- Good day, I'm Mark
from Self Sufficient Me. And in this video I'm
not just gonna show you how to fill a raised garden
bed with high sides like this on the cheap, and even for
free like I've just done. I'm also gonna give you a
bunch of tips and tricks that I've learnt over the
years through my own experience in filling these large beds. That will help you take
advantage of just about any situation you're in. Let's get into it. (lighthearted music) (birds chirp) I actually filled this bed yesterday and I've left it to settle overnight so I can start planting into it. These ones here, I just
dug up from our lawn, self seeded, can you believe it? Wherever you can get them, get them. So while I continue to fill
this bed up with plants, let's go back to a much
younger me of yesterday and fill this bed up with dirt. The first thing I'll do is put my hat on, we might be approaching winter here, but by crikey, that sun's hot! It's gonna save my melon nicely, not good for the camera, but good for the old scone
that's balding on top. You might notice that I've already started filling this bed here. What I've done, is I've thrown
in a whole heap of offcuts, weeds are on the bottom. The weeds with the seeds
that we'll never see again are right at the base of this bed. I wouldn't suggest using
weeds or anything like that as fill closer to the surface, because you'll invariably
dig them up eventually, and they'll start weeding
throughout your bed. But if they're right at the
bottom, a couple of feet down, they're never gonna surface
and they'll just eventually rot and turn into worm food. Grasses and dug up soil which
I'm gonna show you soon, can be easily put into a bed as well. But again, you probably
don't want them closest to the surface, you want them
a foot or two underneath. Now before I go into the fill that I'm gonna put into this bed, I wanna go through a bit of
my own evolution with you. When I first got these raised garden beds, 2006 I think it was, from Birdies. I first filled them with gravel
and also crushed granite. And the reason why I used
those drainage materials in the bottom half of those
beds, was because at the time, I was just following the
instructions from the company. And I think they still give out these same instructions today. That's okay, but what
I found over the years is that's definitely not necessary, unless you fill the base with
clay, you're not gonna have a problem with drainage out
of these beds, regardless. So in my opinion, you might
as well stack the base with good, organic matter and
some solid organic matter, like logs and sticks and twigs that'll take a long time to break down. And as they break down,
they will absorb moisture and be home for insects and
microbes and fungi and worms, and help your plants at the same time, grow nice and healthy. By allowing your plants
to absorb the nutrients that they otherwise would
not be able to on their own. Now I like this dug up soil and grass as a fill for a garden bed, because it brings me to a good point. You don't want to turn
your raised garden bed into a compost heap. There's a big difference
between filling it with organic matter and
soil to grow veggies in, and filling it full or organic
matter with a little touch of soil or compost on top. And turning it into a compost
pile where it generates a heap of heat and compost
piles do as you know, especially enclosed like that. Because that's a good way
to build a compost bed, is to build it similar to a raised bed and just throw everything in
and have a gate on the front. But that's not what we're doing here. So you better make sure
that you don't overload it with so much organic matter
that it is a compost pile, or as you plant your plants in there, all the roots will get
burnt and they won't grow. So make sure you definitely do
have the half, half formula. Half organic matter, half
soil, good garden soil, rough soil, whatever. You can have the top 30
centimeters good, organic garden soil mixed with compost and manures and all that beautiful stuff. And then a layer of
ordinary soil underneath and then your organic matter below that. This is a good mixture because
it's pretty rough soil, mixed in with organic matter. So it's gonna give the
best of both worlds. And one other thing that
this has when you collect it from around your property,
or a job like this where we're already digging
up to create a pathway anyway. Is that you might be
lucky enough to dig up a whole bunch of garden
worms and other microbes, and little animals along with that, that are surviving in the
soil underneath the grass. And when you put that
into your raised bed, they will of course start
to live in that new home. (soil falls into wheelbarrow) (footsteps crunch on grass) (leaves crunch) As I'm filling the bed
with the rubbish fill, I often get in and walk it down just to compact it down a little bit. That stops the sinkage
that happens after a while, it's inevitable anyway, but it just stops the sinkage too soon. Because I'd like to
get at least a crop out before it sinks down halfway. And if you just throw soil
on top of loose material, it might just sit up there with
a whole bunch of air pockets and then create sinkholes. And you don't want that, so I
jump in and I stamp it down. Once I start filling it
with the proper good soil for the top half, I
don't compact that down because that's not great
for growing veg in. When I am using big clumps of
grass like this in the bed, just for added protection so
it doesn't have any chance of growing up through that foot of soil that I'm gonna put on top of it, I'll turn these clumps upside
down and I'll throw them in that way and they'll just
rot under the ground there and turn into worm food. (spade scrapes against the wheelbarrow) All right, I think we're on the home run. We'll get this good soil that I saved from the old garden beds, and we'll fill that last
foot up with all that. And then on top of that,
we'll mix in a little bit of good cow manure that's
been well rotted for months. Probably got some good
worms in it now too. And a bit of mulcher
on top, see how we go. (spade crunches into soil) Look at this fellow,
he's spritely, oh wow! That is what I love to see in my garden. Throw him down here, bury him over. And you go to work in there and make that your new home buddy. I'm gonna essentially
overfill this at the beginning just to allow for a bit of sinkage. (spade crunches into soil) Oh crikey, look at all the worms in this. There's just heaps of
young worms in here now. Come on, where are ya? There you go, look at that. Look at those beautiful worms. There's heaps of them. Heaps of tiny worms,
and that's what I want to start this bed off with. Now what I'll do is I'll break that up carefully by hand when I get up there, so I don't you know, kill
too many of the worms. And I'll just break it up
and just sprinkle it around the top of the bed. (soil falls into wheelbarrow) So you not only getting the
goodness of the cow manure, the nutrients, you're
also getting the worms and the water holding capacity and the structural capacities of it. (soil falls into wheelbarrow) (birds chirp) (spade scrapes against the wheelbarrow) You could give that manure
a slight little till into the bed, I'm not going to. I'll let those worms have
the best chance possible. Plus I think that it's going to absorb into that top layer pretty
quickly anyway and breakdown. Once I get the mulch on
top, start planting in, it'll be nice and rich. (water sprays) Now I didn't add any extra fertilizer like (murmurs) and bone to the bed, because I think the cow
manure will be good enough. But if I find out later
that the veggies are lacking in a little bit of
nitrogen, I might just give a soluble fertilizer,
or a bit of (murmurs) and water that in, but we'll
just see how it goes for now. (water sprays) Well I hope you enjoyed this video, if you did, make sure you
give it a full thumbs up, and subscribe to the channel
if you haven't already. Make sure you share the video around too, because that always helps. Thanks a lot for watching, bye for now. - [Woman] That looks great (chuckles). - [Mark] Good to have (murmurs)
recycled material, isn't it? - [Woman] It looks so cute
too, it looks nice, doesn't it? - [Mark] Yeah.
- [Woman] Yeah.
