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How to Fill Raised Garden Beds for Better Plant Growth

By Calin Oancea and Florin Gabriel

8/31/20242 min read

a garden bed filled with a good soil mix
a garden bed filled with a good soil mix

Hi, in this short article, I will show you a great way how you can fill your raised garden beds. In the first section you will see the first, the deepest layer of material. And not to mention, this way is also recommended by Vego Garden and Ollie, these are two reliable garden bed brands.

You need to make the first (most deep) layer out of cardboard. This material attracts insects and worms and they optimize the soil for growing plants.

cardboard
cardboard

5% Thin Cardboard

Layer 1:

In the second layer, you need to put branches, wood and any shredded biodegradable materials, the wood will be transformed into soil on the long term

wooden branches
wooden branches

45% Wood and Branches

Layer 2:

old leaves
old leaves

10% Plant Waste

Layer 3:

Once you have filled your garden bed with cardboard, wood and branches it is time for materials that will turn into soil very easily like banana Peels and old tree leaves.

For growing herbs from seeds in a garden bed, compost is vital because it contains a lot of important minerals that plants need to grow successfully, but if you don't have compost you can also use normal soil for the fourth layer.

compost soil
compost soil

10% Compost

Layer 4:

For the last layer, you need to provide about 30% of normal soil. The soil and the compost layer are the layers of material where the roots of the plants will grow, if you want to grow cactus plants or herbs in your bed it is best to adjust it for proper cactus soil and good herb soil. In case you have problems with unwanted plants there are sustainable ways to kill weeds out of beds.

organic soil
organic soil

30% Organic Soil

Layer 5:

Vego Gardens soil suggestion
Vego Gardens soil suggestion
overview of the soil components
overview of the soil components

This way of filling garden beds is called the Hügelkultur method and is also recommended by Vego Garden and Ollie, these are two reliable garden bed brands.

Olies soil suggestion
Olies soil suggestion
Calin Oancea
Calin Oancea
Green Box
Green Box

Article By:

Calin has been in the garden industry for 5 years and knows a lot about gardening and plants. He owns this website and is responsible for most of the content.

Reviewed By:

Florin, a more technical guy, is responsible for designing, reviewing updating the articles but also optimizing for SEO so that everything we publish is deam good.

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We hope this article was helpful and inspired you.