How to Fill a DEEP Raised Bed CHEAP and EASY, Backyard Gardening

what's going on growers it's James Prigioni coming  to you live from jersey today i want to share with   you how to cheaply fill a deep raised bed that  will grow a lot of food and save you money let's right here is the bed that we're going to be  working on today we're going to be filling up   and this bed i built last fall and i built it in  a terraced fashion as you can see for a couple   of reasons the first reason is because that is  the south that way so my lower shorter plants   are going to be right here some of my lettuces  and my leafy greens and then up here is going to   be some other plants but i don't want those leafy  greens and that other stuff to shade the plants on   the north side so that's why we have this terrace  another reason that i did the terrace was because   underneath this bed is actually a concrete slab so  as i move some of these wood chips aside and stuff   you'll notice that this is a concrete slab right  here so in this shorter section we only have about   10 inches because that's the depth of this uh bed  right here to grow some of our stuff into so we   can grow some shallow rooted plants like lettuces  and leafy greens some asian greens stuff like that   and then in this higher section it's going to be  much deeper where we can grow our deeper rooted   plants what we're not going to be doing is filling  up this section at the bottom with good soil   like i did in the front here the reason i'm not  going to be doing that is because the plants   i'm going to be putting in the ground back here  they're only going to need about say 12 inches   to about 18 inches of good soil so i don't want  to waste good soil at the bottom here if it's not   completely necessary for what we're planting  let's move over to this raised bed right here   and i put this in a couple years ago this  raised bed i built it out of two by tens   so when i put it in i made my own soil and i put  in about 10 inches of good soil because that's the   depth of this bed as you come in you'll notice a  lot of these plants in here are growing real well   nebraska's they're excelling and underneath  this we just have native soil so the plants   have about a foot to grow and then if they want  they could root into that native soil a little   bit and even though that native soil isn't super  high quality soil like the stuff i built that top   it still works well that's what we want to do  in that deep raised bed we want to create the   same scenario where we have about 12 inches to a  foot and a half of good soil then underneath that   we have some organic matter that the roots can go  into and root into if they want to but it doesn't   cost us anything one thing we need to take into  account is that this bed that we're filling up   it's on a concrete slab like i mentioned earlier  so when it rains we don't want this thing to just   fill up like a bucket wood and just hold all that  excess water and allow it to sit there we want   to make sure it drains that's why i raise the bed  up a bit so we have some area where the water can   drain out because this concrete slab is so not  level so it leaves sections where it can drain   i want to make sure that it's not too high and  that i'm not draining all the soil out so when   i water the garden i don't want the soil to be  pushing out the bottom so to prevent this i put   some quarter inch hardware cloth in you can see  right here there's a hole and then i covered that   with landscape fabric that's just to make like  a natural basin that can hold some of the soil   but it will still drain the water now i'm going to  start filling up my bed with some organic matter   that'll fill the space up and to do that i'm  going to use some old rotting logs and sticks   and the logs and stick work great for this  especially when they're rotting like this one is   and they work great because what we're going  to do is just like i said fill this space up   but the logs over time they'll start to break down  and become porous so they'll be able to hold and   retain some moisture but they can also release the  moisture when they need to too so it works great   to make it so we don't have any anaerobic bacteria  or any anaerobic conditions going on down there   because that's the last thing that we  want and what we're trying to prevent   anaerobic which means without oxygen so our roots  need oxygen to grow so we want to make sure that   there's a good amount of oxygen down here so  putting these logs in and stuff will create   a scenario where we can get help with drainage  and also help with some water retention so we're   going to start putting these logs in at the base  down here i don't want them coming up too high   but as you notice they're only about three or  four inches up here so this will be i'll just   line the base like this not too tight with the  logs and then we'll start moving some sticks   above that most big logs are in that looks pretty  good let's start getting some of these sticks in and these small sticks are gonna help for some  of the some of the drainage actually so we'll put   this in so that it doesn't get too dense at the  bottom because if we were to just pack the bottom   with some native soil or something that could  get really dense and then that really wouldn't   be able to to get rid of some of the moisture and  drain it and then we'll be back in the scenario   where it's anaerobic that's really what we're  trying to avoid in the avoid in these deep beds   because when you don't have oxygen it'll just  slowly rot out all your roots and everything   let's keep getting these sticks in and remember  we want about 12 inches of at least of good soil   and we need a buffer of about six inches at  least of that uh native soil and compost okay   that looks pretty good as you come down here  notice we got a good amount of sticks in here   and that's just a lot of space we already saved so  this is all space we're saving we're not having to   pay for good soil in here so this is definitely  