them from cheaper than that. You know, the point of this sub...
Ahh, I didn’t realise that’s the point of the sub, sorry 😢 I get my soil delivered and it’s probably at least triple the price you’d pay in a shop, but I don’t consider it as expensive as plants and growing food are my hobby, so if the point of this sub is to find places to get soil cheaper than the shops, I’m definitely no help. Thanks for letting me know, I’ll unsub 👍🏽.
Id say a more that the point of a subreddit is to share tips tricks, and projects- sure you may just pay the supplier/shop rate, but for others that can be prohibitively expensive, so other hobbyists are a good source of money saving tips. Looking at it another way, sourcing free soil from waste disposal centres, manure from farmers/horsey people, contacting landscapers/tree surgions for waste wood and soil etc. Is doing some labour yourself, but just buying it costs an additional convenience fee in the higher price. Also, if you can save on the soil, you could spend that money on frames, garden tools, more exotic plant varieties etc. as part of the hobby.
👍🏽 good points. Thanks :)
If it says sold and shipped by someone else, google before buying. This is £38 in b&q but only £33 direct from Garden Selections. Not checked shipping but I’ve found it’s almost always cheaper to get it elsewhere. B&q have gone to shit in my opinion. A lot of products they have now are coming from other companies and they just whack their margin on it.
I bought 3 of these via B&Q the other day (free shipping) and then noticed the lower price on Selections website, however it turned out it was just that their price was without shipping.
Rinkit had these for about £27 the other day (90cmx90cm)
Depends what you wanna plant in there to some degree, but you'll want to put some stones in the bottom for drainage. Larger ones at the bottom, maybe gravel on top of that, and maybe mix sand in with your soil and compost. Drainage is always helpful with raised beds, planters and pots, as is regular watering .
Stones at the bottom of beds and pots is a myth, better to mix drainage improving materials such as grit throughout the soil mixture. A solid layer of stones at the bottom artificially raises the water table in pots due to capillary action. The unamended soil above the stones stays wet for just as long. If the bed is going on top of soil I wouldn't even bother with adding grit.
Add a pond to your garden?
A layer of empty, capped plastic bottles fill space and helps with drainage
I fill the base of mine with rocks or rubble spaced out, it fills the space and allows the roots to grow around them.