not into brands jannell,

suggest you sue what is readily available and not expensive, mushroom compost from the farm is good, check what the landscape supplier might have.

at present we have top soil available so we are using that.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens bale garden

Don't fill w/ only compost of whatever kind.

Companies that deal w/ mulch and soil often have a planting mix. Call around to locate a source.

The definition of "topsoil" is soil from the top 4 to 6 inches from someplace. That might be pretty good material or it might be pretty bad material. As jean indicated companies the sell landscape supplies sell "soil" but you want to look at what you are getting before you decide. I my experience most eveyone that talks about getting "topsoil" has a specific soil type in mind and that is loam. Loam is generally 45 percent sand, 25 percent silt, 25 percent clay, and 5 percent organic matter and that is what you should look for for your raised beds.
Garden soil, or planting mix, does not even have a definition although many people think they know what that is. We need to get away from using these general, but meaningless, descriptions of soil.

ours is red clayey loam and brown clayey loam on top of red volcanic clay, we are lucky it grows up a storm, the poster could fill with mushroom compost we have done, they could get a load of that recycled humus stuff often free it will all grow plants.

our nursery suppliers sell various mixes apart from top soil or whatever, we have bought a mushroom compost mix that had been mixed with horse stable sweepings, but they have a choice check them out.

all we add is gypsum and a dash of dolomite.

len

My yard is all pea gravel over hard packed sand, yuk. So I built raised beds 12" tall. I raked out the gravel and cut out the plastic. Covered with newspaper and a bit of the gravel to hold it down. Then I layered in Kellogg Organic garden soil for veges, Miracle Grow Organic Planting Mix, Composted chicken manure and Edna's best potting mix both from E B White. I tried to mix this very well together. I am older and have no truck or help so bagged stuff is the way I do it.

80-90% top soil, 10-20% compost for veggie production (some would suggest 20% compost is too much, especially in a highly weathered area like FL) or 90%-10% for flowers/shrubs. Personally, I'd go for a 90%-10% mix either way. Some people prefer a little more in their soils, but I don't recommend using more than 20% at most for a variety of reasons from compaction/degradation to cost.

The mineral portion (top soil) will help add and maintain structure and unlike the compost will remain stable in structure while giving the organic (compost/microbial/etc) parts of the soil places to hold and exchange nutrients.

If your compost is really good and quality stuff that you can trust you can do 95%-5% top soil to compost.

nc and the others that suggest using "top soil" olease define what you mean by that term. What is your "top soil"?

There is no such thing as what most people think of as "top soil" in peninsular florida. The landscape is muck pockets (seasonally wet/dry ponds and swamps) and sand. Pretty much nothing else. The sand ranges from very poorly-drained to very excessively-drained.

Anything bought locally there that passes as "soil" is made of decomposed OM mixed with the sand. It will have zero silt or clay in it, so in a relatively short time the OM burns out and you have simply more sand. This is why every few years the raised beds have to be emptied and re-filled or large amounts of compost have to be added as mulch, and still crops are always under-nourished.

The only way out of this loop, IME, is to grow in-ground, using very well-adapted seasonally-appropriate crops, after amending with the highest possible grade of compost or humus. Most crops in the florida conditions require a constant addition of nutrients during the growth cycle because there is so little in the sand - row crops are fertilized very frequently in small doses. Long-season or perennial legumes have the potential for sustainable production without ongoing fertility inputs but little else does.

not sure what pnbrown is saying? of course there is top soil, even though most places are heavily eroded from farm practices etc.,. the soil you walk in is classified as top soil.

it is the type of soil that is now top that comes into question, that is all. most end up with heavy clay, and new housing developments that is fill dirt that has been bought in(a whole 'nutha story).

now generally we don't end up with top soil from our own yards unless we build from scratch. in our last place i ended up with some clay fill from work we did around the house, this made a very good herb garden. with the addition of much gypsum.

now here at our new place we built so had to create a building site for a slab home, here we had good top soil red clayey loam and brown clayey loam, all over volcanic red clay, so our knowledgeable dozer man pushed all top soil into a pile and used the clay base to build the home site.

we had oodles of it a huge pile, we have shared a lot probably around 4c/mtrs. as we learnt by filling our gardens with it plants are beside themselves growing.

we still have more than enough left to top the beds, so that is top soil. you can before buying make determinations as we did.

len