going to help us save a good amount of money   and we're still going to grow excellent food  in here what we don't want to do next though   is just put our good soil on top we need that  buffer of some natural organic material we're   going to get some compost and some native soil  and some stuff from the chicken pan now we're   going to move into the chicken pan and grab some  of this organic matter some old compost and stuff   i had a compost pile going but i kind of let  the chickens get at it and they ripped it apart   so this is going to be some good organic matter  to use we don't want to be using a lot of green   materials when we do this because we don't  want to build a compost pile underneath our   raised bed so you could put some greens and stuff  but i suggest you focus more on brown materials   and you could use some leaves if you want but just  uh make sure you're not using too many leaves that   they mat up they mat things up too much and  then prevent the water from moving through so all this is just like extra but we're going  to use this to fill the space it's going to be   beautiful it's got all the organic matter let's  start loading it into the bed now and you could   use native soil for this if you want but i'm  just going to use this extra stuff that i have so what we're doing here is we're filling up a lot  of that space we don't want a lot of huge air gaps yes the roots do need oxygen to grow but we  don't want a lot of air gaps because then our   soil is going to sink down and as i'm filling  this up i want to get in there and kind of   you know push down some of the some of the  soil and compost because like i mentioned   i don't want that sinkage that will happen if  there's a lot of air space this thing can signal   just a decent amount it's going to sink a little  over time but we want to minimize that if we can so we're going to get some more soil  and fill it up i'm going to fill the   you know the buffer soil all this extra stuff to  about here maybe a little higher this way we have   at least 10 inches of good soil that i can add  in and it'll be very similar to the bed that i   just showed you before where we're growing great  food and the bed right behind me here this is the   birdies raised bed i put in we're going to be  building the same soil after i have all this   of the filler put in we're gonna be building  the same soil on top that i built in here   so i'm gonna show you how i built that  and it's growing incredibly well so far   let's get this in starting to look  good we're almost to the right height   now i'm just gonna compress it down a little  more make sure we're filling some of that space   and i'm actually going to order it in a  little bit and i'm going to do that to   again have some of the space get filled by the   soil and dirt as it moves down but i'm also going  to do this to supercharge the wood a little bit   so i want that wood to be a little wet so it can  start breaking down and then the fungus will come   and start eating out the wood and destroying it  i don't want to make this super wet and super   soggy though so we're just gonna wet it down a  little bit we're almost to the right height here the great thing about using this organic matter  here is over time this organic matter is just   going to break down and turn into great soil  this is going to be bringing a lot of worms in   the worms will be going up and down through  the soil going deeper as it gets colder out   breaking down some of the stuff at the bottom i'd say that's pretty perfect so now we're going  to build this high quality soil for the top 10   or 12 inches and then if the plants want to grow  just a little deeper the roots want to go deeper   they can go into this beautiful compost or native  soil or whatever you have down here it's not just   going to grow into wood we want to make sure we  have this buffer because roots just aren't going   to grow into the center of a solid piece of wood  if it's not like very broken down so we want to   make sure we give the roots the ability to find  something else to tap into now we're ready to   start building our soil that we're going to fill  in the top 10 or 12 inches so i like to build my   own soil i find it to be cheaper more fun and  i just love doing it so if you don't want to   build your own soil you could just pick up some  good organic raised bed mix it's going to be   a little more expensive and it's not going to be  customizable to a particular plant like how i like   to do it but it still works great so i'm going to  build my soil i'm not going to show you exactly   how i do it but if you want a more detailed view  of the you know the specific ingredients that i   like to use then i'll do a video on that but today  i'm just going to show you a basic mixture where   we can start with just one-third compost like i  have here and then one third you can either use   some cocoa core like i have right  here this was a cocoa brick i just   wet it yesterday and then just broke it apart and  you can use one-third cocoa or one-third peat moss and then one-third perlite or vermiculite so i've  got some vermiculite here so i'm going to put in   about a third of vermiculite that's a good base  start and again you can either use vermiculite   or perlite and you can use cocoa or peat moss but  that's a good start i'm going to get it all mixed   up and get my own specific mix going and then i'm  going to start putting it in there we go this is   looking nice and mixed i like what i see now let's  start getting it into the bed i'm going to start   putting this in and another reason i love making  my soil is like you can customize it to whatever   environment whatever plant you're growing so if  you live in a super super hot climate you may want   some better water retention so you may want  to add some more cocoa core or something   so whatever you want to use the soil  for you can customize to it that's why   one of the reasons i love building my own  so we're just going to keep adding this in   and you'll notice underneath i