After your beds are constructed and set in place, it’s time to fill your beds. It’s important to choose high-quality organic matter as bed material in order to insure the health of your future fruit, vegetable, or herb garden.
Healthy garden soil can be achieved in a couple of different ways. It’s possible to buy several bags, or even a truckload of topsoil with which to fill your beds. This way can be a bit costly, depending on the quality of the topsoil available to you. You can also achieve a good soil mix in a more cost-effective way by layering organic matter.
A practice that’s currently popular in building raised vegetable garden beds is inspired by Hugelkultur, a German term involving gardening on top of layered mounds, which have a foundation of decomposing logs at the bottom and alternating layers of organic matter.
Using sticks and small branches of varying levels of decomposition in the bottom of your raised beds is a great way to fill a good amount of volume with nutrient-rich organic matter that will decompose over time, returning its nutrients to the soil of your raised beds. Follow this layer with topsoil mixed or layered with compost (homemade or store-bought), and you have a good foundation for your new gardens.
After filling your beds, you may want to test your soil to find out if it needs any amendments. Even rich topsoil can be lacking in some vital nutrients needed to grow healthy fruits, veggies, and herbs. You can find great organic fertilizers that will help to feed your future plants. Healthy, vitamin rich vegetables begin with well-fed plant roots.