Raised Bed Soil – Using Compost in a Raised Bed Garden

When looking at the soil for a raised bed garden, you need to keep in mind that you want the soil to work well for many years. One way to improve the soil is to add compost. Here’s some tips on adding soil amendments like compost to complete the work for a raised bed kit.

Compost – Great Addition For Raised Bed Gardens
By Darrell Feltmate

Compost is the great addition for all those organic gardeners who have moved to raised beds instead of the traditional row garden. Raised beds allow for a greater concentration of plants per square foot which in turn allows for a greater harvest whether of blossoms or vegetables. However this places a greater demand on the soil to be a healthy growing environment and a great source of nutrition. Compost rises to the challenge.

Healthy soil is a must for raised beds. Closely planted flowers and vegetables compete for every square inch of space. Many of our plants are started in ideal environments contained in rich potting soils in individual pots under cold frames or indoor lights. A move to less than ideal quarters can be a shock to the whole root system and thus the plant.

Raised beds are dug and constructed so as to have a loose soil that is kept from compaction by not waking on it. However, sandy soils drain too quickly and retain too little nutrient value while clay soils hold too much water in pools on the surface and compact under their own weight. Compost allows sandy soils to retain moisture and supplies an ample amount of nutrient matter. It will also break up clay soils so as to allow the water to drain but still have adequate amounts remain available to the roots. Compaction is prevented as the compost draws the clay to itself to make a more finely tilled soil.

Compost may be added to the raised bed garden in a variety of ways but two main ones are generally used. The first is to dig the compost into the bed when it is being made or renewed for the season. A determined organic gardener has been known to mark off the new bed and remove the sod for a new compost pile. Then a shovel width of soil is removed to the far end of the bed. The resulting trench is broken up a shovel’s depth and the top soil from the next bit of bed placed on it and broken up. This is continued the length of the bed until the first bit left at the far end is used to top the last trench. Finally a three inch depth of compost is added to the bed and dug into the top layer. One calls this double digging and leaves a bed about twelve inches deep with a top layer rich with compost.

As the growing season begins, a raised bed attracts the sun’s warmth in the spring, giving plants an early start. However, even with a living mulch of closely growing plants, it may be too warm for some plants in the midst of summer’s heat. A layer of compost added to the top of the bed in a depth of two to three inches will cool some of the soil. It also adds nutrition to a bed that has has great demands on it from the closely growing plants. At the end of the season or the beginning of the next, it is either easily dug in to the loose soil of the bed or left on top as the growing medium.

Darrell Feltmate is an avid gardener who has been composting and gardening for over 25 years with gardens up to 1/2 acre and compost piles for each. His composting site may be found at Compost Central. You can be a master composter in no time at all.

Much of his compost uses wood shavings from his wood turning hobby. The site for wood turning may be found at Around the Woods.

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