don't have a  lot of greens again i don't want to make a   compost pile underneath my soil or that will  just heat up and burn a lot of my roots so   we're going to keep loading this in  get a nice 10 inches of good soil it's going to finish putting the soil in and the  compost that i use for this i get for 45 for a   cubic yard at the big box store like lowe's they  sell one cubic foot for five dollars and 28 cents   so there's 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard and  if i was to get one cubic yard which cost me   45 dollars in compost if i was to get that from  lowe's it'd be like 140 so obviously i'm not   using a whole cubic yard of compost in here but  it is a good saving if you want to order some   of your own compost to build your own soil  and to me it's one of the most fun things   so we'll keep getting this filled up  there we go i got all that soil in   i think i do need just another maybe three inches  of soil so i'll mix up another batch and then just   do the same exact thing but what i want to do is  just also water this in a little bit i like to   do to make sure i'm not getting any pooling make  sure i'm getting good drainage and i also like to   fill this with water let it sit for a little  while so i can test the uh the weight of the soil   i don't want it to be really heavy and really  dense or it's going to be tough for the roots   to move through if it's really dense and really  heavy then i'll add a little more cocoa core and you'll notice i put some perlite  in here too to help with the drainage   there we go it's watered in it's accepting the  water well now i'm just going to dig in a little   bit to make sure that the soil is not too heavy or  too dense so when i lift this up it's pretty light   even though it's not super saturated i don't want  soil that's really heavy or really dense or hard   to move because if it's hard to move it's going to  be hard for the roots to move it too so that looks   beautiful like that i'll mix up a little more soil  fill it up and then it's ready to plant into saved   a good amount of money by not using any good soil  for the bottom half of this so again basically   about half the soil we had to use and we're  still going to be able to grow a lot of food   and we'll come back in a couple weeks we'll check  this out we'll see how much stuff is growing here   and how much actually we've been able to utilize  this section and in the front here you'll notice   we've got a little gap i'm just going to fill  that with soil i'll just backfill that here   i'm going to make some more soil same stuff  i made at the top and just we'll fill it in   so we'll be able to grow a lot of food in this  section even though we're on a concrete slab here   and we don't have to use a lot of soil to fill  this bed up before i let you go i wanted to talk   about something and it's hugelkultur a lot  of you will probably ask are you building a   hugelkultur bed i didn't do that specifically  here because i think it's some great advantage   uh i think google culture works  good in it in the right scenario   and it got popular for a while i had a big video  on it or i had a video on it that did well on my   channel and i actually ended up taking that down  because i don't believe that it's necessary uh   really almost ever the reason that sepp holzer had  so much success with the google culture and he's   the one who kind of started it was because he was  on a very steep slope in the swiss alps so what   he did was he cut down a lot of trees that he had  locally laid them on the ground and then built up   soil around it this way on the uh on a deep slope  when the water came down it would hit against the   hugelbeds and then the water would sink in so he  did it because it was necessary for his particular   situation he didn't do it because it's amazing  to grow food in wood it doesn't work that great   it's good as a space filler like i did here and  eventually it will break down to organic matter   but i didn't specifically put wood in here to help  with the growth i just did it to fill the space   so i don't think huge culture is great for many  scenarios but in some particular situations it   does work that's today's video girls thanks for  watching i hope you enjoyed it i hope you got   something out of it the rain is starting to come  down it's actually also me and tuck are so happy   about it because it's going to water all of our  plants in and it's going to also water that bed in   we hope you got something out of the video and  if you're going to put a deep raised bed in   i hope you don't waste money by just filling the  bottom if it's not necessary with with good soil   when you can just fill it with some wood and  some organic matter so if you guys enjoyed the   video hit the like button hit the subscribe button  share with your friends don't forget to check out   the merch down low and remember whenever you're  on amazon start your shopping with our amazon   affiliate link i also wanted to thank one of the  new channel members or not new but you've been a   channel member for a little bit sam love thank you  for your continued support me and tuck appreciate   it a lot and for being part of team grow and me  and tucker are going to be consistently out here   he's trying to get your attention by starting to  you know pull out his stick and stuff because he   wants to be on camera because he's really  you know this guy's the star of the show   but we'll be back at you again uh real soon  if you did enjoy the video hit the like   button hit the subscribe button james and  tuck will be back at you real soon we out!

Channel: The Gardening Channel With James Prigioni

Views: 546,308

Keywords: how to fill a raised bed, raised bed, raised bed garden, how to, how to build a raised bed, how to fill a deep raised bed, how to raised bed, fill raised bed, garden, raised bed gardening, organic gardening, epicgardening, self sufficient me, garden answer, gardener scott, Logan paul

Id: y2kHArkO_Bw

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021