Best FILLER For Raised Garden Beds. 5 Month Experiment! 🧬

Here are the best fillers for raised garden beds to help you same money. This video we compare wood, compost and cardboard filled garden beds to see which garden bed filler preformed the best.

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📝 S T A Y I N T O U C H

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👩🏻‍🦰 A B O U T M E:
Ashley has had a passion for plants since she was a small child. In the long summers as a child, she would garden alongside her grandmother and it was then that she realized her love for greenery. With years of great studying, Ashley had begun her post-secondary education at the University of Saskatchewan.
At first, her second love, animals, was the career path she chose but while doing her undergrad she realized that her education would take her elsewhere. And with that, four years later she graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a bachelor’s degree in science and a major in Soil Science.
Some of Ashley’s interests are YouTube, in which she posts informative videos about plants and gardening. The focus of Ashley’s YouTube channel is to bring science to gardening in a way that is informative but also helpful to others learning to garden. She also talks about the importance of having your own garden and the joys of gardening indoors. Ashley continues to study plants in her free time and hopes to expand her YouTube channel as well as her reach to up-and-coming gardeners.
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[ienekevanhouten]

Thanks for doing real experiments! I would love to garden in real soil, in ground, but those days are gone. I love the waist high beds that allow me to keep gardening at age 81 with a wonky hip.

[KatrinaM]

I put branches that fell down in our spring wind storms and bunny litter in soft wood pellets as our base. Compost on top. Tomatoes are beautiful despite the big hail storm in early summer.

[anthonynakane]

I ran a test growing lawn seed under a grow light in two small boxes (at the same time)... one with 100% fertilized soil vs the other wirh 100% mushroom compost, both purchased from a big box store. After 10 days, there was good germination in the fertilized soil, as expected. It was over a month before there was any germination in the 100% mushroom compost. So, I use mushroom compost sparingly now, more like a soil amendment, and not a growing medium. Your comments on the variables impacting compost makes perfect sense.

[angelpate]

Interesting! I got a raised bed this year and I put cardboard in the bottom, then rotten wood from the woods, then compost and other duff from the woods, (I live in the woods) then native soil, then mulch also from the woods. I might be a cheapskate. The leeks I planted in it are super happy and can't wait to see how it performs next year. Thinking of growing hot peppers next spring.

[darcypotterpotter]

My home built raised beds 42” tall are all done Hugleculture style I used old punky logs cut to 36” and then split to quarters and I interlocked it and used Not mature compost and Rabbit bedding ontop of the wood and I went 24” the top is ProMix /wormcastings, compost, rice hulls some vermiculite and some perlite the beds have been in use 3 years now and have improved every year, I also watered the beds as filling them all the way up so I had saturation of the soil compost peat moss mix the wood is now holding more water like a spunge

[janw]

I mixed some limited chicken poo ‘infused’ compost on my beds last winter and then covered them with black ground cover. I opened the beds up just before planting. It’s been a great growing season this year.

[JohnJude-dped]

Limited experience but I filled half full of small twigs and rotting wood (prefer) toppings 50 /50 garden and winter mulch.I prefer this as a fall prepping bed.. Believe I'll put cover crop radishes in this week and hopefully improve the bed
Thanks

[mglouise]

I have a raspberry raised bed built out of old rotting railroad ties and i filled it with mulch that had been sitting and composting for 6+ month. I think i used like 2-3 bags of soil but thats it. Honestly i probably did need the soil at all lol. The raspberries took off like crazy

[JWDicus]

Thank you for saying that if you have nitrogen lockout due to wood in the mix it is easily worked around by just adding a little more nitrogen. I hear a lot of gardeners in YT videos say a lot of things like they are being very careful not to mix any wood chip mulch into the soil at all for fears of nitrogen lockout. Some will be raking a thin layer of less than an inch of wood chip mulch aside carefully getting every chunk aside. C'mon. I mean really, it's not a big deal. We get free wood chip at my local refuse transfer station by the truckload here in town for free, and it makes up our largest compost pile input by far. We layer it with garden greens and kitchen waste as we build the piles, but they are mostly wood chip, and some of the chunks are very large, like 2 inches thick or more. After a year in the pile, the outside layer of the big chunks is soft, but still have lots of solid wood in the middle... it all goes straight into our 30-inch tall raised beds and we plant into it immediately. After a year in the pile the compost has cooled down. After 2 to 3 years of growing veggies in the high wood chip content in the beds, when we dig into them to plant a large transplant we find that the big chunks have broken down to a nice fine mix. All we do is watch the plants in our garden for yellowing leaves, and if any plants start to look like they are lacking in nitrogen (doesn't always happen, but does on occasion) then if it does happen, we just add some fish emulsion and the plants green right up. Nitrogen lockout really isn't nearly as big a deal as most YT gardeners would have you believe. And I appreciate your straight talk about it.

[marilynturcotte]

Well, this video is very timely for me!! I just got three new garden beds, two (8ft x4 ft x2 ft) and one (6 ft x3 ft x2 ft, ) so it's wood and shredded cardboard into those beds. I am using soil that came out of my pallet beds. The pallet ones had to go since the rats and wasps were squatters!!

[andydroid]

Get a piece of rebar or something and drive it down through the cardboard to allow drainage.

[carolstuff]

Love the fullness of your garden Ashley!

[GameTimeWhy]

My woodchip garden mounds are doing really well. Wood is almost all broken down after one year. Just made sure to water them well until mushrooms started growing through the soil on top

[grabowskycountry]

We’re in Southern Alberta, have been doing wood & soil in our large mineral tubs for 3 years and this year has been an over abundance of the most perfect tomatoes. Did fertilize with a miracle-gro granular tomato blend once but will not do it again, saw a difference in affect. I don’t understand granular enough I guess so will be going back to their liquid which I have personal confidence in. Thank you for this comparison. Cheers

[darcypotterpotter]

I have been Solarizing the beds in the spring and I add 1/2” to 3/4” of compost

[miriambartley]

I love that Uproar Zinnia. My zinnias of that colour won 1st prize at the Kinmount Fair, 😢.

[felix]

Interested in thoughts on making a blend of shredded cardboard, soil, and compost with possibly a layer of wood at the bottom? Seems to me this would reduce stratification of "problem" layers where there would be nitrogen lock-up or excessive water retention. What percentage of each would use?

[janicepottie]

VERY interesting experiment! Thanks from Cape Breton!

[roywarriner]

If you put a short piece of pvc drainpipe through the cardboard so the soil above could drain, that would prevent waterlogged soil. I would think the cardboard would absorb water as well and be a solid block of ice in the spring that might take all summer to thaw.

[bausgrows]

Such a great video, really cool experiment to run and appreciate you doing it for the GiCs 😀Loved the shot of filling the bed with heavy machinery!