Skip Navigation

Build Your Own Garden

A how-to guide from GRuB's Kitchen Garden Project ...continued

  1. Intro -- The Things You'll Need
  2. Building the Frames
  3. Filling the Beds
  4. Building the Trellis
  5. Finishing Up

Printable version of the entire article

Filling the Beds

Photo of KGP builders unloading soil from the back of a truck.
Before you start moving the soil into your beds, lay down the cardboard or landscaping cloth material to prevent the existing grass and/or weeds from growing up through the soil. Make sure to cover the entire area of the bed. You can even lay down a couple layers if you wish. Once your cardboard or covering is down, you can start moving the soil into the beds. If the space you're building the gardens permits it, you can just back your truck full of soil right up to the beds and shovel it in from there.
Photo of KGP builders filling a wheelbarrow with soil.
However, much of the time, gardens are not accessible by truck, and the soil must be shoveled into a wheelbarrow, rolled over to the garden beds, and dumped in. If you're building more than one bed, you will probably first want to fill all the beds with dirt as high as the top of your frames. Fill them to this height at first just to make sure that all beds will have an ample amount of soil. Hopefully, after you've done this you will have soil left over. Once you know you have enough soil to fill all the beds to this point, distribute the rest of the soil evenly among your beds.
Photo of KGP builders unloading soil from a wheelbarrow.
The ideal bed would be filled with soil that it heaps up above the frames, somewhere around 4 to 6 inches above the frame. There will still be many air pockets in the soil immediately after you fill your beds, and over the next several days the soil will settle quite a bit, especially if it rains. Take your rake, or your hands if necessary, and break up the big chunks of soil so that your plants don't have to try and grow around and/or through them.
Photo of finished beds filled with soil.
You should let the soil sit for about a week before you plant anything, allowing the soil both to settle, and also to cool. Compost is quite warm relative to the temperature of the ground, and allowing the topsoil/compost blend to cool before planting anything is very important - if its still too hot it could burn the seeds or the roots of your transplanted starts.
STEP 4: BUILDING THE TRELLIS -->